2020 Jeep Gladiator

Savvy Offroad got their hands on one and ran it in the stock class of King of the Hammers. Robby Gordon drove the first part through the desert and Eric Miller (who took second in the main race) drove the rock portion. Beat the hell out of it, but finished. Word is the course was done without lockers as in the last minute rush to wire the ARB compressor mistakes were made and the compressor did not work. Pretty impressive for a vehicle with that wheelbase and was a lot of fun to watch.

If you are curious what they were and were not allowed to change here is the KOH rule book, section 8.3 has the details https://www.ultra4racing.com/sites/default/files/ULTRA4-rule-book.pdf

View attachment 43622View attachment 43623View attachment 43624View attachment 43625View attachment 43626View attachment 43627View attachment 43628View attachment 43629View attachment 43630View attachment 43631View attachment 43632View attachment 43633View attachment 43634

WOW! That wrap looks REAL!!!~!
 
I have seen 2 Gladiators in recent days. One was on the road, looked to be on 35's and was sweet. The other was a Sport, on the lot at the local Jeep dealer. It was a fairly base model, with the HD towing and sparkly bits here and there. List? $45K.
After doing the requisite crawl around, etc.... I will say it looks to be everything Jeep promised. Beefy frame, decent clearance for a stock truck, nice interior. Bed size looked to be a match to Ann's 2004 Tacoma double cab.
A built version would be one bad a$$ machine for sure. Cannot swing it now, but someday I will pick up someone's cast off.
 
Saw this and thought those of you following this thread might appreciate it... circa 1969
1969-Jeep-Gladiator-Ad.jpg
 
Interesting campaign, The 2-Car Cars. All jokes aside about Jeep reliability over the years, I don’t get the campaign.
 
I'm not saying I wouldn't consider one, but they need to work out a few bugs.

Major bug I'm hearing about is on the Rubicon's with the front sway-bar disengaged at full-articulation the plug for the electronic locker gets ripped out of the axle housing (wire is too short). In-and-of-itself that's bad but what's worse is it bricks the ECU and causes the Jeep to shut off. So you could find yourself in an off-camber situation with some major major-pucker power and have your Jeep truck rendered a paperweight with no way to restart it until a dealer does their magic-voodoo with it.

It's things like this that prevent me from getting a new vehicle. Too many nanny controls. I'm not saying all technological advancements are bad, but this trend of killing power to a vehicle in the name of safety is a hard line to toe. On one hand I get it, a dealer/manufacturer doesn't want any undo damage done to the vehicle. However as an owner I want maximum control and don't want my vehicle going into limp mode or worse yet totally shutting off when the slightest thing goes wrong with it. Taking it to the next level, as an overland adventure enthusiast who is sometimes 1,000 miles away from a dealer I need to be able to work on my vehicle in the field and some of these new vehicles and fully-integrated electronics make that nearly impossible.
 
I'm not saying I wouldn't consider one, but they need to work out a few bugs.

Major bug I'm hearing about is on the Rubicon's with the front sway-bar disengaged at full-articulation the plug for the electronic locker gets ripped out of the axle housing (wire is too short). In-and-of-itself that's bad but what's worse is it bricks the ECU and causes the Jeep to shut off. So you could find yourself in an off-camber situation with some major major-pucker power and have your Jeep truck rendered a paperweight with no way to restart it until a dealer does their magic-voodoo with it.

It's things like this that prevent me from getting a new vehicle. Too many nanny controls. I'm not saying all technological advancements are bad, but this trend of killing power to a vehicle in the name of safety is a hard line to toe. On one hand I get it, a dealer/manufacturer doesn't want any undo damage done to the vehicle. However as an owner I want maximum control and don't want my vehicle going into limp mode or worse yet totally shutting off when the slightest thing goes wrong with it. Taking it to the next level, as an overland adventure enthusiast who is sometimes 1,000 miles away from a dealer I need to be able to work on my vehicle in the field and some of these new vehicles and fully-integrated electronics make that nearly impossible.

First I've heard of that but it no doubt affects the JL Wrangler as well.

Luckily, the aftermarket for Jeep as a whole is second to none. I expect someone will make a fortune selling people an easy fix for that.

(runs outside to geek out on said plug and wire length)

;)
 
Test drove one yesterday and I instantly fell in love. I knew I shouldn’t have stepped foot on the dealer lot. I’ve always been a Toyota guy for reliability...is it reasonable to think I could get 200k miles out of a JT?
 
Test drove one yesterday and I instantly fell in love. I knew I shouldn’t have stepped foot on the dealer lot. I’ve always been a Toyota guy for reliability...is it reasonable to think I could get 200k miles out of a JT?

My guess is the JL/JT will prove to be more reliable than the JK platform. From what I've seen so far I have higher hopes for the JL than I did when the JK launched.
 
Back
Top Bottom