Bonjour!
Please forgive me if I am posting in the wrong section. I stumbled across this website, and know enough just enough French to navigate my way to this section--Fifty years ago I spent two years in a French school, and, while fluent then, today remember just enough of the language to get in trouble.
I am writing to recount a funny story. I have a 1942 GPW, that my grandmother bought surplus in 1947. I was restoring it in the late 1970s, and was looking for parts. In 1981 I spent part of my summer on Cap Farrat (near Nice), and saw a number of what appeared to be restored WWII US military Jeeps. I finally pulled one of them over. It was driven by a nice young man, who told me that it was a GPW that he had restored. I asked him where he got it. His reply: his grandfather had bought it in 1945 from a US GI! I loved the story.
Incidentally, I found a number of GPW parts in and around Nice, and my perfectly restored GPW has been on the road since the late 1980s.
I apologize for my inability to communicate in French. It usually takes me at least two weeks of immersion in the country for my memory of that wonderful language to come back.
Please feel free to contact me directly: danthompson@praecisinc.com
Daniel