Toledo and Jeep go together like off-roading and Jeep. So it's about time Toledo, Ohio, gets its own Jeep museum. A nonprofit organization has formed and is announcing it will open a 56,000-square-foot museum called "The Jeep Experience," which will tell the storied legacy of the American nameplate.
The museum will be in metropolitan Toledo in an existing building but didn't give details on the location. The nonprofit will announce the site once the contract is finalized, the Toledo Blade reported. The people behind the project say they expect it to cost roughly $40 million to create and to draw about 250,000 people a year.
A Toledo health-care company, ProMedica, has played a role in the planning, and its president and CEO, Randy Oostra, said that Jeep parent company Fiat Chrysler (FCA) has also been involved in the project and intends to play a role going forward. The planners are looking to the Harley Davidson Museum in Milwaukee and the Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, Kentucky, for design inspiration.
Jeep got its start in Toledo as Willys-Overland. The first Jeep manufacturer won a contract from the U.S. military during World War II to design and build the Willys MB, the iconic four-wheel-drive vehicle engrained in the American psyche. The name "Jeep" is said to have come from its military designation name, "GP," or general purpose, which over time, turned into Jeep—although some say its nickname really came from the era's soldiers, who named it after Eugene the Jeep from the Popeye cartoons and comic strip.
Currently, both the Wrangler and Gladiator are built at the Toledo Assembly Complex, a site of Jeep manufacturing since 1945.
