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WW2 Willys Jeep


DFC1943Fl.Lt.

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Well another Willy's jeep for restoration  with a reserve of £6000 didn't sell. Just got to over £3700. When will people take note that the buying public are fed up with owners of jeeps for restoration are not prepared to pay stupid money for a wreck. I have been looking at these for some time now and can not understand why they just keep relisting them at these silly prices. I know I shall be ripped to pieces for this post but I think I speak for the majority of people who would love to own a ww2 jeep who would not be afraid of a certain amount of work to bring them up to a standard. I am looking to buy a jeep and am amazed at what a lot of sellers are expecting to get for their ( rare, untouched ) WW2 Willy's jeeps. These jeeps are not rare anymore, they are everywhere you look when you go to shows. I know they are easy to get parts for and fit in a garage and are a iconic vehicles but that should not make price rise to obscene heights for a jeep that is in such disrepair. Now the sellers on here with jeep's for sale will no doubt give me all the reasons why they command the prices they put them up for but still boils down to the same question, they are wrecks and not worth the price put on them. The people I know, some with jeeps say the same. One bloke who has a 1942 Willy's, running and looks great even says they are worth between £10,000 to £15,000 no more but when you get people with money and no sense who wake up one morning and think, I'd like one of those little jeeps to run around in, they look quite cool. Bang everyone jumps in and think, well mines better than that one, it's worth ??? Well, rip me to bit's and let the arguments commence.      

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DFC1943Fl.Lt, I couldn't agree more. I think some of these sellers have been riding the classic car wave. The evidence is that the investors looking for a quick buck have disappeared, and the price of classic cars have come down. This is great news for the enthusiast who need to take a long term view. Let's hope that we start to see WW2 Willys/Ford project jeeps follow suit and come down in price.

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Well , you seem to be able to identify the cases that are too £ costly , that is good as entering any market first time is a risk.  IMHO  you actually need to enter the market to learn the market and that is applicable to vehicles of historic interest.  Snakes & ladders , French imports inc. MALT + Hotchkiss, Israel & Greece etc.  Generally from 1960's - I would say most / all buyers of Jeeps have paid top $  ,  they use / show them  (most of the deck-chair sitters will give you their £ expectations) , when they sell , little profit , perhaps more if their luck is in. No certainties if they had put their £ capital elsewhere.  More than sufficient - they could have tried £ / cost averaging , hence often owners have 2 or 3 qty. as well as churn them.

Actually  I think the days of getting a mate to carry off a chassis and galv. bathtub of bits must have ended abt. 1980 - hence supply/demand of a heavy work input project, if any remain + if you don't ask a lot of £ , you don't get a lot of £..

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4 minutes ago, ruxy said:

Well , you seem to be able to identify the cases that are too £ costly , that is good as entering any market first time is a risk.  IMHO  you actually need to enter the market to learn the market and that is applicable to vehicles of historic interest.  Snakes & ladders , French imports inc. MALT + Hotchkiss, Israel & Greece etc.  Generally from 1960's - I would say most / all buyers of Jeeps have paid top $  ,  they use / show them  (most of the deck-chair sitters will give you their £ expectations) , when they sell , little profit , perhaps more if their luck is in. No certainties if they had put their £ capital elsewhere.  More than sufficient - they could have tried £ / cost averaging , hence often owners have 2 or 3 qty. as well as churn them.

Actually  I think the days of getting a mate to carry off a chassis and galv. bathtub of bits must have ended abt. 1980 - hence supply/demand of a heavy work input project, if any remain + if you don't ask a lot of £ , you don't get a lot of £..

I have been in the market a few years now and have bought and sold many a vehicle but never ripped the guts out of the buyer for an extortionate amount of money and always been far. I have a 1944 Dodge WC which I have now had for a year and it cost me £8500. This was last year when most were selling for £10,000 to £12,000. The seller knew the price he could have got but is a genuine bloke who does not rip people off. It was sold to me on the condition I didn't come home and put it on the market for a profit, which I could have done quite easily. What I'm getting at is the fact someone sells one for x amount, then someone else thinks mine better that that and sticks another grand or two on, so on and so on. Lets face it, an everyday run of the mill clean Willy's or Ford, forgetting all the, it's rare and I've got the full history bull. should run at £10k to £12k. When you start getting upwards of £20k and above it's just ridiculous. No jeep is worth that unless you have more money than sense and this is where it all goes pear shaped. I know everyone wants to get as much as possible if they are selling and that goes for anything. But when you can't sell it for a price, common sense should tell you your asking to much but this isn't the case, people just keep putting them up at the same price. A lot of friends of mine who would love a WW2 jeep all say the same, sellers are living in a world of their own. Sell at a profit by all means but don't try and rip people off just because you think it's that amount, if it's not selling then you are asking too much, simple. I have been watching 8 different jeeps on certain sites and they just keep getting relisted, some have been relisted 6 to 7 times, I mean it's not rocket science.   

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Tricky one, especially as the guys rebuilding them (UJS) have a waiting list at £26500 I guess this means private sales prices are bound to fill the gap. The last few basket cases on ebay were 5-7K and I don't see that many nice ones available.

 

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I would say eBay is a pretty good way of determine how much something is actually worth, as it show how much a buyer is willing to pay.

That being said, a correct and original WW2 jeep actually IS pretty rare and valuable. Part of this is due to people hoarding original parts and sitting on them as investments. Another reason to applaud good quality reproduction parts.

Btw, it is a Willys jeep, not Willy's jeep (unless the owner's name is Willy). xD

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  • 2 months later...
On 22/01/2018 at 12:00 AM, DFC1943Fl.Lt. said:

I have been in the market a few years now and have bought and sold many a vehicle but never ripped the guts out of the buyer for an extortionate amount of money and always been far. I have a 1944 Dodge WC which I have now had for a year and it cost me £8500. This was last year when most were selling for £10,000 to £12,000. The seller knew the price he could have got but is a genuine bloke who does not rip people off. It was sold to me on the condition I didn't come home and put it on the market for a profit, which I could have done quite easily. What I'm getting at is the fact someone sells one for x amount, then someone else thinks mine better that that and sticks another grand or two on, so on and so on. Lets face it, an everyday run of the mill clean Willy's or Ford, forgetting all the, it's rare and I've got the full history bull. should run at £10k to £12k. When you start getting upwards of £20k and above it's just ridiculous. No jeep is worth that unless you have more money than sense and this is where it all goes pear shaped. I know everyone wants to get as much as possible if they are selling and that goes for anything. But when you can't sell it for a price, common sense should tell you your asking to much but this isn't the case, people just keep putting them up at the same price. A lot of friends of mine who would love a WW2 jeep all say the same, sellers are living in a world of their own. Sell at a profit by all means but don't try and rip people off just because you think it's that amount, if it's not selling then you are asking too much, simple. I have been watching 8 different jeeps on certain sites and they just keep getting relisted, some have been relisted 6 to 7 times, I mean it's not rocket science.   

I think you will find a jeep is worth what ever some one is prepared to pay.

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3 hours ago, gas 44 said:

I think you will find a jeep is worth what ever some one is prepared to pay.

Just so,     like it or not the market is self regulating. 

A jeep or any other vintage vehicle for that matter is not an essential purchase like food or fuel for example therefore the buyer has a choice to buy or not.   The actual value of a 70 to 75 year old vehicle is in reality nothing so the price it sells for is one that the market supports.   As ever in antiques world the buyer drives the price not the other way round the seller just follows the trend.  I'm old enough to remember that one element that fueled the interest in MV collecting was the cost of veteran cars moved beyond the pocket of most interested people back in the late 60's and early 70s Mv's were cheap scrap price. 

Pete   

Edited by Pete Ashby
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5 hours ago, Pete Ashby said:

  I'm old enough to remember that one element that fueled the interest in MV collecting was the cost of veteran cars moved beyond the pocket of most interested people back in the late 60's and early 70s Mv's were cheap scrap price. 

Pete   

Hi,

and I'm old enough to remember the end of that phase, when the classic car crowd moved in (must say, I'm not anti, it was just the first time I'd seen it).

At the Southsea show, around 1987-88 pretty well any vehicle that was capable of driving in to the show under their own steam had done that. For the first time I'd seen, someone arrived with a freshly restored jeep on a trailer, carefully wheeled it off, dusted the tyres, and put mirrors under it so you could see the quality of the restoration (which was good).

After three days in the hot sunshine, I was talking with the owner, and congratulated him on the fact that it had not leaked oil onto the mirrors, "or do you have to clean them every night?" He let me into his secret of a leak free jeep, it had been reassembled with no oil in it for show purposes only! Hence, trailing it was a necessity....

Best Regards,

Adrian

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I went through the process of trying to buy a decent original unmolested Jeep over a two year period.....and gave up!  TBF, the first one I saw was the best and I should have bought it, but I was wary of the price asked at the time.....only to find it looking very cheap only some 12 months later!  By last year I had decided that prices in general were just silly for something so common and......well, rather humdrum after you strip away the hype.  But I agree, the market is always correct.  Do these unsold eBay bangers get passed on to the professional Jeep restorers at a knockdown price?  Only to eventually re-appear with a £30k price tag for sale to those with more money than time/sense/imagination?  Not sure but I think its a brave person who thinks such stuff represents a good investment.  Anyhow, I turned my back on tiddly Willys and went with mighty Dodge.......anyone got some decent storage space in Kent?!!

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4 hours ago, matchlesswdg3 said:

I went through the process of trying to buy a decent original unmolested Jeep over a two year period.....and gave up!  TBF, the first one I saw was the best and I should have bought it, but I was wary of the price asked at the time.....only to find it looking very cheap only some 12 months later!  By last year I had decided that prices in general were just silly for something so common and......well, rather humdrum after you strip away the hype.  But I agree, the market is always correct.  Do these unsold eBay bangers get passed on to the professional Jeep restorers at a knockdown price?  Only to eventually re-appear with a £30k price tag for sale to those with more money than time/sense/imagination?  Not sure but I think its a brave person who thinks such stuff represents a good investment.  Anyhow, I turned my back on tiddly Willys and went with mighty Dodge.......anyone got some decent storage space in Kent?!!

Agree with you totally as well as the Dodge as I have a Dodge WC51. As with my Dodge when asked if it is original I just say to them ' Who knows, it's 70 odd years old and no doubt has been through a number of workshops in it's time, so I would say no it's not original from when it was first built. ' and this is when I get annoyed at people who say their jeep is original and rare. How the hell do they know it's exactly the same as when it was first built. They don't, so why say it is, when these things saw action they would have had bits replaced with what was available and came to hand. So the fact that some one's pride and joy is totally original is beyond belief. I dare say somewhere out there, there is a few which are unmolested but who has the right to honestly say that the jeep they have for sale is original and rare. I recently read an article with regards to the Willys and Ford jeeps with them saying that a WW2 jeep which is say a Ford would no doubt have various other parts from other jeeps on it due to combat conditions and replacing parts which were available to them at the time. So If a Ford has been totally restored with everything Ford on it, it's lost it's history which is a shame. Therefore it is not an original. The jeeps I have looked at have just been relisted time and time again. Then they disappear for a while and then, there they are again. As said, a jeep is worth only what some one is willing to pay for it, so why are most for sale at overrated prices and do not get sold.    

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My Dodges have various rebuild  plates on them. There  Norwigian one on the 51 dynamo from 1962, the 54 has a 1952 rebuild plate from US Germany, So Grandfather's axe. Though the dynamo on a friends one packed up in 2010, when we opened it up the failed bearing was dated 1945.  Are they an investment? Don't care both have stories behind them important to me, and a son and two grandaughters to pass them on to. Also what's the point of having toys if you don't play with them?

Edited by Tony B
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  • 4 months later...
On 8/14/2018 at 1:03 PM, Gor J said:

I see that a MALT is mentioned in this post, I have a MALT with 4 numbers welded onto the chassis, I have never seen this chassis number before, can anyone shed light on this for me please

The "Malt" plate short for La Maltournee,  is attached to French MilitaryJeeps that had undergone a full rebuild at the French Military vehicle workshop, La Maltournee, where they were then went back into service mostly issued with a new Military ID & chassis number,.. the Malt number, usually 5 numbers is a works number and from that can work out the the date of the rebuild, ..

Edited by Nick Johns
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Hi Nick, thank you for that info, thought it was a recent repro but now I think it's better than that, got it off eBay not sure if chap knew about the french connection paid 1200 for it, great straight chassis well pleased, thanks again.

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  • 2 years later...

My name is Owen and I work for South Western Vehicle Auctions. In the last week we have had a Willy's Jeep entered into our auction to a bereevment. We believe the Jeep is a 1944 Willy's Jeep, however, we have been contacted by someone questioning the vailidilty of our advertising. The guy claims the Jeep is a 1963 Reproduction Willy's Jeep. Now we are unsure of what the specifics of the car are I was wondering whether, as the jeep owners club, could shed some light on how to get a defining answer. Thanks in advance, Owen.

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Not easy Owen unless some one can actually inspect the truck there are a number of features that would indicate it's history and authenticity.

  Looking at the photos on your web site it could be a 44 MB well restored with reproduction dash plates and there's nothing wrong with that,  or it may be a made under licence French Hotchkiss M201 produced up until 1966 and there's nothing wrong with that either as long as it's advertised as such.  However It may be a legitimate combination of MB and M201 parts rebuilt by the French army post war with a modern reproduction body and fittings added during restoration.  Again nothing wrong with this  there are plenty about like it. 

The key as with any purchase of an antique is that the buyer needs to be aware of the subject material and the advertising needs to honest and clear,  in other words if there is doubt that can't be reasonably settled then it should be noted in the catalogue that there are uncertainties regarding province. 

 I would suggest you remove the 1944 Willys references in your advertising and stick with the Hotchkiss/Willys theme.

The date of manufacture on the DVLC docs can in certain cases be a bit of a false lead as it was not uncommon with unusual vehicles for this to be the date of first UK registration however in this case I have suspicions that it may be correct.

Pete

 

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On 1/21/2018 at 8:30 PM, Prague1996 said:

DFC1943Fl.Lt, I couldn't agree more. I think some of these sellers have been riding the classic car wave. The evidence is that the investors looking for a quick buck have disappeared, and the price of classic cars have come down. This is great news for the enthusiast who need to take a long term view. Let's hope that we start to see WW2 Willys/Ford project jeeps follow suit and come down in price.

If you look on Milweb there are about 8 wartime jeeps for sale, prices are: £30K / £28K / £30K / £33K / £30K / £25K / £35K / £38K which averages out at £31K - just bonkers !

It's totally nuts but I do think you are right that people just follow suit and put them up for a high price as they have seen someone elses at that price. The Covid effect has inflated prices all over the classic market as everyone is spending their holiday money at home. No idea what price they are actually selling for but it's surely going up....

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