Prototype Drive
When all else fails, mine your past. At times, this seems to be the only strategy Chrysler knows how to follow anymore. But for all the Chargers, Challengers, and Darts trading on their namesakes’ legacies, the Jeep division’s products have arguably walked the straightest path from the brand’s inception to its current showroom offerings. Take the Wrangler, for instance: ladder frame, stick axles, and coil springs. You can find more-complex riding lawnmowers.
Because of the seemingly eternal primordial state in which the Wrangler exists—its recent interior redo notwithstanding—Jeep designers have an incredibly versatile and cost-effective rolling canvas on which to base concept rigs. Taking full advantage of the situation, they’ve made a point of annually churning out a passel of concepts surrounding the Easter Jeep Safari in Moab, hoping to keep enthusiast fires stoked and grab a few headlines in the process. It’s worked.
Recent years have yielded the stripped-down Wrangler Porkchop and the military-style Nukizer 715. There also was the Lower Forty, which we pitted against a donkey in a comparison test. And last year Jeep dropped the JK-8 on us, a custom pickup truck that recalled Jeep’s production Scrambler quasi-pickup of 30 years earlier. For 2012, Jeep checked in with a half-dozen or so new projects. Wedged between the adolescent-fantasy-fueled Mighty FC and Hemi-powered Wrangler Apache was the mild-mannered Jeep J-12 concept you see here that we recently sampled at Chrysler’s proving ground in Chelsea, Michigan.
That’s Grandpa’s Jeep in a Box
“If there was a guiding principal or theme behind the J-12 concept, it was grandpa’s fishing truck,” says Kyle Evans, the J-12’s designer. “The color, the logos, the grille—these things evoke very specific memories for people. When we were out in Moab last month, virtually everyone had a story about a personal experience with a Jeep J-series.”
When the time came to begin constructing the actual J-12 concept, Evans didn’t have to look far. As a senior designer in the Jeep studio, he has unparalleled access to the corporate parts bin and, by association, to the extensive collection of performance and appearance parts that trade under the Mopar brand name. “Not to mention some pretty select Dumpsters,” laughs Evans, a sentiment echoed by fellow Jeep enthusiast Mark Allen, who just happens to be the head of Jeep Design. (Allen would later lead us away from the off-road area—it’s used by Jeep to help certify its vehicles’ Trail Rated badging—by drifting his Grand Cherokee SRT8 around long, sweeping gravel-strewn turns.
