Jeep History - 1941 WILLYS MA
The Willys MA featured a gearshift on the steering column, low side body cutouts, two circular instrument clusters on the dashboard, and a hand brake on the left side. Willys struggled to reduce the weight to the new Army specification of 2,160 pounds. Nuts and bolts were shortened along with lighter panels in order to produce a lighter version of the Quad. Items removed in order for the MA to reach that goal were reinstalled on the next-generation MB resulting in a final weight of approximately 400 pounds above the specifications.
After arduous testing, Willys-Overland was awarded the contract in July of 1941 calling for the production of 16,000 revised MB models at a unit price of $738.74. Most of the MA's were sent to the United States Allies in Russia and England under the Lend-Lease program. Today, the MA is the rarest of all pre-production Willys, with only about thirty models known to exist.
Improvements to the Willys MA over the Quad included: a handbrake; single piece wheels; rounded door cutouts; two circular-mounted instrument clusters; and a steering column-mounted gear shift.
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