What's a real Jeep?

Oh yeah, I have no doubt whatsoever if you gave me a Dana 35 / Dana 30 combo I would be just fine with that. It would be more than up to the task for the kind of stuff I do. I only bought a Rubicon for the lockers, and the fact that the resale value on it would probably always hold steady. The Dana 44 axles are just an extra benefit of the Rubicon.

Sometimes I do things to my Jeep that I don't need to do, and are ultimately just a waste of money. However, I guess that's part of the reason that it's more than just my vehicle, it's my hobby. And as we all know, hobbies cost money, and are often times very irrational.
 
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Maybe that's another marker for a real Jeep? You do things to it that you don't need to, and are ultimately a waste of money, because it's more than just a vehicle - it's a hobby? The urge to make a Jeep your own through modifications is almost irresistible. Heck, the wife has had her JKU for less than a month now, and has already started to make modifications. She now has a list. You don't see people doing that to their Kias...
 
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Every hobby I have is a waste of money, haha, that's why they're hobbies. Without them though, we'd all live a pretty boring life.

When I think about all the money I waste on my Jeep, my RC planes, motorcycles, etc., it really serves no purpose other than personal gratification and providing something fun for me to do!

I think anyone who owns any "Jeep" thinks it's a real Jeep. I just think that if it has IFS it isn't a real Jeep in my book at least. It's just a Chrysler / Fiat with a Jeep badge on it.

Of course that's merely my opinion. Someone else would probably disagree.
 
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You don't see a lot of Chrysler / Fiats with Jeep badges on them getting modified very much, do you? Hmmm...IFS not-withstanding they just don't pass the sniff test. Even the ones that are off road rated (trail rated badge) don't see much off road time. Some of the Jeep Commanders are highly regarded in the Expedition community for their off road capabilities, but you don't see them getting anywhere near the modifications that the lowly TJ / YJ / XJ / JK's do. The support just isn't there, and nobody seems willing to do the custom hack and slash mods that usually go along with a "jeep". The closest thing I've seen is the old Toyota Land Cruisers.
 
StG58 said:
You don't see a lot of Chrysler / Fiats with Jeep badges on them getting modified very much, do you? Hmmm...IFS not-withstanding they just don't pass the sniff test. Even the ones that are off road rated (trail rated badge) don't see much off road time. Some of the Jeep Commanders are highly regarded in the Expedition community for their off road capabilities, but you don't see them getting anywhere near the modifications that the lowly TJ / YJ / XJ / JK's do. The support just isn't there, and nobody seems willing to do the custom hack and slash mods that usually go along with a "jeep". The closest thing I've seen is the old Toyota Land Cruisers.
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Well, one of the issues is that when it comes to lifts, it's a lot more difficult to lift a vehicle with IFS, and those new Jeeps have IFS. Most of the aftermarket companies like Currie, Metalcloak, etc, wouldn't bother wasting their time and effort building lift kits for those IFS Jeeps. Not very many people are going to take those anywhere serious off-road. The most they might see is the mountain or some gravel roads.

The old Land Cruisers are great. Solid axles, lockers and Toyota reliability. They're hard to find in good condition though!
 
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And horribly expensive to boot. There's a company down at Lincoln City that finds and restores the old Land Cruisers. They start out about $60k and go up from there...
 
StG58 said:
And horribly expensive to boot. There's a company down at Lincoln City that finds and restores the old Land Cruisers. They start out about $60k and go up from there...
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Yep, for a clean one I'm not surprised. My friend had an old one in pristine (I can't stress that word enough) and he sold it for 150k, easily.

I would say they are the next best thing to a Jeep IMHO!
 
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For 150k, I can get a new Rubicon hard rock, heavily modify it and run down to JV and have mrblain teach me a thing or two while I chase him around. Or have gas and spare parts for life for the SE.
 
StG58 said:
For 150k, I can get a new Rubicon hard rock, heavily modify it and run down to JV and have mrblain teach me a thing or two while I chase him around. Or have gas and spare parts for life for the SE.
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For 150k I think I'll pay off my house... Haha!
 
Chris said:
Oh yeah, I have no doubt whatsoever if you gave me a Dana 35 / Dana 30 combo I would be just fine with that. It would be more than up to the task for the kind of stuff I do. I only bought a Rubicon for the lockers, and the fact that the resale value on it would probably always hold steady. The Dana 44 axles are just an extra benefit of the Rubicon.

Sometimes I do things to my Jeep that I don't need to do, and are ultimately just a waste of money. However, I guess that's part of the reason that it's more than just my vehicle, it's my hobby. And as we all know, hobbies cost money, and are often times very irrational.
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No matter what era the Jeep has always been the most capable off road production vehicle produced. They are all “Real Jeeps,” and yes even the YJ…
 
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Oh man, I like YJ's actually... My four favorite Jeeps are the YJ's, TJ's, JK's (don't laugh, wife just got herself a JKU and it's growing on me) and the XJ's. MB's, CJ2A's, CJ5's...
 
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StG58 said:
Oh man, I like YJ's actually... My four favorite Jeeps are the YJ's, TJ's, JK's (don't laugh, wife just got herself a JKU and it's growing on me) and the XJ's. MB's, CJ2A's, CJ5's...
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My order is TJ, CJ-7, CJ-8, CJ-5, JK, YJ. For some reason the YJs just never really appealed to me. It's still a jeep but I never liked the look of them.
 
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Added up the cost of all the mods that the TJ needs (it's an SE) and it's cheaper to go out and buy a couple of year old JKR. The problem is that even with all the ability of the JKR, I loose the simplicity of my SE. That's worth a LOT to me right there.
 
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One Jeep that is NOT a real Jeep is the 2wd JKU. No front differential, just a metal cross member thing, like the 2wd Cherokees had.

I don't know if they still sell those, I hope not.
 
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glwood said:
One Jeep that is NOT a real Jeep is the 2wd JKU. No front differential, just a metal cross member thing, like the 2wd Cherokees had.

I don't know if they still sell those, I hope not.
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X2. I didn't even know they made a 2WD JK until a few days ago. When I found out I was astonished. That's the first time ever (to my knowledge) that they ever made a Wrangler that was 2WD.
 
Chris said:
X2. I didn't even know they made a 2WD JK until a few days ago. When I found out I was astonished. That's the first time ever (to my knowledge) that they ever made a Wrangler that was 2WD.
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Those are the first 2wd Wranglers. The only other time I saw 2wd Wranglers was on a Carribean cruise once. On one of the island stopovers, they had rental Jeeps that they had converted to 2wd...topless Jeep, running around on a flat, tropical island...I could see the point there, but not for sale as a new vehicle.
 
glwood said:
Those are the first 2wd Wranglers. The only other time I saw 2wd Wranglers was on a Carribean cruise once. On one of the island stopovers, they had rental Jeeps that they had converted to 2wd...topless Jeep, running around on a flat, tropical island...I could see the point there, but not for sale as a new vehicle.
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Yeah, 2WD on a Wrangler is like sacrilege.
 
Chris said:
It's only the square headlights on the YJs that I loathe. If it wasn't for the square headlights I wouldn't mind them.
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The square headlights were an offshoot of the roll-over scare that 60 minutes created back in the early '80s. The marketing genius' behind the YJ design decided that square headlights gave the appearance of a less "tippy" vehicle. Those same marketing bone-heads were also the genius's behind putting track-bars on the YJs as well.
 
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