This looks like it must have been an official government test from some time in the early 1970s. In case you’re alarmed at the human carnage in the photo, don’t worry, those are crash test dummies. In one of the lighter moments in the video, watch for one of the dummy’s arms flying into the screen as the crash comes to an end.
While this “Jeep” looks like the famous vehicle that served the military dutifully for so long, it’s not really a Jeep. This isn AM General M151s that essentially replaced the Jeep and became famous for rolling over. You don’t see many of these around like you do old Jeeps because the military was so fearful that civilians would wreck them and kill themselves, they deemed them unsafe for highway use and destroyed them rather than sending them to surplus auctions when they reached the end of their service lives. Apparently about 1,000 were sold to the public through auctions and many more were sold as scrap metal, but there was a twist. When the government “scrapped” them, the process was to essentially cut the vehicles into four quarters. Enterprising enthusiasts apparently welded a lot of them back together and used them. The roll overs were mostly blames on the independent rear suspension which would tuck under when the MUTTs were loaded with weight and send them onto their roofs. The problem was so bad roll cages were retro-fitted onto many M151 MUTTs before they went out of service.
PRESS PLAY TO WATCH FOUR CRASH DUMMIES HAVE A VERY BAD DAY – PAY ATTENTION TO THE WAYWARD ARM AT THE END!
Just add the A-team tune…
In a vehicle like that, if you’re gonna crash the worst thing you can do is buckle your seat belt …