My 1937 Willys soft-top Ute

Horne is the proud owner of a rare 1937 Willys soft-top Ute which, but for a chance encounter at a northern NSW farm, would have ended up as scrap metal.

"I happened to be on a run with my mate in the Chrysler club and we were up at Narrabri when he introduced me to some people up there as Brian from the Willys Club," Howe recalls. "One of the blokes sort of looked at me and said `There's one of them over on the Old Man's property ... got a bit of a rag top on it'.

"Well, when we saw it, it was completely stuffed. If it hadn't been for my wife saying how good it would look done up I probably would have left it there. "That and the fact that it was a soft-top was enough to make me want it."

Howe says that while everything was there — including the framework for the folding roof — the Willys was a study in rust. "It had no floor in it, all the trim and seat materials had rotted away but at least the frames were there and he didn't want a million bucks for it."

That was in the early 1980s and Horne paid $150 for the car. "I reckon he thought he got a good deal with someone paying him to take his scrap away."

Three years and hundreds of hours later Horne had turned the old Willys from potential landfill into one of the very few soft-top utes still running. The history of Willys in Australia is a microcosm of the early days of automobile manufacture in this country.

In common with many of the early imported models from other marques the Willys came from the American headquarters — in this case the Willys Overland company of Toledo, Ohio, as rolling chassis with varying degrees of bodywork.

The finishing touches to the cars styling and construction was done in Australia by a variety of coach-building companies branching out to encompass the new age of cars.

For much of the Willys association with Australia the coach-builder of choice was Holden Motor Bodies Pty Ltd, long before the company was to start manufacturing its own local product.

However, in 1937 the imported chassis and panels went to a wider range of Australian companies, including the Adelaide firm of T.J.Richards where, for a single year, Ute bodies — including Horne's — were built.

"It is one of the T.J.Richards cars ... and that makes it a bit more desireable," Horne says. "They only made the utes in Adelaide for one year in 1937 before they went back to being made by Holden.

"I think the Richards body is a little bit better in the back. Where the Holden body has square corners — a bit home-madeish — the Richards body has nice rounded corners." In rebuilding the Willys Ute Horne made one major concession in slightly upgrading the engine.

"I still have the original engine lying around in the workshop but I put a 1941, 134 cubic inch (2.2-litre) in it because that was the same as the Jeep engine and it is a lot easier to get parts for it."

Despite the work he had put into the car to get it back on the road Horne was not about to make it a shed-bound showcar. "It's not bad to drive," Horne says. "I have been to Tasmania twice in it and all around the place. I built it to use it, not just to show it. "For a 50hp (37kW) engine she gets along alright. The only thing it doesn't have is top speed. At about 60 miles an hour (100km/h) she is flat out."

The Ute is not Horne's first foray into the world of Willys. "I had had the cars before ... I just liked them. My third car was a 1940 (Willys) Tourer and it went really well. The only problem with it was it had side curtains instead of wind-up windows. "I wanted an open two-door car but with winding windows so I bought a write-off FJ Holden and turned that into a convertible. I still have that one."

Having sold the original Tourer to finance the FJ, Horne went back to the Willys with another 1940 Tourer that he had just started to rebuild when the soft-top Ute came along. "I still have it in the shed but it has taken a bit of a back seat to the Ute. "I like it (the Ute) better than I thought, it goes better than I thought and I'm comfortable driving it. I've got used to it and I like it."

The Willys will be one of a wide collection of historics on display at the American Independents Day display at Linnwood House on Sunday. The day is for the American independent makes of vehicle which include Hudson, Essex, Terraplane, Nash, Rambler, AMC, Auburn, Cord, Studebaker, Packard and Willys.