Counterfactual: Imagining the 2025 Wrangler 4xe Willys '41 at D-Day

Prologue: Academic historians hate counterfactual what-ifs — going back in time to stop Hitler before he seized power; JFK bending to sneeze a second before impact; Boris Yeltsin allergic to alcohol — because they can’t be proven. But the rest of us love them because they, counterintuitively, bring history to life. Just visit the D-Day beaches of Normandy and you’ll see. 

Careful, though: you could be run over by Jeep drivers still celebrating the Allied Victory nearly a century later. They decorate their vehicles in an unflattering but historically accurately named “drab olive” and plaster them with equally accurate decals. Indeed, mimicking the original Willys Jeeps and piloting them around Second World War sites defines a passionate subculture of war nerds. It seems a harmless enough way to commemorate a generation’s sacrifice. 

That is, until you get run over by some schmuck in a drab olive Jeep videoing himself in third gear for a TikTok. I love Jeep Wranglers, but these guys are a whole other level of obsessed. 

Perhaps in celebration of Victory in Europe Day's 80th Anniversary (or some lament for the demise of 80 years of allied Western cooperation, thanks to Orange in Chief), Jeep offers the limited-edition 2025 Wrangler 4xe Willys '41. The press materials say it “celebrates the original, combat-born-and-bred Jeep – the legendary 1941 Willys MB.” 

This leads to our counterfactual, academics be damned: What if the Allied soldiers on D-Day also had this modern Wrangler Willys ‘41? It’s confusing stuff to ponder. You can’t say the Allies would have won the war with the newer model; we already won without it.

The Point: Despite this Comparison Being Moot, it’s Fun to Consider

Beyond colour, the two vehicles share the same stencilled decals, similar 17-inch steel wheels on massive military-grade tires, and a four-wheel capability to move you from A to Z, through or over your other 24 letters. But let’s pause at J for Juno.

Imagine Juno Beach, where about 14,000 Canadians landed on June 6, 1944, many driving borrowed Jeeps. In just three years, America (our friends back then, speaking of counterfactual) manufactured hundreds of thousands in Toledo, Ohio. Would the soldiers landing have preferred our newer model back on this historic day? Maybe.

Or maybe not. The 2025 Wrangler 4xe is 1.43 metres longer than the original Willys, 0.3 m wider and 0.53 m taller. That’s a much bigger target, like replacing Danny DeVito with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Sure, the enemy of June 1944 was a shadow of the army that drove the Allies into the drink at Dunkirk four years early. But even a poorly equipped and poorly trained shadow is unlikely to miss a slowly approaching target the size of a wall. 

Easy targets aside, the 2025 Wrangler contains many modern essentials our forebears would have loved. Hill-start assist in 1944, for example, was a surfeit of privates with strong backs and not enough leftover Lucky Strikes to bribe their way out of the lousy jobs. Air conditioning meant you’d removed the Jeep’s canvas soft top — or had it shot off. Heating was an extra pair of thick socks sent over from those 12 million leftover Canadians tending the home fires. (Children in early 1940s Ontario schools spent recess time “Knittin’ for Britain.” Thanks, Granny!)  

I drove a new Willys ‘41 last month. For heating and cooling, I bet those hard-assed soldiers of Grandpa’s generation would’ve loved the three-piece removable hardtop. A $3,100 addition (in today’s money), it’s a great option for any off-road warrior. Note: They don’t come made of Kevlar.

Also, this modern Wrangler is a plug-in hybrid that can travel 35 km on electric charge. Your grandpa would’ve appreciated that quiet electric drive at night. Much stealthier and safer. 

Accompanying this modern hybrid’s motor is a 2.0-litre four-cylinder turbocharged engine. That may sound like too few cylinders for some “real men,” especially when flooring it on the highway, but it burns only 11.7 litres of gasoline per 100 km, while achieving 375 hp and 470 lb-ft of torque. 

The original Willys also contained a four-cylinder “Go Devil” engine, but it put out 60 hp and 105 lb-ft from 134 cubic inches. (Even the Devil was on rations in those days.) Yet that was enough to save the world.

Not unlike its modern brother-in-arms transport, the first Jeep typically rendered a respectable 11.7 to 18.8 L/100 km. Not that they would have cared about fuel. Unlike the enemy, our side was well supplied. How did we keep it that way? 

Air superiority is the battlefield equivalent of four black kings on a checkerboard to zero reds. You’re going to win. Several precious enemy caches of fuel were quickly destroyed by Allied bombers. This left the defenders conducting some of their defence on bicycles and horses. Really. Not that a bike or horse ride through Normandy isn’t lovely … in 2025.

Another simple fact of battle: defending is easier than attacking, especially if you’re attacking from a plucky little island 50 km away. The Allies came intentionally overequipped with surpluses of fuel, troops, ammunition, and civil infrastructure for constant replacement and upgrading. After years of fighting, the Allies had zero intention of losing. Throughout the first 48 hours of the D-Day incursion, over 17,000 Jeeps were landed on the beaches of Normandy. 

How Did 17,000 Jeeps Land in 48 Hours? 

This isn’t counterfactual. Before beaching the Jeeps, the Allies towed makeshift harbours dubbed Mulberrys across the English Channel, quickly assembling them. 

Imagine! Does your town have a spare harbour lying around? The audacity of the very thought makes building a tunnel beneath Highway 401 sound easy. 

The remnants of a Mulberry harbour still adorn the beach of the picturesque Norman village of Arromanches, temporarily named Gold Beach in 1944. At low tide, you can walk out and get a selfie with other war nerds. I was there on the 80th anniversary of VE Day and can report that seeing and touching these rusting, seaweed-strewn hulks is emotionally overwhelming.  

Next steps after installing makeshift harbours? Float those thousands of Jeeps, plus tens of thousands of pieces of ordnance, and a gobsmacking 150,000 terrified humans over onto five beaches hailing bullets. All this on the first day. 

But all of that begs another question: without long extension cords for counterfactual plug-in hybrids, just how did they get fuel there? They laid underwater pipelines and pumped thousands of tons of gasoline each day (see above re: audacity).

The first objective was to get ashore and take the beaches. The fighting was vicious, a veritable slaughterhouse on sand. The amphibious vehicles ferrying soldiers and their Jeeps were called Ducks (not, as you’d think, because the soldiers inside them were sitting ones themselves). If soldiers made it ashore, they’d keep fighting or get in a Jeep and attempt to pass the fortified front line. 

Three hundred and forty of our soldiers died, and 574 were wounded at Juno Beach, the Canadian objective. Much as this article is meant as a fun read, but let’s not forget that harrowing fact — and how fortunate we are to be reading, writing, or editing it, and not experiencing it first-hand. 

Now back to the fun: The modern Jeep is Trail Rated, and such badges mean eet doan need no steenkeeng roadts. But the original Jeeps were built from that same cavalier go-anywhere vision. 

It’s not like the invasion on the ground got much easier once those driving passed the beaches. Soldiers simply sucked it up, kept calm and carried on. Many in Jeeps.

There Wasn’t Much Road Left in Seaside Normandy by June 1944 

Remember the scene in The Wizard of Oz where the beautiful field of poppies betrayed the heroes? Keep it in mind for the rest of this section. 

It’s not like there have never been any roads in northern France capable of moving three mechanized armies, but by 1944, there were almost no un-bombed roads at all. Which begs another counterfactual question: can you call your activity off-roading when there’s almost no road? 

Just a few hundred metres in-land from the Norman coast, you’re adrift in bocage, some of the prettiest rolling countryside imaginable. When the hawthorn is blooming in late spring, artist David Hockney says it looks like acres of foaming champagne. A lovely place to take a Jeep in 2025, as war nerds will attest. 

But if you’re an allied soldier in ’44, bocage is a threatening terror. Many of the narrow, curving, dipping, and mostly bombed dirt roads lay between camouflaging hedgerows. 

Hedgerows? You’ve probably wondered what those are since your first slow dance to Stairway to Heaven. It's a living wall of dense and prickly bush, often tall, thick and centuries old, clearly built by people who abhor straight lines. Normandy’s hedgerows could hide what’s behind their ancient foliage, including squads of enemy snipers.

Ever notice that camouflage, bocage, and foliage are French words the English appropriated? 

Say You Survived the Beaches, Now How to Solve the Elusive Danger of Bocage? 

Jeeps weren’t the only automotive innovations the Americans provided at Normandy. An effective army is part killing machine and part engineering firm, and in 1944, no army on Earth was more effective than that of our American allies. 

Some clever recycler from Milwaukee or Dayton picked up pieces of German defensive hedgehogs and fitted them as prongs onto their tanks. Presto, instant bocage busters, which, because they could nose their way directly through pretty much anything, earned the nickname rhino. 

Now, tanks could plow straight through the fields followed by the Jeeps, off to eventually win the war. 

Jeeps, Today and Back Then, Have Always Been Mountain Goats 

Jeep passengers in 1944 doubtless preferred roads, but you have to respect the intent to go anywhere in a straight-ish line. The modern Willys has an automatic (yawn) eight-speed transmission with, among other necessities, robust upgraded axles for widely varied terrain with a locking differential that’s easily engaged and disengaged by a switch. 

The originals made do with a three-speed manual transmission, plus low gears and a two-speed transfer case for climbing hills and countless other mobility challenges posed by the lack of roads. And they lacked the modern Willys suspension. Driving one, or worse, being a passenger in one, would’ve felt like random unbalanced motion on four pogo sticks connected to a bench. At once, getting seasick and a hernia. 

Our Grandpas Kicked Butt and Didn’t Need the Accoutrements

Stereo back then meant catching hell on both sides of your vehicle. Safety features were dog tags over your heart and a new helmet on your head. So surely, they would’ve loved the modern Willys, except for that whole bigger target thing. 

The 2025 Willys I drove with all its decorated additions, upgrades, and destination charge, costs $82,620 before taxes. Think that’s costly? Our Jeep-driving grandfathers’ and great-grandfathers’ contributions are incalculable. 

Pause and thank them.