'Jeep' Celebrates Its 75th Anniversary: Details, Info and More

In #mce_temp_url#Jeep's celebration of its 75th anniversary, the last thing that Sherryll Leeson anticipated to see when she opened the motoring hangar of the NZ Herald was a photo of her dad.

But set amongst a story on Jeep's 75th Anniversary, was a photo of then New Zealand Prime Minister Peter Fraser and Lieutenant-General Bernard Freyberg featured at one of the significant moments in World War Two, sitting in Willys Jeep, with her dad, Driver Ted Leeson, in the driver's seat."I simply could not believe it," Sherryll remarks.

"We'd heard the stories from Dad about being Lieutenant-General Bernard Freyberg's driver and how he met Peter Fraser, but we'd never seen a picture. So I talked about it with my sister, trying to work out whether it really was Dad, but when we presented the picture to our mother, she simply said 'That's your father!"

So how could this missing crossroads in family history come to be rediscovered? "When we were looking at the historic timeline of the Jeep, we knew we had to talk about its unique wartime chronicles as it was how the company came into shape," remarked David Smitherman, Executive Officer of Jeep's New Zealand importer."

"But we also went to converse about the New Zealand experience of Jeep so it would be momentous to Kiwis. We were enthusiastic to find that New Zealand and Jeep have been together from the very beginning of the company and its most famous car."

"This has been faithfully recorded and preserved by the New Zealand National Archive and the National Library of New Zealand. Among the many historic photos being preserved from World War Two was this noteworthy and remarkable picture of Prime Minister Peter Fraser and Lieutenant-General Bernard Freyberg in a Jeep at the most significant moments of the war."

With this, one can see how fruitful the history of Jeep has been. Being able to influence the world and revolutionize how vehicles should be made, it is truly a spectacle to see the notable influences that Jeep has given to the world.