If you're even casually familiar with the Jeep brand, you likely know that it essentially owes its existence to U.S. Armed Forces efforts in World War II .
However, at war's end, the minds behind the battle-tested four-wheel-drive vehicles decided to expand their client base, redesigning and eventually rebranding them for purchase by the off-road-loving general public. Those vehicles hit the market in 1945, when the Willys-Overland company released the Jeep CJ-2A. The CJ designation means Civilian Jeep, signaling that the vehicles had been reimagined to appeal to the public.
They proved so popular that some version of a CJ would be a part of the Jeep lineup for the next 40 years. During their production run, CJs saw numerous mechanical and cosmetic upgrades, with Jeep attempting to fine-tune designs with models like the closely related CJ-5 and CJ-7 . But in 1985, Jeep bosses surprisingly pulled the plug on the entire CJ line, with the beloved Jeep CJ-7 Laredo outlasting even the CJ-8 Scrambler to send the line out on a high note.
While Jeep, by then owned by the American Motors Corporation, never officially declared its reasoning for killing the CJ lineup, it's likely that a changing marketplace was the primary reason. Consumers were favoring more luxurious sport utility vehicles over the CJs, leaving Jeep little choice but to pivot in that direction to stay competitive. The four-wheel-drive market was rapidly growing by the mid-1980s, with consumers favoring a level of comf.
