Invention of the Original Jeep American Bantam is credited with the invention of the original jeep and the first serial production military jeeps ordered by the U.S. Army in 1940. The idea of a small, durable automobile to replace the horse was championed by American Bantam salesman Navy Commander Charles 'Harry' Payne (retired), working closely with Robert Brown, a civilian consultant working for the U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps (QMC), American Bantam chief engineer Harold Crist and American Bantam president Frank Fenn, who together during the spring of 1940 laid out the specifications for the first Bantam Reconnaissance Car. Harold Crist did the lion's share of specifying, conceiving, designing and building the car with Karl Probst drafting and formalizing pre-existing layout and specifications set out by Crist. American Bantam delivered the first jeep to the QMC on September 23, 1940, at Camp Holabird, a U.S. Army base to the east of Baltimore, Maryland. Engineers from Ford and Willys-Overland on-hand at Camp Holabird during testing to learn more about the new vehicle. The original jeep designs were handed over to Willys-Overland and Ford and became the basis for the design of the World War II jeep. After the delivery of the first jeep, American Bantam kicked off serial production of the Mark II (also called the BRC-60) jeeps with improvements suggested by the QMC. American Bantam was the sole manufacturer jeeps put into service by the U.S. Army during 1940. All together American Bantam built 2,675 jeeps from 1940 through 1943, with the bulk of those vehicles being delivered during 1941. More than half of the initial production went to the British Army, and some to the Soviet Union. Some of the motors and chassis were imported from Toledo, Ohio; the original bodies were made at the American Bantam factory in Butler, Pennsylvania. The Bantam company produced the most fuel-efficient engine and first prototype under the original U.S. Army tender specifications and was awarded the first contract. However, because elements favorable to Ford within the Quartermaster Corps claimed that Bantam lacked production capacity to produce the vehicle on the scale needed by the Army, the awarding of ongoing contracts was reopened. Eventually the Army gave the BRC (Bantam Reconnaissance Car) 40 designs to Willys-Overland and awarded the bulk of orders to Willys and Ford, while Bantam went on to produce jeep trailers (T-3). After World War II American Bantam continued to make