“Down in San Diego most likely” was the full message my friend sent me, along with a link to a Grassroots Motorsports forum post titled “Anybody want dibs on a 1942 GPW in California.” I could’t click it fast enough. What I discovered at the link was someone who had been given a World War II Jeep for free, and just wanted it gone. I replied to the forum post immediately. Here’s what happened next.
I always hear stories from ol’ timers about how they snagged an old Ford Mustang or Model A or Corvair for $40 or some ridiculously low sum that could only have happened 50 years ago, but now I have my own such story. And it happened in 2024.
Here’s the full forum post on Grassroots Motorsports, written by “wearymicrobe”:
I got suckered into taking a 1942 Ford GPW for what I think is going to be free from a work friend who is leaving to live in Alaska. Has some rust in the bed and the motor is a later L motor, allegedly in the DMW system already non non-op, ran when parked. I need this like a hole in the head.
Will post pictures here this weekend and confirm the documents. Worst case I will seal the metal up quick and throw it down below the house in storage. Would be fun to see it turned into something for the 2014/2015$ slammed and on slicks if somebody has the time and energy to do so. Just my fees and gas to tow it home likely.
Here you can see my friend, John, being an absolute legend:
The seller then posted the photo below showing the Jeep, which is wearing oversize tires, aftermarket wheels, a civilian Jeep windshield/grille/tailgate/engine, and lacking seats. “So it’s on the trailer. A lot less rust than you would expect,” wearymicrobe’s post reads. “I have the military blackout lights and gauges. Engine is a 50s Willy that ‘runs.’Â You could roadkill this thing with about three or four days of work no problem,” he writes. “Has a new radiator and a few other small things here and there.”
Then comes the critical bit for me: “I have a title and it is non op in California  I have the original 1963 plates when it was registered and I have documents back to about 1969 give or take.”
Hot damn, a California title! That’s a huge deal for military vehicles, which are no longer allowed to be titled in California, as I understand it (though there are ways, I’ve heard).
Wearymicrobe then posted a link to more photos, along with the text:
So lots of photos as promised. Into the jeep for about 85$ in gas and tow so that’s what I want for it. Has a new radiator in a box. New headlights and taillights. Minimal rust but has a few cracks and pinholes here and there. Motor is a little tight so likely needs to have the head pulled and checked
First come first serve on this one. Title in hand signed with no date value of 100$. All past paperwork included. All the spare parts included.
$85! Unbelievable! Here are the photos:
In short order, I was in touch with Wearymicrobe, whose real name is Michael, who is a bit of a legend on Grassroots Motorsports, as he has lots of amazing cars (both permanently and temporarily, as he seems to have a lot of older friends who have vehicles to get rid of) and actually races.
Michael agreed to sell me the Jeep, and even to wait a few weeks for me to get back from my $500 minivan trip, and to get healthy after getting the flu. So last weekend, I headed down from LA to San Diego.
Unfortunately, the rental agency that I normally use (Galpin) was closed on the weekend, and no regular rental company was going to give me something for towing, so I looked into U-Haul. $20 for a pickup truck isn’t bad, but then $0.89 per mile. Yikes! The trip was nearly 300 miles, so I’d be dropping about $300 on a rental truck, then I’d have to spend $55 on the car hauler.
I was way too cheap for that.
“This Jeep is barely a real car,” I thought to myself. It’s tiny. Why do I need a car trailer? Plus, the Jeep might be too narrow for its two platforms anyway,” I thought. So what I did is forego a rental car in favor of my 1985 Jeep J10, and I forewent the car hauler in favor of a regular 12-foot utility trailer. Total cost?: $29.99! Ok, so I had to buy a hitch receiver with less of a drop than the one I had, so that was another $30, but still: $60 plus gas for a 300 mile towing operation? Not bad!
The truth was: This was a bad idea. The Jeep J10 has a 112 horsepower engine, and the axle ratio is 2.73. This thing was not meant to tow. It was an underpowered dog, and even the empty 1,700 pound trailer was making its weight known at the tail end of my ol’ truck.
The traffic was OK, though getting started from a stop with the tall gearing required quite a bit of clutch slip. It was the hills that really made the job tough, requiring a downshift into third gear, and a max speed of about 40 mph on the freeway.
After three hours praying for that poor 258 cubic-inch inline-six as it revved to the sky up those hills, I arrived at Michael’s incredible home near San Diego, and gazed at his beautiful motorcycles and automobiles. After a nice introduction, we got to work getting the Jeep onto the trailer, and I have to admit: It was a shitshow.
Those $25 I saved by skipping the car hauler in favor of the utility trailer had clearly not been worth it, though I will note that the utility trailer is about 500 pounds lighter; still, the weight and cost savings didn’t make up for the shitshow Michael and I endured as we tried to lift the 2,500 pound Jeep about a foot up onto that trailer.
Our method was ridiculous; we unhooked the trailer from the truck, then try jacking the front of the trailer up so that the rear would drop. We then pushed the Jeep up against the back of the trailer, jacked up its rear axle with a floor jack, and then used a ratchet strap to literally pull the trailer under the Jeep’s rear wheels. Then we jacked up the Jeep’s front end and did the same, all the while carefully moving around wheel chocks to make sure that not only would the trailer not go rogue, but the Jeep wouldn’t roll backwards off the trailer.
The paragraph above doesn’t do justice the 90-minute long nightmare that was trying to load a Jeep onto a rampless trailer using only ratchet straps, a floor jack, and brute strength, but I’ll just reiterate: I should have spent the extra $25 on the damn car-hauler. This was utter foolishness.
Though, I am a cheap bastard, so you know I was pleased to save a few bucks.
Once the World War II Jeep was on the utility trailer and ratcheted into place, my old truck made it clear that it hated me. There was not only a 4,200 pound trailer hooked to the back, but there was a heavy axle in the bed (I should have taken that out) and a bunch of parts that had come with the old Jeep. In total, my Jeep J10 was probably dragging around 5,000 pounds in addition to its already hefty 4,200 pound curb weight.
Listen to my beloved old truck rev to the sky in second gear, going 30 mph up a steep grade between San Diego and LA:
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Somehow, though, the truck made it home without any really issue. It had fresh fluids in the diffs, transmission, engine, and transfer case, and the radiator was doing its thing — it was overloaded, sure, but this was still an AMC inline-six powering a beefy old body-on-frame machine. It can handle far more than one would think.
Once at the Galpin parking lot, I shoved the Jeep off the trailer and pushed it into the parking spot right in front of my Holy Grail five-speed Jeep Grand Cherokee that I’m hoping to miraculously have ready for Moab in a few months. Sadly, it was raining right into the old Willys’ carburetor, so I’ll be draining the fluids, removing the cylinder head, and making sure everything is covered in some light oil before I try to crank the motor over so I can prepare it for sale. You see, this Jeep will not remain internal combustion engine-powered for long.
Huge thanks to Michael for selling me this incredible machine for such a song. More on this $85 Ford GPW’s condition and my plans with it in a future article.
Watch out for that killer steering setup that could occasionally throw your wheel to the left into traffic if it hits a bump the wrong way and the driver isn’t holding on very firmly.
What kind of range are you hoping to get? That will be the main determinant of your battery pack cost, and this thing is not going to be at all efficient. Off-road at low speeds, expect the Wh/mile consumption to be the vehicle’s weight in lbs divided by 5.
Sounds pretty typical for DT.
It obviously wasn’t built for towing, but what *was* a J10 with 110hp and a sky-high rear end ration built for??
Can confirm that a 1947 CJ2A barely has the width to be put on a U-haul car hauler. It looks very sketchy until you get it up there, and another maybe inch less width would not have made it. Also am familiar with loading a vehicle via ratchet straps. Day after I did I bought a winch case I would be damned if I do that again.
I tried putting our concours condition 1949 Beetle on a U-haul car hauler: no dice. Narrow cars won’t fit.
I almost did what David did for mine, but the getting up there is what stopped me. It was suspect enough getting it on the hauler with a ratchet strap rated for 750lbs, when the CJ had 4 flats and 2 seized brakes. Toss in two guys approaching 40 at the time and the local chiropractor got paid well for his services.
Outstanding find! I’m reminded of my grandad, who always send to have a couple of surplus Korea- and Vietnam-era Jeeps knocking around. Usually, it was one runner and a couple of parts cars. Grandad used to take me with him to check on operations at his gravel pit outside Flagstaff. I remember one time, he decided “time to make our own road” and pointed the Jeep straight down the steepest damn hill I’d ever seen anyone drive down.
Everything turned out fine, until the engine fell out. I guess grandpa thought gravity was good enough and didn’t pay real close attention to the engine mounts. The whole engine, radiator and fan included, literally came out the front of the Jeep. Not having a grille may have contributed. We hiked back up to the road, caught a ride with one of the gravel haulers back to town, and called it a day.
The next day, my uncle gave grandpa a lift back to the Jeep, and grandpa put the engine back in. Knowing grandpa and those Jeeps, it’s likely he used a come-along and downed trees to lift the engine, a screwdriver or two, several pairs of vise-grips, a couple of bolts and a lot of baling wire to get the engine back in place and drive the Jeep home. It’s also likely that grandad’s fix remained the only thing keeping that engine in the Jeep until he sold or scrapped it. Grandpa was a Seabee, so “just make it work. Right now” was his wrenching ethic.
I still miss you every damn day, grandpa. Give my love to Oma.
I made the trek between L.A. & ABQ on I-40 many times when I was a kid, and that gravel plant east of Flagstaff was one of the big landmarks I always looked for. I’m sure I drove past your grandpa many times — some of those with my own grandpa at the wheel of his beloved ’68 Impala 327.
Those journeys had a huge impact on me during my formative years, and I-40 between Williams & Flagstaff is still my favorite stretch of road anywhere.
Thanks for the memory! The gravel plant wasn’t our business, but a lot of gravel from the gravel pit ended up there. Grandad held the mineral rights to the pit and leased them to whatever operator wanted to dig there. We usually went up there to count trucks and the weighing tickets, mainly to keep the operators honest.
Although my extended family has been in northern Arizona for four generations, we left Flag in the early 80’s for SW CO. Growth has not been kind to old Flagstaff, IMO. The family business is now in the hands of my mom and aunts, but still running.
I purchased this 2000# auxiliary winch to drag stuff up on my trailer. It is comically slow, but I was able to drag a 2004 Crown Vic onto my 16′ landscaping trailer with only three wheels as the previous owner broke the rear axle/hub off by driving around on a bad wheel bearing. https://www.harborfreight.com/automotive/winches/2000-lb-marine-electric-winch-64602.html
My 2005 (2004 build date) CV had the rear axle bearing machine a deep groove into the axle. I was able to get it sorted before it snapped off- there were LOTS of clues something wasn’t happy back there.
I can’t imagine what that guy was ignoring driving it until the axle machined through enough to snap.
U-Haul offers a weekly rate with 750 miles included. $350 iirc. They are, though, discontinuing pickup trucks in many markets as they’re often rented by street racers who tear them up. I once rented a pickup that had an actual bullet hole in the drivers side door. “Oh yeah…that happens”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5Yjv-eCrNY
I always think of that video when I think of U-Haul pickups
I mentioned this on another recent article, but near me there is an Enterprise truck rental place that will rent you a tow vehicle. It wouldn’t have made for as interesting an article though: “I rented the proper vehicle and got the old Jeep home with no drama.” 😉
WWII Jeeps are cool and all, but what in the wide world of sports is that silver car up on the lift in your friend’s garage?!
vintage spyders 550 spyder replica. ~1100lb mid engine tube frame car running a ~2200cc type 1 vw engine. I built it to replace my ACR track car and well went a bit nuts with the power it makes so right now it is just sitting on the lift until I can build another motor that will not overwhelm the tires are every single stab of the throttle.
https://imgur.com/a/V7fpNoF
The problem is, because David is my boss (well one of them) he doesn’t run any of this tight-ass hare-brained shit by me first, only sensible one in the building.
Spend a few more bucks or endure grinding misery? David will choose misery EVERYTIME.
Thank you for being a voice of reason in this lovable madhouse. Hopefully someone apologized to this Michael guy for David’s antics.
I’m confused about several aspects of your towing.
“In total, my Jeep J10 was probably dragging around 5,000 pounds in addition to its already hefty 4,200 pound curb weight.”
“This thing was not meant to tow.”
“my old truck made it clear that it hated me.”
So, was it really that bad? I’ve never towed with my j10, but my f150 straight six manual pulls amazing, including 6000-6500lb worth of Honda Accord on a trailer. I can understand that tall gearing is rather detrimental taking off in 1st, but other than that, it should have been ok. My XJs also do great pulling lighter loads.
Also, have you scaled that j10? Is it really 4200lb? There’s not a whole lot of stuff on one of these pickups, and David Freiburger said on his Instagram that he scaled a Wagoneer with Buick 350/auto trans at 4000 flat, so I figured a j10 must be fairly light, like significantly under 4000.
Anyways, this was quite the Tracy Jeep adventure. Always here for crappy jeep content.
And yes, you should have gotten the U-Haul car hauler. I like those trailers, they tow nice and are easy to load, but they are not for large vehicles. A short bed single cab fullsize pickup would fit, but anything longer than that won’t. A 1991 Accord and a 1994 Nissan pickup were both approaching the limits of that car hauler. And neither of those are large cars, I’d say like 50% of cars on the road are just plain too big. It’s weird that U-Haul doesn’t do more of a disclaimer or something regarding trailer sizes.
5,000 lbs is often thrown around as about the limit for those J10’s. He’s probably not overweight, but right at it. It handled it badly because the J10 was made to tow at a max speed of about 55mph, and it was made in a time when traffic accelerated a lot slower than it does today (and people expected trucks to be even slower).
The F150 with an I6 300 was a better tow rig than a J10. That said, your F150 probably has shorter gears than the J10.
A quick google search puts the curb weight of a J10 right at 4100 – 4200lbs. Frankly, they’re just not very good trucks. They are heavy and underpowered, and DT’s has tall gears that make it worse for towing. They’re really cool looking though.
I can’t remember if I ever weighed my J10, but I’d be shocked if it weighed under 4,000 pounds.
The reality is that 112 horsepower + 2.73 gears + 2 ton curb weight is a horrible recipe for towing. It doesn’t matter how tough the vehicle’s frame is, that’s just not enough tractive force at the contact patch to maintain even 50 mph up any significant grade without really wringing that motor out (a motor that hates revs).
You’ll have to weigh it if you ever get around to plating it in CA…
Wow, California makes you scale light trucks and charges you an extra registration fee based on weight? That’s the biggest waste of everybody’s time and money that I have ever heard of.
yup, they probably do it to a Hyundai Santa Cruz even. It’s really stupid in my opinion.
So it was really just a horsepower/gearing/ability to go forwards issue, not anything else?
If you think a Jeep six hates revs, you must not have tried to rev out the Marshall much. I have driven semi trucks that more willingly rev higher than the Ford 300.
U-Haul does do some sort of “will your vehicle tow this car” thing on their website. Most people I know who rent a car hauler say they’re towing a Honda Civic when they’re really towing a Crown Vic.
Yes, and there’s a good reason people lie about the cars they’re towing. Their requirements are totally moronic. They do not take into account towing capacity or vehicle size in the slightest. Their only criterion is whether the tow vehicle weighs more than 80% of the trailer and car on it. They do not care in the slightest whether the tow vehicle does or does not have the rated capacity to tow that much, or if the vehicle you’re putting on the trailer actually fits on the trailer.
I’m assuming this makes the liability insurance easier.
They know people will lie, but their insurer is happy, and they have plausible deniability, so that’s likely good enough for them to deal with the majority of lawsuits brought by people towing something they shouldn’t have with something they shouldn’t have and trying to get U-Haul to pony up for their nonsense.
That’s exactly what it’s for. And that’s why I don’t feel bad about telling the U-Haul guy I’m towing a 1994 Toyota Tercel(it’s actually a 3/4 ton pickup)
Some Harbor Freight ramps next time maybe?
Nah, the ramps would’ve displaced the extra axle he had in the back of the J10, and he absolutely needs that in there at all times 🙂
Fair enough, but wouldn’t it look cool if he had them strapped to the sides of the J10?
Being prepared and sensible is the opposite of David’s M.O.
Usually a car dealer likes cars to leave its lot, not be added to it.
Beau paid actual money to David Tracy and Jason Torchinsky to work for him, knowing in advance who they are and what they’re about. He did this to himself.
Once a collector…
How you’d get so lucky with the trailer? I went to pick up a Wrangler body in Va Beach, and got the biggest open trailer U-Haul had. Unfortunately, unlike your trailer, the entire back half didn’t fold down, the tailgate was about 1.5′ less wide than the actual trailer. Guess how wide the Wrangler body was. Yep, about 4″ wider than the tailgate opening. So, in 100 degree heat with about 75% humidity we (the seller and I) had to flip the Wrangler body on it’s side to get it into the trailer, and of course I didn’t want to slide it in as that would have scratched up the body. So we rolled in on furniture dollies I had to foresight to bring, and then let it back down once inside the trailer. Then I had to repeat when I got home, except with no help but a engine hoist.
Somehow that sounds way more insane than whatever David had to do here.
I hope there’s video, or at least pics of that adventure
Glad to know you got home ok, was worried about you still being a bit sick.
Also I love enabling people to do dumb things with cars as you can see some of my projects in the background. Lots of cool stuff came with the Jeep to go to David so he has a good start from friends. Blackout talk lights, a full set of bearings for the hubs and a bunch of other things like the factory ww2 manuals printed out god know how long ago and some weird jeep specific tools. Actually had registration back to I think 1972 from some of the older owners. I know that it has a decent wiring harness at least partly installed as well.
I have bought a few ramps so that I never have to do that again. I normally use my lift to pick things up and or us my lowered trailer for the Viper but the 550 spyder is pretty much welded to the lift that for now while I finish up building another motor.
Once again glad to help enable, if it stuck around here for another couple weeks I would have had the whole thing blasted and painted and slammed in what ever I could find a adapter plate for and used it as my new surf wagon.
David. Since you are obviously colour blind, let me describe a couple of the red flags here.
California law considers all lanes to be travel lanes. As long as you are traveling at the posted speed limit you are entitled to stay in any lane you like.
That said David was towing so he should have adhered to the towing speed limit of 55 mph and stayed in the right lane with the big rigs.
> he should have adhered to the towing speed limit of 55 mph
I’m sure he would have if his truck had been able to reach it
> California law considers all lanes to be travel lanes. As long as you are traveling at the posted speed limit you are entitled to stay in any lane you like.
25 years later, and this is the thing I hate most above all with California traffic. The amount of mouth-breathing idiots going speed limit or below in the left lanes is stunning at times.
Whatever leadfoot.
You are definitely NOT allowed to tow in any but the 2 right lanes of any California freeway. Of course that means on I-5 north of the grapevine, you go the speed of the 2nd slowest big rig on the freeway.
A Jeep for $85? I was sure you answered an ad in the back of a comic book.
And it came in a crate
Covered in Cosmoline
With sea monkey’s and a pair of X-ray specs.
Wait what about the Golden Eagle
It’s the coolest thing he owns yet it never gets any love. I vote for selling everything and putting all the money into that one.
Because sadly, it’s only cool because of its looks. Mechanically, it’s anything but cool. Slow, inefficient, not good off-road, hard to fine parts for, unreliable.
It does have soul, though. Which is why I’ve kept it.
But it doesn’t make sense to pour so much time and money into that when I can instead work on my incredible five-speed ZJ, a reliable, off-road capable, daily-drivable, rare beast that I love.
Time to sell the Golden Eagle, so somone else can help it fly again.
Yeah I know, but you said you were going to electrify that one! I mean, why not both, sure, but I’m curious what happened to that plan.
Builds that don’t make sense are typically more interesting than ones that do. See: Safari builds of sports cars.
Restoring your postal jeep made no sense at all; was extremely entertaining. Just sayin! 😛
*whispers* motor swap………
I cant wait for this! Or for the ZJ revival. Or the Golden Eagle revival.
As an aside, wheres the J10 registered now?
I have one question: Do fanboys dream of electric Jeeps?
This one does. I DREAM of EV swapping an old CJ or Wrangler.
Classic David Tracy shenanigans. I’m here for it.
I’ve long assumed the Golden Eagle would become the EV project after it blew the second V8 and the FC needed… alot even before a conversion is taken into account, but this is good too.
Nice thing about California is you have a good local electric swap knowledge base to bounce ideas off of.
I first learned about the differences between similar-looking trucks by trying to use a ’75 F-150 6 cyl three-on the tree to U-Haul-trailer an MGB, and back it up a long, narrow uphill driveway. It was horrible and didn’t work and fried the clutch badly. We would borrow an available F-250 w/ granny gear ever after.
There was a time not so long ago I wanted a J-20 Jeep pickup but it needed to be a 3/4-ton granny-low manual trans so I could actually work it, new enough for front discs, and I literally found not a single one for sale in the western states so good luck with that. I wound up with a Cummins Dodge, sooner-or-later almost everybody into old/race cars gets tired of the battle and gets some kind of 3/4-ton pickup that can deal with it. You don’t want to get in a wreck and be the guy who was towing beyond capacity.
With that, remember the Popular Mechanics ads, “Surplus Jeeps only $25”?