After two of my vehicles—my 1986 Jeep Grand Wagoneer and my 1948 Willys-Overland CJ-2A—decided to crap the bed this week, I received a reminder that the best way to fix a car isn’t to simply replace components, it’s to understand how the components failed in the first place.
When you consider that Jeep is the most important and valuable brand that Fiat Chrysler has to offer, it starts to make sense that FCA would attempt to Jeepify everything else in its portfolio. Including the Fiat 500X, which already shares its platform with the Jeep Renegade. Let us not get bogged down by details!
You don’t need to take the 2018 Jeep Wrangler off-road to enjoy driving it. Every ride in this thing feels like an adventure. But when you do push it off the edge of the map, the barbarian spec Rubicon becomes the best sidekick you could ask for.
If you’ve ever seen a picture of a World War II Jeep with brown paint between the points of its “invasion star,” you might have assumed it was just an aesthetic touch. But it was much more than that: the paint was there to keep soldiers safe. Here’s how.
For decades the “Jeep Wave” has been a way for Jeep owners to greet one another, and it’s a lot of fun. But there’s one misunderstanding about this tradition thats been tearing at my soul: people think it applies to all Jeeps, when in reality, most Jeepers—including my poor self—get no love.
When my 1986 Jeep Grand Wagoneer overheated after spewing all of its coolant from a broken hose, I worried that the 1,700 mile journey from Michigan to Utah had reached its end. But those concerns quickly disappeared, because the Jeep’s AMC 360 V8 just kept beasting on.
Jeep, the one true extremely profitable son of the Fiat Chrysler behemoth, revealed in their five-year plan for investors today that they want to build a new Deserthawk lineup centered around “ultimate high-speed sand capability.” To that I must say, “do it, fools.” It’s an extremely good idea.
While enjoying a typical, romantic Friday evening with a bottle of automatic transmission fluid, a few lit MAP torches and my 1979 Jeep Cherokee Golden Eagle’s owner’s manual, I discovered something amazing: a stain-removal table, which includes information on how to clean various fluids including “vomitus,” blood,…
Ford announced last month that it’s phasing out small cars and now, probably not surprisingly it looks like Fiat Chrysler will take a similar path. Soon-to-retire CEO Sergio Marchionne apparently will cut down on the small cars and go in big on the large and luxurious ones. That means less Fiat and less Chrysler.
The 1984 Jeep Cherokee was such a dramatic redesign, it somehow made its predecessor from one model year prior, the SJ Cherokee, look like it belonged in another century. I know this, because I just drove both back-to-back; the SJ is, comparatively, a pile of junk.
We knew my $800 Jeep Grand Wagoneer project was going to have a hard time driving 1,700 miles from Michigan to Utah, especially over the Rocky Mountains. But we weren’t expecting the Jeep to burst a hose and vaporize its coolant after the mountains, on the flat home stretch.
A couple months ago, after I struggled to decide if I wanted to buy a 1979 Jeep Cherokee Golden Eagle, readers told me I’d be a fool not to. So I heeding their advice and hauled the Jeep home through an ice storm. Yesterday, I finally washed the big SUV, and my god were readers right: this Jeep is incredible.
Last fall, I bought an $800 Jeep Grand Wagoneer that hadn’t run in 12 years. After months of wrenching, in March, I drove with my coworker Andrew Collins on a grand journey from near Detroit, Michigan to the off-road trails of Moab, Utah. Here’s video of that trip’s first leg—the Jeep’s first highway voyage in over a…
Right now, I’m trying to get my 1979 Jeep Cherokee Golden Eagle on the road, and I’m struggling to answer a question: How much preventative maintenance should I do? (Because this is getting expensive).
Fiat Chrysler engineer and passionate car-nut Ben Reedy spends his days engineering new cars, and his nights wrenching on old ones. His latest project involves shoehorning a 485 horsepower, 6.4-liter Hemi V8 out of a wrecked Challenger into his 1983 Jeep CJ-8. The whole thing is truly epic.
The 2.0-liter turbocharged 2018 Jeep Wrangler JL’s fuel economy figures are in, and with numbers as high as 24 MPG combined, the world finally has a Wrangler with fuel economy that’s actually borderline “livable.”
I ran my Jeep out of gas on Friday, stranding me in an “authorized vehicles only” turnaround between carriageways of one of the busiest stretches of Michigan’s Interstate 75. But I didn’t call AAA like I normally would have; I requested a Lyft. And it worked great.
The Jeep CJ-5 was in production from the mid 1950s all the way until the the early 1980s, and—along with the M38A1 military model on which it is based—marked the beginning of the end of Jeep’s “flat fender” era. Just look at those beautiful rounded front fenders.
Today, after almost 12 years in production, the final Jeep Wrangler JK will roll off the assembly line in Toledo. And while this may not seem like such a big deal in the wake of the excellent replacement model, the JL, we shouldn’t forget how important the JK was. This is truly the end of an era.
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