Chantal
From Normandy to Versilia, a small military vehicle turned into family memory.
1942 | Willys MB
The Willys MB is not only one of the most recognisable military vehicles of the twentieth century. It is a small machine born for war and, without meaning to, became the grandmother of all modern off-road vehicles.
Designed as a light, robust vehicle capable of going almost anywhere, it was used by the American army during the Second World War as a reconnaissance, liaison and support vehicle. Its strength lay in simplicity: compact dimensions, essential mechanics, great versatility and off-road capability that was extraordinary at the time. Selectable four-wheel drive and low-range gears allowed it to tackle mud, sand, stones, climbs and roads that often were not roads at all. It was a tool before it was a car.
But some tools, when they pass through History, become symbols.
This example was born in 1942 and entered service with the Marines. From there it was shipped to England, waiting for what would become one of the most important military operations of all time: the Normandy landings of June 6, 1944.
That day it crossed the Channel and arrived in France. Not as a collector's object, not as a romantic image of the past, but as a living part of an immense, dramatic and decisive mechanism. A small Willys among thousands of men, vehicles, ships and destinies. A simple, exposed, necessary vehicle. One of those machines that did not seek glory, but without which the glory of the just, the Allies, the good ones, would have been more difficult.
It remained in Normandy for a long time, well beyond the end of the war. It stayed in France until the late 1970s, when it was purchased by Dino Pericoli, my father-in-law. From that moment its story changed tone: it left the places of the landings, arrived in Italy and received Milan registration plates. The plate carried with it a detail almost impossible to ignore: it ended in 1942, the same year the Willys was produced and the same year Dino was born.
From military vehicle, it became family memory.
After Dino Pericoli passed away on June 6, 2013, exactly on the same day as D-Day, sixty-nine years later, the Willys was inherited by my wife, Chantal. For years it remained stored in a garage, still, protected, almost suspended. Not used, but never forgotten.
When we got married in 2019, Chantal asked me to take care of it. Not to transform it, not to make it new, but to respect it. That is how a conservative restoration began, conceived to bring it back to life without erasing what it had crossed. Because certain cars should not be remade: they should be listened to.
Today this Willys lives a second life completely different from the one for which it was born. It no longer crosses battlefields, but white roads, pinewoods, sunlit avenues and slow days. It has become our beach car, and spends its summers in Forte dei Marmi.
It is difficult to imagine a sweeter destiny for a vehicle born in 1942, passed from war to family, from Normandy to Versilia, from military service to the lightness of summer.
This Willys cannot.
In the life of a collector, many things can change. Taste evolves, priorities shift, desire takes new directions. And so, even when nothing is really for sale, almost everything can have a price. It is not something that could ever leave the collection, because it belongs to another category. It is permanent. Like its story. Like its memory. Like the name it carries: Chantal.