2010 EJS

[ZEUS]

I was fortunate enough to wheel with the Mopar engineering group in Moab on the Steelbender trail. Never have I wheeled with $1 million dollar concepts and never have I wheeled with them WITHOUT A CAMERA in our entire group!!! Grr... The first spy shots weren't even out yet!

My favorite of the trip tho was this lil gem:
http://blogs.jpmagazine.com/6659709/...tos/index.html

It has a VM Motori 2.8-liter 4-cylinder turbo diesel, a 3.8:1 Atlas, 5.13:1 Dynatrac axles and rolls on 37's. We were not impressed with the driver's attitude problem and ego but I guess when you are in driving a hand built $150,000 one of a kind and everyone looks at you with envy... it might stand to reason.

Also on the trail was a 4-door Wrangler on 44's with Mopar's yet-to-be released portal axles - I was surprised to see them entering that niche market but of course they will be around $12,000 a piece! They are also really wide. Of course, no pics, not even spy pics yet! BTW, all those engineers were driving these one-off prototypes and most have never even been on a trail before. We learned a stripped version of the Rubicon will be available soon with basic steel wheels, bare interior, and no frills! The Dodge Powerwagon concept (the third one perhaps anyway) was out there too - I liked it. They took a 1-ton Dodge Ram dually and cut the frame down and trimmed out the bed sides to create a short flareside bed out of it - it was on 40's... I dug it!

http://blogs.jpmagazine.com/6656514/...gon/index.html

And for my Jeep hatin VX brothers... there was an XJ with all the Mopar accessories on it - tube doors, wheels, seats, all this Mopar stuff to advertise the whole XJ offering. The problem... same as a VX, they burnt up a lot of oil and we had to give them a quart to get by. 1-million dollars of Mopar stuff and concepts and no spare oil!

GOOD TIMES! Dan Mick is also really quirky and nice... he gave us Twizzlers!

[Triathlete]

but I guess when you are in driving a hand built $150,000 one of a kind and everyone looks at you with envy...

Kind of like driving a VX...except that $150,000 part!

[vt_maverick]

[nfpgasmask]

Dude, Vt, you GOTTA resize that pic, dude!!!

Bart

[nfpgasmask]

OK....that's the coolest looking Jeep I've ever seen.

Bart

[circmand]

Back in the late 60s early 70s when it was a Jeepster or a Scrambler

[ZEUS]

OK....that's the coolest looking Jeep I've ever seen.

Bart

My sentiments exactly! I fell in love with it as soon as I saw it. I was SO lucky to get to see it wheel too - it is as capable as it is cool looking and with that subtle sound of that diesel under the hood it totally fits the theme. It has a Wrangler JK interior an AEV Brute bed but the rest of the body was all custom. Watching it come down the wall on Steel Bender, I thought I was going to see it get it's first scratch but everything from the front bumper to the sliders, to the rear shackles cleared by about an inch to spare. It is truly a thing of beauty; a well executed retro rocker!

[Triathlete]

ZEUS...is it leaf sprung or linked?

[ZEUS]

The chassis is the J8 mil-spec option Seen_HERE which replaced the rear coils in the stock WK with leaves. Load carrying capacity is 1.5 tons!! The front maintains the coils and links. Its a military Jeep like no other!

[So-CalVX]

I WANT THAT RAM!!!

i have a thing for lifted two door trucks (and PUV's) haha

[pbkid]

lol i like how you can see the powerwagon in the background of the spy pics of that jeep/truck thing....

nice jheep... ill have to agree. to bad the production version would never be anything close to that... they wont include sliders, bumpers, skids because its not good for the yuppies that will buy it

[ZEUS]

I just don't see Jeep entering the truck market again anytime soon - sadly. I liked the Gladiator concept quite a bit too but not as much as the Nukizer 715! Either one would seemingly be fairly easy to produce along the lines of a stock Rubicon versus concept.

[Triathlete]

Zeus...did you happen to make it out to the vendor show? A company called River Raider had a very sweet jeep "truck" that they built. 4 door, back doors welded shut, truck type roof, dana 60/14 bolt and a ton of really cool functional mods. There is some vid of it here towards the end of the video.

And for Dubs 20 inch wheels BFG now has a 42x14.5 Krawler!

[don moore]

now i miss my 73 GLADIATOR...thx

[ZEUS]

Zeus...did you happen to make it out to the vendor show? A company called River Raider had a very sweet jeep "truck" that they built. 4 door, back doors welded shut, truck type roof, dana 60/14 bolt and a ton of really cool functional mods. There is some vid of it here towards the end of the video.

And for Dubs 20 inch wheels BFG now has a 42x14.5 Krawler!

That is a pretty sic ride! We usually avoid the chaos of the EJS by going early in the week - things get hectic on the trail around Wednesday and it sucks to deal with. The vendor show is usually not set up until Wednesday too so I rarely hang out there unless one of us is looking to buy something expensive at a discount. This year was a short stop over just the weekend because of that damned thing called "work".

Thanks for the link!