Road Test
A long and memorable series of ads has conditioned us to believe that “there’s only one Jeep.” In fact, there are now seven, and at least one of them lacks even a hint of those “only one” attributes—that is, the ability to keep motoring merrily along even after the pavement disappears.
Seeking to get their brand onto the shopping lists of people who like the SUV look but whose sense of off-road adventure extends no further than the occasional stretch of well-graded gravel, Jeep’s product planners have come up with two marketing distinctions to please both the hard-cores and the poseurs. For the former we have Jeeps with little badges that proclaim them to be Trail Rated. For the latter, the trail ends at the mall, or the supermarket parking lot.
Two of these revisionist Jeeps—the Patriot and the Compass—are structurally identical, sharing skeletal elements with a passenger car, the Dodge Caliber, that has no Jeepish ambitions whatsoever. But of the two, only one qualifies for the coveted Trail Rated badge. So what’s the distinction? And beyond that, does a Trail Rated Patriot really have the indestructible go-anywhere grit of a Jeep Wrangler, the seminal only-one Jeep?
Just one way to find out: Find some tough trails and hit ’em. But where? Having recently watched Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid on TV for the 537th time, the choice was easy. The spectacular terra-cotta country of southeast Utah is crisscrossed with countless trails, ranging in difficulty from 1960s-station-wagon-easy to only-mountain-goats-and-suspension-modified-Jeeps-need-apply. A good many of these trails—the entire network is called the Outlaw Trail—were used by Butch, Sundance, and members of the Wild Bunch, and we thought it would be cool to see if we could find any reminders of those thrilling days of yesteryear. Which we did. Sort of.
