“Lock the car so they can’t use it!”

Ran across this clip from Laurel and Hardy’s 1941 film “Great Guns” that features the duo reconnoitering in a war game in a “jeep.” The thing is, it doesn’t look much like any Jeep (or jeep) we’ve seen. Several comments on the vehicle claim it’s a Bantam jeep prototype, but we find that highly unlikely. While the timing of certain events theoretically makes that possible – after all, Bantam, Ford and Willys delivered their first jeep prototypes in late 1940, while “Great Guns” had its release in October 1941 – it’s not likely that the Army would have spared a jeep of any sort at that time. Besides, the grille shell behind the brushguard looks suspiciously like a 1932 Ford grille shell.

Any Laurel and Hardy aficionados out there care to weigh in on this vehicle?