We're digging deep into the rabbit hole today. You see, there are some, let's call them "divergent," theories about why Willys put a seven-slot grille on civilian Jeeps starting in 1945 when the military version had nine slots. It's not as much of a mystery as the Jeep Wrangler "ducking" phenomenon and its baffling ubiquity, but one conspiracy at a time.
If you start going down the rabbit trail on Google, you're going to find a lot of articles that either claim to have the definitive answer or throw
their metaphorical hands in the air and say, "We don't know, it could be one of these reasons." The first, and most common theory, goes that Ford had a patent/trademark/copyright on the stamped-steel nine-slot grille it designed for the project. Willys-Overland wasn't allowed to use it, or at least feared Ford enough to not even try, so the company trademarked a seven-slot grille instead. Sure, Willys had filed for the "Jeep" trademark in 1943 and had it granted in 1950, and there's no mention of a grille design, 7 slots or otherwise in the paperwork, but let's not get ahead of ourselves with busting myths just yet.
The second theory is that the seven-slot grille represents the seven continents where the Jeep saw military service. The third and probably biggest stretch of a theory is that the seven slots somehow refer to the seven months it took to design, the seven people who designed it, or the seven years needed for production and development.
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Seven Ate Nine
Addressing the third theory first, Ford, Bantam, and Willys-Overland all reached the Army's final round of bidding in 1940 and had 49 days to deliver a prototype. The final product used bits of Bantam's design, Spicer's transfer case and differential, Willys' Go-Devil engine, and Ford's bodywork. And they crushed it, which is why 80-year-old Jeeps still have the goods today. But you'll notice there's nothing seven-ish here. Well, 7x7=49, so maybe the seven-slot grille is a math nerd joke about the prototype timeline?
Then there's the "seven continents" theory, which has no documentation to support it. Nothing from Willys-Overland, Ford, or the Army exists saying that there should be seven slots to represent continents. Besides, the first American military activity in Antarctica was Operation Highjump in 1946. Unless there are some time-travel shenanigans afoot or the Jeep seven-slot grille exposes a pre-Highjump secret Antarctic operation that isn't on the record books, it's revisionist history.
The remaining theory is that Ford's nine-slot grille design was protected by a patent, trademark, or copyright, preventing Willys from using it for the CJ2A, the first civilian Jeep. But not one website I found that claims "Ford wanted to protect its nine-slot design" is the gospel truth will say what the patent/trademark/copyright number is, nor when it was issued. There's an April 7, 1942, military patent, US2278450A, for the "Military vehicle body," which the US Patent and Trademark Office says is the original Jeep patent, but there's no grille in the drawings.
Uncovering The Truth About Ford's Nine-Slot Grille Patent/copyright/trademark
I decided to find the mysterious oft-referenced Ford nine-slot grille paperwork by searching through all the patent/trademark/copyright documents the government printed between May 1940 and December 1945, including the Smithsonian's scans of U.S. patents, HathiTrust's scans of trademarks listed in the "Official Gazette of the United States Patent Office," and the U.S. Copyright Office Public Records System. I searched for "Ford" and "grille," poring through every reference to both, and there was not a single listing of a Ford nine-slot grille. Yes, I went through five years and seven months' worth of patent, trademark, and copyright filings.
If the nine slots are that important, don't you think Ford would have either made a vehicle that featured one or gone through some public wrangling with Willys over a royalty for using nine-slot grilles? When DaimlerChrysler still owned Jeep, the company un-quietly sued General Motors over a seven-slot grille on the Hummer H2, so it's not like automaker infighting stays a secret for long.
The most likely reason the grille went from nine slots to seven is because of the headlights. By 1941, all U.S. cars had switched to 7-inch headlights, but the World War II Jeep's were 5 3/4 inches. Looking at the military and civilian grilles back to back, it's easy to see that the two outermost slots would have gotten cut in half by the larger lights, so Willys probably axed them for aesthetic reasons. That's more boring than legal wrangling between Willys and Ford, but reality isn't concerned with making things interesting. Besides, reality is odd enough that we don't need to make stuff up. Like, someone just bought a brand new Jeep Patriot in 2025. Is that not weird enough for you?
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