In 1940 American Bantam Car Co. designed and built the first Jeep in record time because of their many years of experience building what were at the time comparatively small cars. No other car manufacturer at the time had the small vehicle engineering and manufacturing expertise that American Bantam® possessed and without that expertise the Jeep that helped win World War II may never have been conceived.

The predecessor to American Bantam® was the American Austin Car Co., which was founded in 1929 as a subsidiary of the Austin Motor Co. from England. They manufactured the Austin Seven under license for the American market until American Austin went into receivership in 1934.

Austin Motors was founded in 1905 by Sir Herbert Austin in Longbridge, England and grew to become one of the greatest car manufacturers in the world. Austin engineered automobiles were the first automobiles manufactured by American Bantam, BMW, Mini, Austin-Healey, Rover, Rosengart in France, Roewe in China and Nisaan in Japan.

The Austin Seven was an incredibly popular vehicle at the time and was the largest manufactured automobile in Great Britain in 1930. The American version of the Austin Seven had a 15 hp 747 cc (45.6 cu in) inline-four engine with a top speed of 50 mph (80 km/h) in top gear. The car was a tiny 10 feet (3m) long with a 75 inch (1905mm) wheelbase and weighed only 1,130 lbs (514 kg), enabling the car to achieve 40 mpg (5.9 L/100 km) in 1930! The American Austin sold 8,558 vehicles during the company’s first year of production and produced around 20,000 cars before operations ceased in 1934.

American Bantam Car Co. was founded in 1935 by Roy Evans, a former salesman for Austin, who purchased the American Austin assets out of bankruptcy. American Bantam® car’s were built on the same 75 inch wheelbase chassis but with a new 19 hp (14 kW) engine and a new body with more modern styling designed by Alexis de Sakhnoffsky. Production of the Austin Seven resumed in 1937 and in 1940 the engine was upgraded to 22 hp (16 kW) to achieve a top speed of 60 mph. Around 6,000 Bantam® Sevens were built before America entered World War II.

Charles ‘Harry’ Payne lobbied forcefully with the US Army Quartermaster Corps (QMC) to sell American Bantam® cars to the US military but in 1940 the QMC was in no hurry and lacked the budget to develop an entirely new vehicle. Payne wound up convincing Secretary of War Harry Woodring on the concept which eventually led to General Marshall’s office appointing an Ordnance Subcommittee to visit the original American Bantam® factory in Butler, Pennsylvania, where the first jeep was later invented.

At their headquarters American Bantam showed the Army QMC their existing Roadster and the Roadster Pickup. Indeed, displaying these vehicles would later come back to haunt American Bantam® because this is probably where the US Army initially came up with the idea that the “reconnaissance car” could weigh only 1,200 pounds with a 70 inch wheelbase, 200 pounds lighter and 5 inches shorter than the Austin Seven.

While the American Bantam® Pilot was indeed the first small, light-weight four-wheel drive vehicle, the American Bantam® Seven was the first vehicle the US Army QMC looked at when setting the specifications for the original jeep and was undoubtedly the foundation for the design of the first American Bantam® jeep.