text: The Mighty Mite was first conceived between 1946 and 1947, by a self-taught engineer, pilot, and auto racer from Missouri, Ben F. Gregory. Gregory designed several front-wheel drive cars after World War I, but was unsuccessful in marketing them. He turned to commercial aviation, but a crash in 1942 ended his flying career. Recovering from serious injuries, he became an aircraft inspector. After the end of World War II, Gregory found new investors. He turned again to front-drive cars, this time culminating in a fully driveable prototype—an innovative 1947 rear-engined, front-drive compact car, the Gregory Sedan. No carmaker was interested in his car, but he was inspired to use some of its design features, such as leading- and trailing-arms suspension, in a more modern four-wheel drive off-road vehicle, or jeep, and he found additional investors willing to fund a prototype.
  One investor arranged a 1951 demonstration for the United States Marine Corps (USMC) Equipment Board, which went so well that the investors quickly formed the Mid-America Research Corporation (MARCO) to develop the vehicle for military or commercial markets. That same year, MARCO presented it as the MARCO MM-100, making it the first clean-sheet ton vehicle to be designed for the U.S. military after World War II. The USMC executed a contract for ten test vehicles in August 1951. The vehicles were delivered in December 1952, and the USMC began the test program. For further development, the company decided to hire Harold Crist, American Bantam's original chief engineer on designing the original Bantam BRC, on which Willys MB multi-role vehicle was based. Joining on 1 January 1953 as project manager, Crist brought with him three of the main people who had worked on the original Bantam vehicle: Chet Hempfling, Ralph Turner, and Frank McMillan. From that point, the team included four of the original WW II vehicle engineers. But Gregory, in turn, was eventually forced out of the company.