TOLEDO, Ohio — "I've always liked the old Jeeps. WWII, Korean era, stuff like that."
And now, Toledoan Paul Cooper can call one his own.
"I didn't know it was going to take me a little over four years to get it done, but it did and no regrets," he said.
Cooper works in fleet operations for the city of Toledo, but over the last six years has started a new hobby: restoring a vintage Jeep.
Back in 2018, while on an aircraft job in Tuscon, Ariz., Cooper stumbled upon a business with a Jeep on its roof.
"It's a 1942 Willys MB," he said. "It was built for (WWII)."
Cooper says the Jeep was built in Toledo and then accepted for use by the U.S. military on New Year's Eve in 1942.
He didn't initially buy it, though. But two years later, he went back and pulled the trigger.
Now, after four years of restoration, it's finally back on the road.
"First time I fired it up and it sat there and ran, I was just high-fiving people," Cooper said.
"It was kind of a sense of relief, but more so a sense of accomplishment. Yeah, I did this," he added.
But Cooper says he didn't work on the project alone, referencing friends along the way.
In terms of parts needed to fix the Jeep, he says he looked for parts from places worldwide to restore some pieces to their original form.
"The seats are all original, all three seats," said Cooper. "The passenger seat came from England, needed a lot of work, but it's original. The driver's seat came out of a barn in Georgia, it needed work too. The rear seat came from California, which didn't need a whole lot of work but it needed some."
Other parts were just replaced with newer technology to preserve safety.
"The tires on mine, they're new, the brakes are new, wiring's new," Cooper said. "I went with new; I'm not going to use 80-year-old stuff like that."
But in the end, a piece of history is revving its engines once again.
Cooper says it will be on display at the Glass City Center all weekend long for the 2024 Toledo Jeep Fest.
HEADLINES: Toledo Jeep Fest 2024 guide | What to know
For those who work all weekend long for the event, like worker Kevin Cesarz, he appreciates when people put in the work to give people a piece of the past.
"It's really special," said Cesarz. "Any of these Jeeps out here, you see these modern Gladiators, these JLs, these rubies, they're all descendants of those original, hardworking, utility Jeeps. "