1940 willys jeep

(first posted 5/29/2011)    Two key evolutionary developments define humans: a large brain and the ability to run long distances cross-country. That probably explains why the Jeep is the most iconic vehicle on the face of the planet.

The fruits of our brain activity increasingly entrapped us in urban confinement and the constraints of pavement, but the Jeep offered the way out: the freedom to take us anywhere our legs once had, and our horses after that. Its roots were of course military, but it came to embody the cowboy myth, updated for the second half of the twentieth century; the last hurrah of Americans’ conquest of its open spaces.

The Autobiography of a Jeep - sunnycv.com

The Jeep became the mechanical alter-ego of man. Well, at least of one six-year old.

My father being an inveterate hiker, long family walks that started at our house in the center of Innsbruck and ended up in the Alpine slopes were a regular affair. In the city-center ar