When the Going Gets Tough, Santa Takes His Jeep
The experts at Haynes wrote the book on Christmas, and put Santa’s Jeep on the cover.
All over the world, the Haynes Manual is the bible for any sort of vehicular service. Recently they have branched out into other areas, with sci-fi manuals on Star Wars and Star Trek ships, the vehicles and gadgets of the Ghostbusters, and very accurate WWI, WWII, space and aviation manuals. The latest, and not meant to be taken quite so seriously, are their Haynes Explains mini book on topics like teenagers, marriage, the nationalities of Europe, and the book above, all about Christmas.
Haynes Explains Christmas was written by well-respected British author Boris Starling, and can be picked here up on Amazon for about $10. Or if you need Haynes to explain the Germans, the French, Babies, Football, etc, those can be found here too. Unfortunately, their Jeep Wrangler manual hasn’t been updated to cover the JK yet, but if you need an earlier model, they have you covered. The new JK Wrangler manual is set to be on shelves in January of 2018, and will cover all years 2012-17.
Most of us probably remember Santa driving a sleigh with eight tiny reindeer, but according to Haynes, it seems he drives a Willys Jeep with a Go Devil four-cylinder, and 60 tiny horses hidden in the combustion chambers. A Jeep makes perfect sense in the wet and boggy winter since, unlike a sleigh, it can navigate snow, mud, or even dry land. There may not seem like all that much cargo space inside, but we all know Santa has a magic bag that can fit infinite gifts without getting any bigger.
A little bit of Google image search magic reveals where the image came from and turned up several more like it. The original image came from the Army Signal Corps in 1941 and was shot on base in Virginia. For some reason, Sargent Santa is wearing not only his official uniform, but some sort of mask to hide his identity from the enemy. Luckily these Jeeps had a top speed of little more than 60 mph because it doesn’t look like the eye holes are very big in that mask.
The Army Signal Corp caption on the back of the picture says Santa was bringing gifts of radios and gear. That may not sound like much of a Christmas (or actually it might to JK-Forum members), but remember we were at war. Warm socks, new boots, collapsible shovels, and fresh canteens were quite welcome. Don’t worry, pretty sure there were military grade chocolate bars in there, too, and Betty Grable pin-up calendars.
You can only imagine what a great Christmas gift it was to the folks in Europe when we did finally roar into WWI with our Jeeps and other gear. The Jeep brand image is still huge in Europe, which is strange considering how ill-suited SUVs are for most European cities. But that is still thanks to residual goodwill from the part Jeep played in liberating the continent from the Nazis. Now that FCA has produced more European sized Jeeps, like the Renegade and Cherokee, sales there are growing by leaps and bounds. 2015 sales were up more than 100 percent compared with the previous year, and 2016 was up another 25 percent over those figures!
