Photo: RM Sotheby's
In the late 1960s, Willys designed the Dispatcher Jeep. Essentially a two-wheel-drive variant of the CJ-3A, the Dispatcher catered to the needs of the U.S. Postal Service. When the contract to supply the USPS ended in 1959, Willys found itself in a tight situation.
The automaker had to sell the surplus chassis and parts, but to whom? The answer to that question came from Henry Kaiser, a gentleman who bought Willys-Overland in 1953 and changed the name to Willys Motor. Soon after acquiring the company, Kaiser retired to Hawaii, where the guy owned a resort complex on Waikiki Beach. “Now wait a minute,” Kaiser thought to himself. “Why don’t our guests use the DJ-3A around these places?"
"But first, we need to lose the roof,” he might have thought. And the rest, as they say, is history. With this idea in mind, Willys Motor got down to business. Thus sprang the Jeep Gala, which went the way of export markets such as Mexico, the Caribbean, and Henry Kaiser’s resort in Hawaii, among others.
At home in the U.S., the stripy ragtop model was named Surrey, because why not? The Jeep we’ll talk about on this occasion, though, was an export market Gala originally specified in Cerulean Blue. Restored from the ground up in the same chromatic scheme, the Gala in the adjacent photos shows only 45 miles on the odometer since the completion of the nut-and-bolt restoration.
Roughly 1,000 units of the Jeep Gala were produced through 1964, but this one here certainly deserves a thumbs up for the tip-top condition it presents itself in. Expected to fetch as much as $35,000 at a RM Sotheby’s auction, the blue-painted Gala doesn’t have much to boast as far as toys are concerned.
The front passenger, for example, is offered with a manual windshield wiper, whereas the driver has a column shifter and a clutch pedal to worry about. Passengers seated in the rear, meanwhile, can entertain themselves by looking at the floor mat. Jokes aside, it does look neat, doesn't it?
"But first, we need to lose the roof,” he might have thought. And the rest, as they say, is history. With this idea in mind, Willys Motor got down to business. Thus sprang the Jeep Gala, which went the way of export markets such as Mexico, the Caribbean, and Henry Kaiser’s resort in Hawaii, among others.
At home in the U.S., the stripy ragtop model was named Surrey, because why not? The Jeep we’ll talk about on this occasion, though, was an export market Gala originally specified in Cerulean Blue. Restored from the ground up in the same chromatic scheme, the Gala in the adjacent photos shows only 45 miles on the odometer since the completion of the nut-and-bolt restoration.
Roughly 1,000 units of the Jeep Gala were produced through 1964, but this one here certainly deserves a thumbs up for the tip-top condition it presents itself in. Expected to fetch as much as $35,000 at a RM Sotheby’s auction, the blue-painted Gala doesn’t have much to boast as far as toys are concerned.
The front passenger, for example, is offered with a manual windshield wiper, whereas the driver has a column shifter and a clutch pedal to worry about. Passengers seated in the rear, meanwhile, can entertain themselves by looking at the floor mat. Jokes aside, it does look neat, doesn't it?
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