But the army then took an unprecedented step. Concerned that Willys might not be able to meet the increasing demand and wanting a backup facility in case of sabotage, it persuaded Ford to build jeeps according to the Willys blueprints. Jeeps produced by both companies would be essentially the same, with interchangeable parts.

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Bantam, the company that had helped pioneer the whole concept, lost out. In all, it produced 2,675 jeeps, most for shipment to the Soviet Union and Great Britain in late 1941 under the Lend-Lease Act. The company survived the war economically by fulfilling government contracts for torpedo parts, aircraft components, and special trailers intended to be towed by the jeeps Bantam no longer manufactured.

If credit for the jeep's development was mired in controversy, the origin of its very name would be debated for decades after the war. Conventional wisdom focused on the name as a slurring of the letters GP, for "General Purpose." But the army did not use the "General Purpose" designation for the jeep, instead opting for the ponderous "Truck, Quarter-ton, Four-by-four, and Command Reconnaissance."

The word "jeep" had actually been around since at least World War I—"an old Army grease monkey term," according to Maj. E. P. Hogan, who in 1941 compiled a brief history of the vehicle's development. Jeep, he wrote, "was used by shop mechanics in referring to any new motor vehicle received for a test." Soldiers also employed it as a derogatory reference to new recruits.

During the 1930s, several different army vehicles, including an all-wheel-drive tractor and a half-ton Dodge command and reconnaissance car, were referred to as jeeps. In 1937 the Popeye comic strip even introduced a popular dog-sized character named Eugene the Jeep, a magical creature that solved complex problems; some authorities insisted the new and remarkable army vehicle got its name from the comics. Someone joked that the jeep, in its stripped-down simplicity, was so austere its name had to be an acronym for "Just Enough Essential Parts."

But as the designation for Willys's new vehicle, "jeep" almost certainly entered the public consciousness one day early in 1941 in Washington, D.C. As a publicity stunt, Irving "Red" Hausmann, chief test driver for Willys, demonstrated the vehicle's capabilities, even driving up and down the steps of the Capitol. As Hausmann recalled it, he had heard soldiers at the Camp Holabird test center referring to the prototype as a jeep. So when a bystander asked him, "What is that thing?" Hausmann replied, "It's a jeep." A reporter for the Washington Daily News, Katherine Hillyer, overheard the remark and mentioned it in her story, and the name stuck.

By the time America entered the war in December 1941, the jeep rolling off the Willys assembly lines—and soon those at Ford—was a starkly functional marvel. With its canvas top and windshield folded down, it presented the desired low silhouette for combat. The vehicle could rev up without strain from 3 to 60 mph, carry a load up a 40-degree slope, turn in a 30-foot circle, and tilt sideways to an angle of 55 degrees without turning over. It could plow through wheel-deep mud, ford hood-high streams, and leap over small ditches. And the jeep was so durable that GIs and generals alike considered it practically indestructible. The army's chief of engineers, Maj. Gen. Eugene Reybold, later said that in all his travels he had "never seen a jeep that would not run when it was needed."

If the jeep could go almost anywhere, it was also compact enough for delivery to the battleground in multiple ways. Air transports carried them easily. During the D-Day invasion of France, gliders carried jeeps into combat. Operatives of the Office of Special Services parachuted jeeps into France for use by their units working with the French Resistance. Landing craft disgorged jeeps onto the beaches of the Pacific.

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