If you are reading this, have ever picked up a 4x4 magazine, or have modified your Jeep even the slightest bit, you are what the people at DC call the lunatic fringe market. A few years ago you didn't matter to them. They figured there weren't very many of us. Rewind to OCT of 2000 when I found myself at the DC Chelsa Proving Grounds attending a long lead for the introduction of the then brand new '02 Jeep KJ Liberty. Little did I know that this was the beginning of a change that would convert the Jeep that I knew into the Daimler.
Public relations people and engineer's introduced the Liberty as a vehicle that would attract new buyers to the Jeep brand. They knew it wasn't meant to be as much of an off-road vehicle as the current Wrangler, Cherokee or Grand Cherokee of the time, and they made that pretty clear. The Liberty was however designed to be the most capable off-road vehicle in that catagory, which to me wasn't saying all that much. Several other vehicles were available for comparison at the introduction. Jeep people considered these cute utes to be the competition. There was a Toyota RAV-4, a Ford Escape, a Nissan Xterra and a few others all of which I considered pretty **** when it came to off-raod capability. Somewhere between taking my first look at the Jeep Liberty and breathing my next breath, I realized the KJ wasn't a JP Magazine Jeep, at least not for the core reader. Jeep reps reassured me that the Cherokee would still be produced and that the KJ wasn't a replacement for it because the two Jeeps attracted very different buyers.
A few months later I received a phone call from a Jeep public relations rep telling me the company was discontinuing the Cherokee. Shortly after that I was bombarded with commercials and ads for the Liberty that bragged about it's off-raod prowess. I felt sick. I felt even sicker when the public bought the Liberty and the hype. And I actually had to vomit when I started receiving letters from Liberty owners telling me how much better their Jeep worked off-road than a cherokee or a Wrangler.
As far as concept vehicles were concerned, the following few years could be referred to as dark times for Jeep in my mind. I remember traveling to aftermarket shows and Camp Jeep, looking over a hideous Fender-guitar Wrangler complete with real guitar bumpers and guitar-strap seatbelts. There was also a tacky lime-green surf Wrangler and a Tabasco-sauce Jeep along with plenty of other visually unattractive monstrosities that had nothing to do with and certainly didn't improve the Jeep brand or heritage. Needless to say, none of these Jeeps had any added componets that would make them perform any better off-road. Whoever was in charge of these programs at the time should have been fired if for no other reason then to save that individual from embarassment.
Fast forward a few years to March 2002 in Moab, UT., where for the first time I was able to get behind the wheel of the most capable production 4x4 ever produced, the Wrangler Rubicon. I met some of the engineers who helped design and build it. These guys were just like you and me and apparently had a heck of a time convincing The Daimler that an off-road capable Jeep would sell. Intially only 8,000 Wrangler Rubicon's were going to be produced for the '03 model year. This number was increased several times before the new Jeeps even hit the dealer lots as deposits and sales surpassed what The Daimler had anticipated. The company couldn't make enough of them.
Today looks a lot brighter to me than that crisp fall morning in the middle of the Chelsa test track just over four years ago. I can accept that DC is OK with diluting it's Jeep brand with cars and car-like SUV's. I don't have to like 'em, and in my mind, some of them will never be Jeeps no matter how many "Trail Rated" or "Jeep" logos are plastered on them. I like to think of it as a fork in the road - one path heading down a rough, fun-looking 4x4 path into the hills, the other as smooth paved road heading toward the city. I don't know about you, but JP Magazine is going four wheeling and there are some Jeeps that just won't make it.
- John Cappa.
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