Delmar Roos isn’t usually mentioned along with Edward Drummond Libbey, R.A. Stranahan, or John North Willys when people talk about the men who shaped Toledo’s industrial legacy.

But maybe he should be.

Were it not for Mr. Roos, a Cornell-educated engineer known both for his brilliance and his temper, Toledo might never have become home of the Jeep.

“He was one of the initial people to discuss with the Army what this new type of vehicle to replace the motorcycle and mule was going to look like,” Fiat Chrysler historian Brandt Rosenbusch said. “He was really the father and the guiding force behind the Jeep.”

While it may be argued that no one person can claim that title, there’s no disputing the outsized role Mr. Roos played in Jeep and Toledo history.

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Coming out of the Great Depression, Willys-Overland Motors was strapped for cash and behind the curve with technology. In particular was its reliance on an anemic four-cylinder engine that had been introduced way back in 1926 for the company’s Whippet brand.

“It was a pretty bad engine,” said Patrick Foster, an automotive historian and author of Jeep: The History of America’s Greatest Vehicle.

“It had a reputation — it was noisy, it was rough, it burned out the bearings. It just didn’t hold up well.”

When Mr. Roos was hired on as Willy’s vice president and chief engineer in 1938, reworking that old engine was top priority. He and his small team of engineers tweaked or replaced nearly every part. Eventually, they coaxed 60 horsepower out of an engine that had been making just 45 horsepower.

Mr. Roos, who died in 1960, can’t alone be credited with designing the Jeep. But it was his smooth, powerful “Go Devil” engine that ultimately won Willys-Overland the government contract.

“The Willys engine was the best four-cylinder engine in the world at that time,” Mr. Foster said, noting that the Willys prototypes “ran circles” around prototypes from Ford and American Bantam, the other two companies submitting proposals to make the Army vehicle.

In many ways, the military Jeep was the perfect project for Mr. Roos. He had emerged as somewhat of an outlier in the American automotive landscape, favoring small, efficient vehicles over the large, heavy vehicles popular at the time. His experience in lightweight design would become especially important when the Willys prototype came in some 800 pounds too heavy.

“He had his engineers weigh every single part and figure out how are we going to reduce weight. They redesigned the body to eliminate a few panels to make it lighter. It went all the way down to cotter pins,” Mr. Foster said.

As the story goes, Mr. Roos even weighed out the paint, deciding to go with a single coat to save weight. In the end, Willys made it. Barely.

His work at Willys made Mr. Roos a local celebrity, though he already had an impressive resume before he got to Toledo. He’d worked at luxury car makers Pierce-Arrow and Marmon, and had been chief engineer at Studebaker. He also had once been president of the Society of Automotive Engineers.

In 1925, while chief engineer at Locomobile, he led a promotional transcontinental trip, driving from Connecticut to California and back. The trip, according to one newspaper account, covered more than 9,000 miles and showed just how hands-on Mr. Roos was.

“Barney Roos was an engineer’s engineer,” Mr. Foster said. “He was highly respected, in a way that I don’t think there’s any engineers today that carry the level of respect he did.”

Following World War II, he went on to become Willys’ first vice president and operating head under Ward Canaday.

A 1949 article in The Blade described him as “jovial, likable, and regarded by associates as a stern but fair taskmaster — one who expects more from those under him than chair warming.”

He also continued to speak frequently about the need for more efficient vehicles — and more efficient drivers. In 1951, Mr. Roos outlined his findings that the average driver got only half the miles per gallon he should, calculating motorists wasted $274 million worth of gas in New York state alone.

Mr. Roos left Willys in 1953 and eventually returned to New York. He died at age 72 in Philadelphia following a heart attack.

Though his foresight was exceptional, particularly with relation to compact cars, there is one point that he got wrong.

In early 1943 — still more than two years out from the end of the war — Mr. Roos spoke with the Toledo Times about the future of the Jeep as a civilian vehicle. Though he saw great potential for Jeeps on the farm, he didn’t see much beyond that.

“Certainly the jeep is not going to affect the passenger car, because no one wants a four-wheel-drive passenger car that has big tires and is a hog on gasoline,” he said.

Last year, Fiat Chrysler sold 202,702 Jeep Wranglers.

Contact Tyrel Linkhorn at tlinkhorn@theblade.com or 419-724-6134.

First Published August 7, 2016, 4:00 a.m.