One of the the smallest automakers, Willys-Overland, produced one of the industry’s more significant innovations: the all-steel station wagon.

When the engineers and executives at Willys-Overland Motors introduced the US first all-steel station wagon in 1946, they weren’t trying to revolutionize the auto industry. They were simply working within their modest means to expand their product line.

A station wagon, they could see, was a perfect fit with the brand image of the Jeep utility vehicle made famous in World War II. But the conventional wood station wagon bodies of the time were fragile, expensive, complicated, and time-consuming to manufacture—out of the question for the struggling Toledo automaker.

Charles E. Sorensen, known as Cast-Iron Charlie from his previous career at Ford, was then president at Willys. Among the few instructions he gave designer Brooks Stevens when he handed him the assignment for the Willys Jeep Station Wagon: The body was to be entirely steel, and all the panels would be shallow-draw pressings, allowing the company to shop outside traditional auto body suppliers for its stamping work.

Stevens was happy to oblige, as he’d been exploring civilian variants of the Jeep since 1942, working along similar lines. His front end design, of course, carefully mimicked the original Jeep, which had now become the struggling automaker’s bread and butter. The cab itself was essentially a plain steel box assembled from shallow-drawn panels, per Sorensen’s mandate, with two doors rather than four for maximum rigidity.

Intuitvely, Stevens decided that buyers would only buy wagons that looked like traditional wagons. Shallow reliefs were pressed into the door and quarter panels, to be set off with contrasting beige and brown paint to simulate, sort of, the hardwood panels of a conventional station wagon. It was a clever ruse—not terribly convincing, but it broke up the boxy lines and made the Willys look less like a delivery truck and more like a real wagon.

Chief engineer Delmar G. “Barney” Roos and his staff developed a simple ladder frame much like that on the CJ2-A, but with its wheelbase lengthened a full two feet to 104 inches. For the 1946 launch, only two-wheel drive models were offered; 4WD was not available until 1949. To provide a more passenger car-like ride, Roos created a simplified version of the Planar independent front suspension he previously developed for Rootes and Studebaker. In this setup, called Planadyne by Willys, the transverse leaf spring doubled as the lower control arm on each side.

For the introductory year there was just one available engine: the same 134 cubic-inch inline four that had powered the military Jeep all through World War II and the civilian Willys Americar before that. Its extremely undersquare, L-head architecture dated back to the twenties. In the station wagon the Go-Devil, as it was called, was rated at 63 hp at 4,000 rpm. An F-head four and a number of inline sixes came along later in the wagon’s production life, as did a panel truck and a pickup in 1947. In the postwar seller’s market, when buyers were throwing cash at anything with wheels, the Willys Jeep Station Wagon sold in solid numbers. By 1950, more than 100,000 were produced.

Crosley introduced an all-steel station wagon in 1947 (albeit a tiny one) followed by General Motors, Chrysler, and Ford. Soon it was the industry standard and the woody was a relic of the past. All -steel bodies transformed the station wagon from a low-production, boutique vehicle to an affordable, mass-market product. Willys-Overland, one of  the smallest of the automakers, was the first.