"Lady Maria" has sort of a funny story and here is some of it.
She started out as just a stripped down "tub" of a former Marine radio jeep. No drive train, engine, axles/wheels....Just a badly rusted out "tub". I offered a running 350 Chevy engine for the tub AND an M37 that would kind of run...sorta. The owner agreed to install both axles and throw in an engine and trans he had laying around but knew nothing about( and some other parts. Fast forward...we rebuilt the engine and trans top to bottom, installed it in the tub and put it on a lift to "check her out". (New clutch, pressure plate etc).
So. I climbed into our project and a buddy raised me up on the lift. The engine started as soon as the fuel hit and sounded so sweet. I decided to check out the drive train and dropped the tranny in low 2WD and let out the clutch.....HOLY FARKEL BATMAN!!!! What a horrible noise from the rear axle!! I tried 4WD and both axles sounded like they were about to explode!!
That was all done early on a Saturday morning. The original owner brought me two more axle assemblies that afternoon and by early Sunday evening, we were ready to try again!!
Perfection!! She was running, driving, and stopping as she should.....but she was VERY ugly.
So, in our little club we had several jeeps done as Army and Marine jeeps...but no Navy or Airforce.
I decided to go with Navy and my body/paint guy got hot on the body work and even got her in gray primer in about a week.
My buddy came down that weekend when we were supposed to apply the "Battleship Gray" paint and saw how good she looked and wanted to paint HIS GPW gray in honor of his father in law who served in the Navy in WWII.........so...I said OK.....then we'll make mine an Airforce jeep and we will have all services represented and eventually we will do one for the Coast Guard.
So....I ordered some "Strata Blue" paint and the day my man was supposed to shoot it on the jeep the wife came by the terminal for lunch and wanted to see the jeep we were working on.
She said "I want a jeep" so of course I said OK....BUT she didn't like the Strata Blue paint color because it didn't "pop"!! Then she saw a Nissan Pathfinder with a pretty blue color that "popped" and said...."I want THAT color with yellow letters.
So now we had a Marine jeep that was supposed to be a Navy jeep but turned into an Airforce jeep....owned by an old retired Army guy!!
I needed some protection from the heavy ground fire I expected so I told everyone it was the wife's jeep and her ideas on the paint and lettering and we named her "LADY MARIA".
The actual lettering/bumper (unit) markings came from a vehicle that belonged to an Airforce Detachment stationed locally and most of them came to see her when she made her first airshow display here in Columbus, Georgia.
So, that was all about 15 years ago and she still runs/drives/stops as she should.
THE END
