When Stephen Jaworski goes out for a cruise in his jeep, people always take notice.
But this isn’t just any ordinary jeep.
This one is a CJ 2A Willy’s Jeep from the early 1940's.
“This type of Jeep would have been used all over the theatre in WW II, in Russia, in the United Kingdom, in Canada, in the Philippines, wherever there was the Allied Forces the Willy’s Jeep was there,” said Jaworski a Warrant Officer at CFB North Bay.
This is the second rebuild of this well-known army Jeep. Jaworski has put about 13 years of work into this vehicle which has manual brakes and sports a three-speed manual transmission. It truly looks like a jeep that came back through a time machine.
Jaworski has had a passion for Jeeps since he was a kid.
“When I was a boy my father had a Land Rover and when he had a Land Rover it was always something interesting and watching the show ‘Rat Patrol’ and a lot of the old car enthusiasts told me one thing if you wanted to build a vehicle, build one vehicle,” he said.
But the jeep didn’t always look this great. About three years ago, Jaworski, then stationed in Egypt, found out about a Jeep Dealer with rare Willy’s Jeep parts. With the support of his wife Lynda, Jaworski was given the green light to amp up the Jeep restoration.
“I went to Orillia and found his shop and started buying parts for my jeep, and then about 2 1/2 years ago my wife and I were talking and she says ‘you know what fix the jeep the way you want to fix it,’ but I said if I’m going to do it, I have to do it right,” said Jaworski.
But that parts purchased turned into the purchase of a new tub and frame for the WWII vehicle.
Jaworski says his next project will be working on an M100 cargo trailer which would have been used back in the 1940’s with the versatile Jeep.
He admits that the jeep raises a lot of eyebrows and it’s quite common for someone to come up and offer to buy it off him on the spot, however, after all the work he has put into the vehicle over the past decade, it truly has become a priceless item for this Jeep nut.
