Bantam prototype designer · 1883–1963
Karl Probst
The freelance engineer who turned the Army specification into buildable Bantam drawings in roughly two days, then watched the smallest company lose the production prize.
“No showmanship, no company behind him, barely paid — and his two-day drawing session is arguably the single most consequential 48 hours in the whole Jeep story.”
An electric-car engineer, decades before it mattered
Born October 20, 1883, in Point Pleasant, West Virginia; studied engineering at Ohio State, graduated 1906. He had already designed the original Milburn Light Electric automobile years before WWII — an experienced, independent engineering mind, not a novice pulled in off the street.
The phone call nobody else wanted to take
In July 1940, with days left before Bantam's Army bid deadline, plant manager Harold Crist recruited Probst — freelance, initially unpaid — because Bantam had no engineering department capable of turning the Army's specification into a buildable design.
Two days that out-engineered Detroit
Probst produced complete chassis and body drawings plus a cost estimate in about 48 hours, starting around July 17, 1940. Popular retellings compress this into "the Jeep was built in 49 hours" — that conflates his drafting sprint with Bantam's separate 49-day full-delivery deadline. They are not the same clock.
A prototype, and a company that couldn't cash in on it
Bantam delivered the running "Blitz Buggy" prototype on September 23, 1940 — but ultimately lost the production contract to Willys' superior engine, and never built another Jeep-branded vehicle. Probst's name is barely known next to "Willys" or "Jeep", despite doing work every subsequent Jeep traces back to.
A quiet ending, a small civic memory
Probst died August 25, 1963, in Dayton, Ohio. Decades later, Pittsburgh's Port Authority named a bus after him, and a street in Caen, France was named for him around 1990 — a detail with real weight given the Jeep's role in the liberation of France.