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Finding a Suzuki jeep in Canada?

15K views 14 replies 10 participants last post by  Max 
#1 ·
Hiya, i'm over in Canada for a little less than a year and want to buy myself a little 4x4 to drive around in (and do a little off-roading on my familys farm land)

I'm having trouble finding any for sale in Ontario...is there a special place where they are all hiding?! Ebay is crap in Canada, everything seems to be in the U.S!
 
#5 ·
I would imagine you can't find any because they are all rusted out in that region assuming you want an older one. There are a handful of areas that hold wet and salty water and rot out fast and most shitheads don't seem to look after that so you get rot. If you do manage to find one be sure to check ALL of the cab mounts and frame cross members especially the one right by the gas tank.
 
#7 ·
What everyone else said - including this:

There is no such thing as a Suzuki Jeep.

Jeep (and "jeep") is a registered trademark of Chrysler-Fiat.

What you are looking for is a Suzuki 4WD vehicle. Or a Sidekick, Geo Tracker or Vitara.

Sellers and owners will look at you funny if you use the words "Suzuki" and "Jeep" or "jeep" next to each other in a spoken (or written) sentence.

Just sayin'...


I hope that this helps!
 
#8 ·
Everyone knows jeep is a brand name, however before the term S.U.V. was coined, every off road passenger vehicle was reffered to as a jeep, and in many countrys still is. When I was growing up we had a land rover, then a scout II, then a bronco. We called them all jeeps. Sorry if it bothers you but I am still going to call it that.
 
#12 ·
Just because some Yanks trademarked something doesn't mean other general purpose aka "GP" or "jeep" vehicles are not jeeps. The real difference is Jeep vs jeep. Jeep is a brand name distinguished by the capital "J" while a jeep could be any short wheelbase general purpose vehicle. The name brand Jeep didn't even exist back when the style of vehicle was conceived and first built. I believe the original was manufactured by Willys and virtually every country that was exposed to it during its initial years made replicas that were as good as or better than the Yankee version. Jeep brand jeeps are generally garbage IMO, all they have going for them is better aftermarket support but they are a LOT easier to damage in stock format whereas all you really need to do to wheel a zuk is rip off the front bumper fascia and make sure your gas tank is full :p
 
#13 ·
The first U.S. Army jeeps were made by the Bantam Motor Company in the early 1940s. They couldent keep up to the demand for the war so the army also contracted Ford and Willys Overland Company to build them too. Willys was the biggest producer and coined the brand name we know as "Jeep". In the 1970s , A.M.C. adopted the name and took over the brand. Then Crysler took over in the early 1990s and continues to be the producer of Jeep brand products today.
When Suzuki took over the "Hopestar ON" in the late 1960s they changed the body and motor and the first Suzuki L.J. models were introduced. (L.J. stands for "Light Jeep").
 
#15 ·
Additionally, the derived name "Jeep" doesn't have a clearly defined origin as you can see here... :)

Origin of the name

Many explanations of the origin of the word jeep have proven difficult to verify. The most widely held theory is that the military designation GP (for Government Purposes or General Purpose) was slurred into the word Jeep in the same way that the contemporary HMMWV (for High-Mobility Multi-purpose Wheeled Vehicle) has become known as the Humvee. Joe Frazer, Willys-Overland President from 1939 to 1944, claimed to have coined the word jeep by slurring the initials G.P.[13]

An more accurate view, popularized by R. Lee Ermey, on his television series Mail Call, disputes this "slurred GP" origin, saying that the vehicle was designed for specific duties, and was never referred to as "General Purpose" and it is highly unlikely that the average jeep-driving GI would have been familiar with this designation. The Ford GPW abbreviation actually meant G for government use, P to designate its 80-inch (2,000 mm) wheelbase and W to indicate its Willys-Overland designed engine. Ermey suggests that soldiers at the time were so impressed with the new vehicles that they informally named it after Eugene the Jeep, a character in the Popeye comic strip and cartoons created by E. C. Segar, as early as mid-March 1936. Eugene the Jeep was Popeye's "jungle pet" and was "small, able to move between dimensions and could solve seemingly impossible problems."[14][15]

The word jeep, however, was used as early as 1914 by US Army mechanics assigned to test new vehicles. In 1937, tractors which were supplied by Minneapolis Moline to the US Army were called jeeps. A precursor of the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress was also referred to as the jeep.[13]

Words of the Fighting Forces by Clinton A. Sanders, a dictionary of military slang, published in 1942, in the library at The Pentagon gives this definition:

Jeep: A four-wheel drive vehicle of one-half- to one-and-one-half-ton capacity for reconnaissance or other army duty. A term applied to the bantam-cars, and occasionally to other motor vehicles (U.S.A.) in the Air Corps, the Link Trainer; in the armored forces, the ½-ton command vehicle. Also referred to as "any small plane, helicopter, or gadget."[citation needed]

This definition is supported by the use of the term "jeep carrier" to refer to the Navy's small escort carriers.

Early in 1941, Willys-Overland demonstrated the vehicle's off-road capability by having it drive up the steps of the United States Capitol, driven by Willys test driver Irving "Red" Haussman, who had recently heard soldiers at Fort Holabird calling it a "jeep." When asked by syndicated columnist Katharine Hillyer for the Washington Daily News (or by a bystander, according to another account) what it was called, Irving answered, "It's a jeep."

Katharine Hillyer's article was published nationally on February 19, 1941, and included a picture of the vehicle with the caption:

LAWMAKERS TAKE A RIDE- With Senator Meade, of New York, at the wheel, and Representative Thomas, of New Jersey, sitting beside him, one of the Army's new scout cars, known as "jeeps" or "quads", climbs up the Capitol steps in a demonstration yesterday. Soldiers in the rear seat for gunners were unperturbed.

Although the term was also military slang for vehicles that were untried or untested, this exposure caused all other jeep references to fade, leaving the 4x4 with the name.

The original trademark brand-name application was filed in February 1943 by Willys-Overland.[16] It is also used as a generic term as the lowercase "jeep" for vehicles inspired by the Jeep that are suitable for use on rough terrain.[17]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeep
 
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