I had never heard of a Tuxedo Park Jeep before running across this one for sale here on eBay. The Jeep is located in Dolores, Colorado and has a buy-it-now of $9,500 with bidding at $7,100 that has not met the reserve yet. Based on the information found at kaiserwillys.com, the Tuxedo Park was an attempt at selling Jeeps to a more upscale market, with upgraded features and some chrome. This particular Jeep seems to have kept most of the unique features intact, with the exceptions of the chrome front bumper and wheel trims (and I doubt that it came with a FoMoCo radio). The seller states that everything works except for the parking brake and hopes that some penetrating oil would fix that (so why not try some?) The detail pictures show a surprisingly solid vehicle with even the underside still showing mint green in most places. The tow bar would be useful if you wanted a small vehicle to tow behind an RV, but I think I’d want to track down an original bumper and wheel trim, just to be different. What about you?
This really is a rare find. I’ve never heard of a Tuxedo Park, and quite frankly, I don’t see too much difference, but as far as stock, original CJ’s, equipped like this, is almost unheard of. These years for Jeep were just the “Zenith” of the model. Being a Jeep, most were used in winter and have rusted away, at least here in the Midwest, and being a Jeep fan and seeing one like this is a welcome site. The O.D., the mombo winch, ( with aux. brake), and the suicide knob on the steering wheel, would seal the deal, for me.
Never owned a jeep but have road in them, this one seems to be a very nice survivor. I don’t know the value but I’m skeptical of NADA’s value on this. Being a first generation Bronco fan I would compare it to one of those price wise so I would say his BUY-IT-NOW price is pretty fair IMO. That is if everything he says is true.
Very nice condition, and the Tuxedo Park option is rare, but adds few options, and little value. The unusual thing about this particular Jeep is the column mounted shifter, very unusual, and much more common on the earlier Willy’s station wagons, and Jeepsters. I don’t think that I have ever seen this on a CJ model.
Chas
Charles, all Tuxedo Parks came from the factory with column shifts, both on the CJ-5 and CJ-6 models (yes you could get the Tux package on a cj-6). The only other CJ’s that came with a column shift were the very early civilian Willys CJ-2a’s. All were column shift up until mid year 1946, when they swapped to a traditional floor shifter. The Tux package seemed to be optioned on maybe 10%+ percent of the Jeep CJ’s that came off the line; not super rare, but finding an intact one is getting a bit hard. This is a good looking original survivor, with a great options list. If I didn’t have so many Jeeps at the moment, and more importantly, had some real money to spend , I’d bid on this.
My big question is-Why would someone but a CJ5 in 1965 with all these options to make it a great driver and not drive it? People just didn’t save cars back then thinking of possible future values, they drove them.
I have a 65 tux, hasn’t been “improved”, it is in rough shape but I bought everything I could to make it original. The Jeep manuals I read said the early Jeep frames couldn’t take a beating 4 wheeling, so use caution. Mine I bought from a farmer here in Virginia, all the leaf springs were broken & the shocks were also shot, it was missing it’s 60/40 front seat, never had a back seat or a heater. It’s white & I ordered a white, heavy vinyl top with 33% tint, stainless & aluminum frame from the Specialty Shop, they were bought out & no longer make white tops. I could have ordered any color. Now to put it together. Later.
My first jeep was a 1965 Tuxedo park purchased in 1978 for $900 in Clearfield Pa. Robin egg blue, flat head 4, 3 on the tree, fun 1st jeep. Body was shot. Pa. winters decimated the steel.