The original Overland car was developed in the early 1900s by the Standard Wheel Company, of Indiana and the fledgling firm had already changed hands once before John Willys, a New York auto dealer and major Overland customer, arrived to rescue it from closure in 1907.

Willys secured credit, reorganised the company and by the summer of 1908 was in a position to build a new factory.

Building four-cylinder cars only from 1910, the revitalised company went from strength to strength, production increasing steadily until by the start of WWI only Ford could claim a higher output.

Sliding-gear transmissions had replaced the previous epicyclic type in 1909, co-incidentally the same year that Ford introduced the Model T that would use the latter form of transmission for the next 17 years! The Model 69 was one of two four-cylinder models, introduced in the autumn of 1912, the other being the larger and more expensive Model 71.

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