- The vehicle in the picture is a GPW jeep built
on 7 February, 1944. I purchased it more than nine years ago from a WW II Veteran in
Pennsylvania. This owner purchased it seven years earlier from a plantation sale in
Florida and restored it over the seven-year period.
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- And now the “rest of the story”. I
had always wanted a WW II jeep since I was a youngster in Nebraska. I drove my dad’s
jeep, a 1943 GPW Navy jeep from the time I was nine years old till I left Nebraska at 17
years of age. My wife Sherrie has bugged me for years about getting a 4-Wheel Drive to go
out in the boonies. Boy, now we need to get down to some serious business.
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- I made an offer for the jeep and then upon my
return from a trip to Israel, I found out that the owner had sold the jeep for $500 more
to a California man. I called the buyer in California, and to my dismay found out he was a
broker who bought military vehicles in the US and shipped them to Japan ( my mind went
into overtime). It was sold to a buyer in Japan the same day the broker bought it. When I
found out the broker had bought it sight unseen, I then told him he really should have
seen it in person. There were lots of problems that you could not see in the pictures,
however, this didn’t bother me as I could fix them. There was silence on the other
end of the phone.
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- The broker then asked for a list of problems
which I sent him. He then passed this onto the Japanese buyer who then refused to take it.
The broker was able to intercept the shipment and told me that the jeep was mine. After
some TLC by Al Beren, we have since enjoyed our jeep trips to Creede Colorado, Roosevelt
Lake, the Sedona and Jerome area, Custer State Park South Dakota, and Moab Utah.
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