The original WWII Willys Jeep was as simple as it gets, no airbags, no seatbelts, no electronics just steel and guts.
It was a light and tough 4x4, easy to work on and you could fix almost anything with basic tools. You could tear the whole Jeep down in less than 5 minutes.
If someone tried to build one today, same size, same style, could it actually pass modern safety and emissions standards?
Or would the rules make a true “modern Willys” impossible?
Curious what engineers, mechanics, and everyone else thinks. It would save people so much money.
Straight from the original blueprints: heck no, consider the lack of seatbelts to say nothing of emissions.
With a bunch of engineering tweaks but staying close to original: maybe you could get it to be legal, but almost nobody would buy it. The gas mileage would be terrible. Maintenance would suck. Cars have EFI instead of carbeurators now for good reasons. And a car with no air conditioning would be miserable in lots of places.
Anyway if you wanted to do a project in that spirit today, I’d suggest making it all electric, but designed simple, like an e-bike on steroids instead of like a Tesla (which is more like a computer on wheels). Use LFP batteries instead of the higher energy but much more finicky and dangerous Tesla style packs, have some rooftop solar panels, maybe something like a street legal Kei minivan:
https://www.vantagevehicle.com/collections/electric/products/electric-passenger-window-van
You can buy those used in the US for around $5K but their top speed is 40mph, and they are only legal to drive on slower streets. I was a little bit tempted but decided I needed something that can drive on the freeway.
I wonder if it’s possible for one to be created by the user out of 3d printed and generic/publically available parts - it would be a niche concept but it could be nice for someone to create their own electric vehicle if they really wanted to for shorter commutes (could even decrease the car dependency in some areas of the US, for instance).