Recently Bill McGuire (2017) of Mac’s Motor City Garage reposted a story that included photographs of a never-produced postwar Willys passenger car called the 6/70. He offered intriguing details about the car, which included independent front and rear suspension. However, I came away confused about when the compact Willys was cancelled.
The narrative floating around in my brain was that the possibility of early-postwar Willys passenger cars died when company president Joe Frazer left the firm in 1943. Richard Langworth summed up this school of thought: “To many it was obvious that Joe Frazer’s postwar plans for Willys had involved a much more ambitious passenger car operation than one contemplated by [chairman Ward M.] Canaday” (1975; p. 13).
Of course, in more recent years another scenario has surfaced. Patrick Foster (1998) has argued that Canaday actually wanted to reenter the passenger-car market by 1947 but was unable to do so. This was because of postwar challenges such as obtaining bodies at an affordable price.
So what was the sequence of events for the aborted Willys compact? Let’s see if Stevens’s archives at the Milwaukee Art Museum can offer any clues.
In 1942 Stevens proposed a Jeep passenger car
Stevens first got involved with Willys when he suggested at a 1942 presentation to the Society of Automotive Engineers that the Jeep chassis could be a good basis for a postwar compact car. According to Glenn Adamson, he stated that “today’s Jeep could become tomorrow’s popular car with a minimum of tooling and fabrication cost” (2003; p. 92).
Note that Stevens’s design, which was dubbed the “Victory Car,” featured all-wheel drive.
The proposal caught the attention of Willys management, which hired Stevens’s consulting firm to develop a compact passenger car. By the summer of 1943 Stevens’s ideas had evolved into the 6/66.
Also see ‘1933-42 Willys offered a better template for an import beater’
“Strangely the sedan that soon emerged looked very little like a Jeep,” noted Adamson. “Probably with encouragement from the company’s swashbuckling president, Joe Frazer, Stevens and his design staff took the prewar Willys sedan as their starting point. Though their creation was relatively plain and utilized a standard Jeep engine, the car called for an entirely new chassis and body tooling to create the rounded curves that Stevens and Frazer thought were needed to make the car sell” (2003, p. 93).
I suspect that Adamson conflated events by stating that by 1944 three prototypes had been designed and built under the names 6/66, 6/70 and 6/71.
For one thing, Frazer was reportedly gone by September, 1943 (Langworth, 1975). His replacement, Charles Sorenson, quickly killed the passenger-car program in favor of an expanded line of Jeeps, according to Foster (1998). In addition, all of Stevens’s archived images shown below were dated 1946-47.
Stevens designed compacts after Frazer’s departure
According to Foster (1998), in January, 1946 Sorensen was replaced by James Mooney. He told the press that Willys would soon introduce a compact passenger car with a 104-inch wheelbase, a weight of under 2,500 pounds, a six-cylinder engine and four-wheel independent suspension. The car would only be offered in two-door models. McGuire (2017) referred to this car as the 6/70.
Frazer had been gone almost two-and-a-half years when Stevens came up with the design shown below. The illustration, which was dated Jan. 4, 1946, carries over the basic elements of the 6/66 but has a heavier, more chrome-laden look.
A prototype for this concept was developed. The next three photos were taken on Nov. 21, 1946. The fourth photo, of a car’s dashboard, may have been from the same prototype but was dated May 30.
Stevens continued to fine-tune this basic design in 1947. The first illustration below keeps the outboard fenders whereas the second one adopts “pontoon” side styling. Both cars were given a more squared-off deck.
I did not find in Stevens’s archives a photo of a 6/71 clay model shown in McGuire’s (2017) story. However, the archives did include two illustrations from March, 1947 that displayed further evolution of Stevens’s basic design.
Both of the cars shown below were given a V-shaped split windshield and a more horizontal fascia, but the first car maintains an outboard rear fender whereas the second one has a pontoon shape.
What’s the backstory behind this strange car design?
In the summer of 1947, photographs were taken of a clay model with a dramatically different shape. This is the same car that Stevens poses with in the banner photo. That would suggest he thought this concept was worth giving visibility to. Even so, I have thus far not come across any information about it.
My biggest question: Is the unusually long snout indicative of front-wheel drive? If so, why did Stevens waste the space-efficiency potential of that drivetrain layout by giving the car such a low beltline?
I should add that Stevens developed two-door convertibles for each design proposal. For example, the first image below is dated May 27, 1946. The second one is dated June 21, 1947.
Notice how different the proportions are of the two cars. The first one has an aesthetically pleasing long-hood, short-deck look. The second concept is stunningly ill-proportioned. It’s a veritable wiener dog on wheels.
Postwar designs had big differences from prewar
The 6/66-6/71 design proposals had roughly the same exterior dimensions as the prewar Willys, but they also had meaningful differences. For one thing, the postwar proposals only included two-door models. That stood in contrast to the prewar Willys lineup, which also included a four-door sedan, wagon, truck and even a panel van.
One reason for the lack of four-door body styles may have been that the new design appears to have a longer wheelbase ahead of the cowl than the prewar Willys. That effectively moved the front seat so far back on the chassis that it may not have been possible to offer a four-door model.
To see what I mean, compare a photograph of a 6/70 above with that of the prewar Willys below. Note that this 1939 four-door had a four-inch-shorter wheelbase than the 6/70 — only 100 inches. Over the next two years the wheelbase would be increased by a total of four inches behind the cowl to increase interior room. (The only images I found were illustrations with distorted proportions so have included this 1939 photograph instead.)
One might suggest that the added wheelbase ahead of the cowl was necessary because the 6/70 was given a six-rather than a shorter four-cylinder engine. However, the 1952-55 Willys Aero offered both sixes and fours yet its snout did not appear to have been as long as a 6/70’s.
Stevens and Willys management apparently wanted to emphasize sporty styling over practicality — and a broad lineup of cars.
The 6/70 would also have been heavier than the prewar Willys. If its projected weight had come in just below 2,500 pounds, that would have been as much as 300 more than a 1942 Americar and around the same weight as an entry-level 1952-53 Aero with a six.
The 6/70 may have offered “more car” than the prewar Willys, but it might not have competed as well against Chevrolet, Ford and Plymouth on price. This would prove to be a fatal problem for the Aero.
What can we learn from these images?
The dates given to these illustrations and photographs suggest that Stevens worked on passenger cars in two time periods: 1942-43 and 1946-47. The gap between those two periods was when Sorensen was president of Willys in 1944-45. This would align with Foster’s contention that Sorensen stopped the development of a passenger car and his successor restarted it.
Might the 6/70 have found much success in the marketplace if Willys had managed to get the car to market somewhere around 1947? Given the enormous postwar appetite for new cars, it would have been difficult to fail during the seller’s market.
The big question is whether the 6/70 would have done any better than the ill-fated Aero once the seller’s market ended.
Share your reactions to this post with a comment below or a note to the editor.
RE:SOURCES
- Adamson, Glenn; 2003. Industrial Strength Design: How Brooks Stevens Shaped Your World. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
- Foster, Patrick R.; 1998. The Story of Jeep. Krause Publications, Iola, WI.
- Langworth, Richard M.; 1975. Kaiser-Frazer: The Last Onslaught on Detroit. Princeton Publishing, Princeton, NJ.
- McGuire, Bill; 2017. “Stillborn: The 1947 Willys 6-70.” Mac’s Motor City Garage. Posted May 18.
PHOTOGRAPHY & ADVERTISING:
- Milwaukee Art Museum Brooks Stevens Archives
- oldcarbrochures.org: Willys (1939, 1940, 1942, 1953)
The better of these designs might have sold if available in 1947-1948, but the rendering with the styling details reminiscent of 1951 Buicks, might have done very well. The rest of the designs would not have aged well after 1949, in my opinion. Timing is everything. Would Willys have been able to secure the raw materials to tool up and build such a car ?
As the article noted the May 27 1946 rendition is certainly well-proportioned and is arguably the best-looking of the proposals – looks like a baby Packard. I would add that by 1947 the wheelbase on the design was long enough to overcome the buckboard ride of a Jeep. Would it have sold? Perhaps, perhaps not. But in a seller’s market depending on how much of the original 1942 value proposition could have been met, this could have been the American answer to the more well-known “people’s car”- the VW bug. The Willys contribution to automotive history has perhaps been better served by the iconic and enduring Jeep brand.
Robert, your comment inspired me to add a section to the story that compares the 6/70’s market positioning with the prewar Willys and early-50s Aero. I wonder whether a reskinned version of the prewar Willys Americar would have done better because it could have offered a clearer alternative to Big Three fare — including a lower price.
The Victory Car design looks like someone took some body parts from a junkyard and put them on a Jeep. I don’t know if Willys had an idea of the thousands of surplus Jeeps available to civilians after the war. Perhaps this would be better as a kit body to be sold to Jeep owners? The other renderings are about what one would expect for the era. What gets me is it seems they had no interest in using the prewar tooling as other manufacturers used for their 46-48 models. Since they are starting with a clean sheet why not go with a true postwar style?
That’s a good point. By 1950 the 6/70 would have looked positively ancient compared to the new Nash Rambler. Indeed, it would have looked old hat compared to the 1947 Studebaker.
From around 49-52 Plymouth had a car on a 111 inch wheelbase. I couldn’t find any production figures (I didn’t look very hard} bujt the slightly larger Dodge equivalent sold over 200k in a 3 1/2 year run. So, there is a market there. If you could shorten the wheel-cowl distance a few inches and move the passenger compartment forward it would have been a better riding car. A small car with swing axle suspension? What can go wrong? The designs weren’t Brook Stevens’ best. The two drawings above “What’s the backstory” look good. I don’t know about the independent rear suspension. See how the first couple years go with a tractor axle and if sales are good and you think the market could stand a $30 or so jump for IRS around the time of the first reskinning you may have something. Give those drawings the 49=51 model years, the 52-55 the Aero, and 56- the reskinning with a dogleg windshield. Now, heading into the 60s is the market ready for a true AWD car? The Commando sold well enough and founded the small sporty SUV market. I don’t think they would see 1970 as a stand alone corporation, but when consolidation hit they would swing a bigger club.
The titbit on Willys-Overland expressing interest in producing the Fiat 1400/1900 with its own engine and transmission, along with talks between Rover and Kaiser-Jeep on either a merger or some form of joint-venture in production and design including a 1958 Willys-Land Rover hybrid prototype with Land Rover OHV* does raise one interesting options for how they could have prolonged things a bit longer with their car division up to the start of the 1970s.
Worth mentioning too the Rover P5 was initially intended to be smaller car to replace the P4 until it grew in size and required a larger modified 3-litre version of their F-Head engine, although could see Kaiser-Jeep getting more traction out of both the P5 platform (to underpin two models – restyled a la IKA Torino) as well as with the Land Rover OHV engines similar to what Santana Motor did and sit below the Kaiser-Frazer V8.
– The Land Rover OHV petrol and diesel engines would go on to have a long history up to the Brazilian-built 300Tdi-derived MWM International Powerstroke 3.0.