THE OLD JEEP WINS — Sharon Mark Cohen

In my opinion, the look of the old “wood paneled” Jeep wins as far as aesthetics. My husband drives a Jeep Compass these days. The look doesn’t do it for me as much as the used Jeep my family owned when I was in grammar school.

My brother Al reminded me our family had a black Jeep for a little while and painted on the door was the name of the bean company our Uncle Jerome drove for at the time. Our father must have gotten it from them and painted over the company sign, according to Al, leaving only the part that spelled out our last name, Mark. He soon sold that old one to the local corner grocer (Mr. Kimmel) not realizing it was a six-cylinder car. Al told me that our father bemoaned that he should have kept that powerful Jeep. I wonder what he would think of the Jeep Compass today.

Al chuckled that the other family-owned brown Jeep with the metal imitation wood paneling on the side, was pictured in his Abraham Clark High School in Roselle, New Jersey 1961 yearbook. The reason, Al explained, was because, in a featured picture of the Roselle train station, our father had the Jeep parked visibly out in front. It was the 1949 Jeep pictured in this post, one of many second-hand vehicles my father owned, and the one that Al drove to high school on occasion. Al said that unlike the black one, the brown one had only four cylinders.

Now, my husband drives the Compass after owning two Jeep Cherokees. Its six-cylinder engine offers much faster movement and modern gadgets than the one in the picture. Over the years of my childhood and throughout my married life, there have been many cars, vans, and trucks in the family “carpool.” To me, the old brown “wood-paneled-look” doors on the Jeep from the 1940s stand out, making that 1949 Jeep my favorite family vehicle of all time. What was your most special driving machine?