Willys technically doesn’t exist but its heritage does and has an Italian co-owner even though it is American through and through. John Willys founded his company in 1912 as the Willys-Overland Motor Company. He had started out by selling bicycles around New York State and this had lead him to set up a dealership for Overland cars. In 1907 with supply from the factory a … [Read more...]
American Motors
American Motors (AMC) was formed in 1954 by the merger of Nash-Kelvinator and the Hudson Motor Car Company. Nash had recognised that the Big 3 being General Motors, Ford and Chrysler were going to be hard to beat without economies of scale and they found Hudson to be a willing partner to start the process. With the completion of the merger, the new AMC was able to reduce the … [Read more...]
Common Rail Diesels
I first heard about Common Rail Diesels in the marketing of the Jeep Grand Cherokee! I couldn’t understand why this would be such a major marketing item. I’ll cover that off at the end of the article. Direct injection was developed for military use on aircraft by the Germans and Soviets and then jumped to civilian use after World War 2. Robert Bosch developed an automotive … [Read more...]
The Interesting Case of Jeep and the Clever Marketer
Over recent weeks there have been stories about Jeeps being hacked and FIAT Chrysler losing a law suit over a wrongful death due to a fire after an accident - They have also been fined a record US$105M for recall “lapses” and in Australia the ex head of the local company is being sued by his former employer for fraud. All of which deserve separate posts on this blog, however I … [Read more...]