The WWII Jeep looks like the product of American industrial might, but it was designed in two days by a freelancer working for a nearly bankrupt company with about 15 employees. This episode traces how the US Army, saddled with 360 different vehicle models and still relying on horses and motorcycles, issued an almost impossible specification for a quarter-ton four-wheel-drive vehicle and gave 135 manufacturers 49 days to deliver a prototype.

American Bantam and designer Karl Probst cobbled the Blitz Buggy together from off-the-shelf parts and drove it to the Army base in Maryland 30 minutes before the deadline. Then the government handed Bantam's blueprints to Ford and Willys, merged Ford's flat stamped grille with the Willys Go-Devil engine, and produced over 640,000 Willys MB and Ford GPW vehicles. The episode follows the 1948 FTC ruling  ...