"People have been saying you can't turn a Jeep into a 1-ton truck, and that's what I did," Muldoon said, adding that along with including Kevlar armor and a shell casing drain in the bed, he reinforced parts of the Jeep's frame so that it can handle a much heavier load than a normal Rubicon. It also feels much heavier than a normal Jeep.

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Recon's axles are high clearance Dynatrac models typically used in much larger trucks — a ProRock 60 in front, and a Pro 80 equipped with a Detroit locker in the rear — and the little black beast sits on 39-inch BF Goodrich Krawler tires.

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Muldoon said he had to study up to figure out the military machine gun mounts, which aren't always as simple as they look. But they give the Recon a decidedly threatening appearance, and even got him pulled over by the Moab police when he first got to town.

"[The police officer] asked me one question," Muldoon recalled. "Is that a real machine gun? When I told him no, you could see the tension drain out of him. Then he asked me if he could get his picture taken with it."

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Not everything VWerks builds will be exactly what military customers need. (Have you ever seen an army truck with red metallic painted wheels, cruise control and power seats?) But Muldoon said that VWerks concentrates on creating "buzz model vehicles," or trucks made to garner attention and get people thinking about possibilities.

As someone who headed up engineering at Chrysler's accessory division — the venerated Mopar — from the late 80s until last summer, Muldoon has been happy to have the opportunity to turn his creative streak into shredding, growling steel monsters. That and he's amped on creating jobs in a region that has seen 18 percent unemployment since the great Detroit meltdown of a few years ago.

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"Not everyone's going to be able to afford extreme machines like this, but we designed them so that people can buy pieces," Muldoon said. "If you like the Diablo lift, you can get it. If you like the bumper, you can get that, too. But part of the energy of our company is to put people back to work in our home state by building high quality products."

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Who knows, maybe Hillary Clinton will want a flame-throwing Caballo Diablo for her next State Department trip to the Middle East. The federal government has spent money on stranger things.