There's an old movie, Lonely are the Brave, starring Kirk Douglas and Walter Matthau. It's a pretty good movie. But the parts that stand out to me the most were the Sheriff, played by Matthau, driving a jeep in the New Mexico desert, and you can tell that Matthau learned to drive a military jeep the hard way and that they are not comfortable, safe things to ride.

In my further reading about the early Jeeps, I discovered that the mini-nuke launching FatMan from Fallout was more or less real. There was a specially modified version of the Jeep that had one of these launchers on the back.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_(nuclear_device)

I never knew that existed.

It's funny weapon, as the effect range is larger than the launch range. Run'n'gun'n'run?

That's probably why it was mounted on a Jeep.

The lethal radius was about a quarter mile, while the launch distance was between 1.25 and 2.5 miles. As long as you weren't down wind, you'd probably only have a moderate increase in future cancer risk.

They were pretty much inferior to their German counterpart in every way.

Doesn't make 'em any less cool though.

Well, the Germans knew they were going to have a war a long time before America did. And working on a jeep kinda got around the ban on a military build up. So, it's not an entirely fair comparison. The American jeep had some issues, but it's no Bob Semple Tank.

Both my grandfathers have fond memories of driving around in American Jeeps during WW2 - so I may be biased.

It was a thing, when they fielded the HMMWV, to hang on to your 1/4 tons if you could get away with it. I was XO of a Cav Troop and my driver's name sounded like Gun It! I managed to keep that thing off the books for thirteen months. We gave that thing hell. It gave us hell back.