Each year, Jeep builds a few concept vehicles and takes to the Easter Jeep Safari through off-road trails in Moab, Utah. Jeep uses the nine day trek to show off the off-road capabilities of its vehicles while celebrating its storied past. Maybe our invitation was lost in the mail.
Fortunately, Jeep did invite us to a different Jeep Safari, which took place during the week of Metro Detroit’s Dream Cruise. All the vehicles involved in this event have completed the Jeep Easter Safari in Moab. The Detroit Jeep Safari route may have been be a much shorter and less treacherous than Moab’s trails, but electronic locking differentials are helpful traversing the craters Detroiters refer to as roads.
The first concept vehicle Jeep had available was the Jeep Trailstorm. Though listed as a concept vehicle, the Trailstorm is more of a showcase for the Jeep Performance Parts catalog’s comprehensive list Jeep Wrangler parts and accessories. Jeep PR folks were quick to note that ninety-eight percent of Wrangler owners add at least one accessory to their Jeep, and the Wrangler is modified more often than any other vehicle. In fact, the Trailstorm started life as a $30,000 Jeep Wrangler Unlimited Sport 4×4 with a 3.6-liter Pentastar V6 and a five-speed automatic transmission before Jeep added 33 different parts and accessories — with a price tag of around $20,000 — to create an off-road monster.
Some of the notable additions to the Trailstorm include Dana 44 Axles for the front and rear, a 2-inch lift kit, unique 17-inch wheels, 37-inch tires, high-top fender flares, a cat-back exhaust, half doors all around, the Wrangler Rubicon X’s winch and bumpers, and a brake kit that adds front brakes from the Ram 1500. Usually adding Dana 44 axles to a Wrangler requires a 4-inch lift. However, Jeep designers and engineers raised the fender flares two inches in order to add the Dana axles with a 2-inch lift. This results in a vehicle that is less prone to tipping and has a lower center of gravity.
The Trailstorm’s red rock digital camo vinyl wrap was intended to help it blend in to the Utah desert. On Woodward Ave, it makes the Trailstorm stands out amongst the classic cars. The Trailstorm drives like a Wrangler with a slight lift and has a deeper, more satisfying exhaust note. The 3.6-liter V6 provides as much power as most Jeep owners would ever need. The five-speed automatic transmission is adequate and robust. Although the most off-roading I was able to do in the Trailstorm was a gravel road lot behind a shopping center, the Dana 44s are serious axles that will get you through almost any terrain.
It’s not just about the Trailstorm’s capabilities and how it drives. It’s also about how it looks and makes you feel. The Trailstorm feels special if you drive it on a trail in Moab or a busy road in Detroit. That isn’t unique to the Trailstorm though. All Wranglers give you a special feeling when you take the top of on a warm spring day. And that’s the point of the Trailstorm. Strip the loud graphics and giant tires away and you still have a Wrangler Unlimited. Jeep and the Jeep Performance Parts catalog give you the ability to create whatever you want your Trailstorm to be.
The second vehicle Jeep made available was a compact, regular-cab pickup truck powered by a small diesel engine. Yes, you heard that right. Mini truck fans rejoice! This is your truck. Too bad it’s a one-off concept that was only built for the Jeep Easter Safari. You’ll have to keep your Nissan Hardbody prayer candles lit. For this truck, Jeep engineers took a Renegade, added 6 inches to the wheelbase, chopped everything off behind the front row, and added a 5-foot bed. Then they called it “Comanche,” because what else are you supposed to call a Jeep pickup? The styling is a blend of FCA’s new Jeep products and old military Jeep trucks.
The Comanche’s matte tan sheet metal is accented with a satin black hood, winch, steel rear bumper, soft top, 16-inch wheels with 32-inch tires, and a spare tire in the bed. A 2.0-liter diesel engine is paired with the ZF nine-speed transmission. Both are found in the European Renegade, as well as many other FCA products. The transmission has Jeep’s Active Drive Lock, which includes low range and a locking rear differential.
In person, one glimpse of the Comanche will even soften the heart of a Monster Energy fueled brodozer driver. It is a playful puppy of a truck you want to love. The interior of the Comanche is very similar to the Renegade’s. This is a good thing because the Renegade’s interior is one of its strengths. Unlike the Renegade, the Comanche is outfitted with headrest-less seats, canvas seat covers, and old-school lap belts meant to bring up memories of military Jeeps and personal injury lawsuits.
Some of the unique changes make this truck better than the CUV on which it’s based. The lengthed wheelbase is one of them. Because of it, the Comanche rides much smoother than it’s Renegade sibling. The 5-foot bed is also more useful than the sad excuse for a backseat and trunk area found in the Renegade. The fact that the Comanche rides better than the Renegade gives me hope for the vehicle that will replace FCA’s 4×4 Mitsubishi Lancer wagons. If the next compact Jeep is, in fact, a stretched Renegade, it should be an interesting product
Unfortunately, the engine and transmission combination lets down the otherwise exciting package. There have been a number of drivability complaints regarding the ZF nine-speed transmission FCA uses in many of its products. The issues experienced with the Comanche fall right in line with many of those complaints. Unless you push the accelerator to the floor, it takes forever for the Comanche to get underway. Driving slowly through a parking lot was anything but a smooth experience, and when you take your foot off the gas, the transmission seems to almost brake for you. The lower rev range of the diesel engine doesn’t do the transmission any favors either. However, once out of first or second gear, the engine and transmission significantly smooth out, and the drivability issues are gone.
Both of these vehicles are excellent examples of why the Jeep brand is so successful. The people that design and engineer Jeep products love the brand as much as enthusiasts. They know what customers want. The fact that so many people within the brand spend countless hours designing and building concept vehicles for an off-road event is amazing. They also attempt to create things they know Jeep people will love. After driving a modified Wrangler and Jeep pickup back to back, I know what Jeep people will love: a Wrangler pickup.
I love the way the Comanche looks, but it is as likely to be built as a brand new Studebaker.
It is neat minus the front grill. I’m not a fan of it on the Renegade either. The head lights need to sit closer to flush to give it more of a traditional flat faced Jeep personality.
The grill could use a little more squaring off too.
They’d have to do something about the removable top. It sounds like your driving a truck with a Wal-Mart tent for a roof.
I like its little hat! I drive slow so no problem.
But I’d prefer a top coat over that primer.
It’s supposed to be reminiscent of the Kaiser M715 military truck.
http://www.alfaheaven.com/MilitarySection/TZarmy/TZPhotos/M715SdRt.gif
The top would fold down, and the windshield fold flat (not happening on this toy) but, incongruously, the door windows on those were full-framed. Not unlike the first-gen Ford Bronco.
Then why’d they paint it a shade of Clinique’s “even better” makeup foundation?
That’s what most military trucks and equipment are now painted in.
The Black Forest or Siberia, are not the modern battlefields. Or haven’t been, for sixteen years. Allah’s Sandbox is where the action is.
If you’ve missed the shipments of HumVees on rail or trucks, then at least check out your local National Guard armory. At least half the fleet will be painted Sand.
Just shows that you never know who will get a vendor contract nowadays.
I think it looks a little wak. The roof is too low, and the door comes up too high – betraying those CUV roots underneath. And it needs a bit more ride height (TM).
“a compact, regular-cab pickup truck powered by a small diesel engine.”
That is some masterful trolling.
Yeah this is a serious tease. It already brown(ish) and could have a manual.
Vinyl seats and manual windows, every Jeep dealership would have a long line of enthusiasts ready to buy.
Or not!
Ironic that the “Comanche” is based on a Fiat, considering that Jeeps were in the invasion force in Italy in WWII.
That’s the only one? Renegade and Cherokee are based on Fiat platforms.
I’m sure there were quite a few jeeps running around Japan during the occupation, yet the Patriot and Compass are based on a Japanese-sourced platform. Jeeps were in Korea during that conflict, but Hyundai played a huge role in the World engine used in the Compatriot (which is admittedly South Korean, not North).
The jeep was very much present in Germany during and after the war, and the Grand Cherokee has much Diamler DNA in its bones.
It is all ironic.
“Comanche” was what Franco-American Motors chose to name their XJ Cherokee pickup…which as it turned out was their last new-new product before being ejected from Chateau L’Renault and kicked over to Lido’s tacky digs. Building on the Indian names that the two-man AMC marketing team started in 1974.
If they want to celebrate the Jeep heritage, they can call it “Gladiator.’
It looks good, to my eye. How quiet it is with that top, would remain to be seen; and so would the ruggedness of any vehicle made of a Fiat model engineered while the company was under financial duress. Franco-American made the XJ go because the Hornet-Gremlin-Cherokee combined parts-bin was deep and the parts proven. Fiatsler does not have that sort of supply of proven parts and components.
I wish them well; and I have to remind myself that the original J-series, later called the SJ series, was itself a compromise. Style by Brook Stevens, as he did a watercolor of the Chevrolet Brookwood parked in his driveway. Engine an ancient Continental unit, jury-rigged with an OHC head. Shallow body stampings – Charlie Sorenson had decreed ten years earlier of a maximum depth, given their scavenged and cobbled stamping tools. So…in that way…this could be a legitimate spiritual descendant of the Kaiser-Frazer-Willys-Bantam mess that Jeep grew out of.
Even on the smallest minitrucks, the short bed option was alway 6 feet. But then, some of those trucks had a lot of rear overhang.
A five-foot bed is enough… as long as the tailgate can provide the other foot when down.
It looks like it’s less than that; notice the spare tire right behind the cab.
Slapping my forehead………
Why doesn’t Jeep wake up?
Do they realize they are leaving lots of money on the table if they don’t build some of the concepts they show? Many buyers will beat a path to their door!
scratching my head………..
Because they actually looked at the number of buyers who would plop down the cash for one of these things new, and came to the conclusion that it wouldn’t be worth it.
That’s it exactly.
I can look at these concepts and drool. But my money’s not going to allow a buy; and my age and interests preclude buying a Mall-Rated Desert-Sand-Primer pickup.
Fiatsler pretends to be continuing the Jeep tradition; and I pretend I might be interested in buying one.
Neither is happening.
I would pay at least $45,000 Theoretical Dollars.
Wake up?
You do realize that besides an engineering exercise these concepts usually are pointing to things that will be offered in the Mopar/Jeep accessories catalog.
Right. The point of these Safaris is to show off the brand and some of their products/accessories. Two of the vehicles they had available could be built by anyone today. The others are full of Jeep/Mopar factory aftermarket parts/accessories that fit on a variety of Jeep products (Mostly Wrangler).
Still waiting on those Mopar old-school steel disk wheels for Wranglers.
re: “the sad excuse for a backseat (…) in the Renegade”
The Renegade is one of the few crossovers that fits me in the back seat. Lots of headroom, enough leg room (even with a 6-footer driving). Sure, the trunk is small, but it’s a sub-compact (with the head room of a land Rover). If you want something bigger, just walk 10 feet in any direction in the Jeep showroom.
Agreed. What really seperates a subcompact from a compact CUV, in my book, is how much space is behind the rear seat. A compact will have a respectable amount; a subcompact, enough to fit a single suitcase the narrow way.
“… enough to fit a single suitcase the narrow way.”
Who, exactly, still owns a suitcase, let alone uses one?
People who travel? You don’t want to be like that woman who said, “Nobody I know voted for him.” That’s a sign your social circle is closing in on you.
And what do you use to travel? Garbage bags?
Military dufflebags, or side-zip duffles, are far superior. They don’t bang the hips when you tote them – and you can sling them over a shoulder. They can be squeezed and pounded into tight spaces. The ones with interior rubber lining are watertight.
Cleaning out my parents’ home, I must have given fifteen suitcases to Goodwill. Why my father resisted, so much, just using Army surplus duffles all along, I’ll never know. ONE suitcase would take care of the business clothes. Stick the other stuff in a soft bag.
Everything from these two places is excellent:
http://www.redoxx.com/
https://www.badbags.com/
I have to assume you’re thought I was talking about the old-style leather suitcase plastered with stickers from around the world. Heh, no, I was more thinking the ones with a telescoping handle and caster wheels. Those fit the long way in my compact CUV, but would (probably) only fit the narrow way in a subcompact CUV (compare Tribute and CX-5 to a CX-3).
If you have a vehicle that has only enough behind-the-seat room for one old-style suitcase set the narrow way, you don’t have a B-segment subcompact. You have an A-segment microcar.
The Renegade in particular I believe is bigger than you want to admit. The available behind-the-seats space isn’t all that different from what’s in a JKU Wrangler Unlimited, the only difference being the height of the cargo area where that height is very rarely utilized in a JKU. The Renegade’s interior space is almost exactly the same as my 2002 Saturn Vue, which means you can carry one heck of a lot more than an airport roller bag longways. Heck, even a Fiat 500 can carry a surprising amount of gear with the back seats folded down, so the CUV argument is somewhat specious for most “normal” circumstances.
“The Renegade’s interior space is almost exactly the same as my 2002 Saturn Vue”
Nope. Not even close.
Vue cargo (cu ft): seats up 30.3, seats down 63.8
Renegade (cu ft): seats up 18.5, seats down 50.8
In other words the Vue was a bit short of a modern compact CUV, the Renegade is about even with a Honda Fit.
Vue interior passenger space 100.6 cu.ft.
Renegade interior passenger space 100.3 cu.ft.
The Vue offered one advantage over the Renegade that you may have overlooked: The front passenger seat could fold flat, letting you carry an 8′ ladder inside with the tailgate closed.
My insurance company labeled the Vue as an SUW: Sports Utility Wagon.
Heh… that’s off by “a surprising amount”.
I rode in a Renegade yesterday. Anyone that sits behind me will first need to have above knee amputations.
Doesn’t the back seat go back and forth? Maybe it was all the way forward.
I’ve not known the rear seat to be adjustable on any CUV smaller than a two-row midsize. But that doesn’t mean there are no small CUVs that have one.
Love the truck. I am one who likes the look of the Renegade, but have no desire to own a subcompact CUV. The pickup vesion puts the “Utility” part back into the equation.
“Although the most off-roading I was able to do in the Trailstorm was a gravel road lot…”
>off-roading
>gravel road lot
>road lot
>road
That Comanche is giving me a step-side Chevy Luv vibe.
It is giving me that LUV vibe too.
Shall we rub some salt on it and get it to rust?
>Implying you’d even have to do that
The LUV didn’t need the salt to start rust.
If you built a truck out of steel foil the thickness of Reynolds Wrap, and then painted it with a can of Krylon…you’d have the rust problem the Isuzu Ranchero had.
(And that’s what it was, really. An Isuzu Florian four-door car with the back end hacked off and a box put on. An El Camino without style – now think how crude a CAR built like a LUV truck would be…)
I don’t know about any Isuzu “Ranchero”, but the LUV was actually a pretty tough truck, whether it ran on gasoline or its little diesel engine. Through the course of two different jobs I got to drive one of each and didn’t see the kinds of issues you claim, though I’ll admit I wasn’t in the “rust belt” at the time. The gas-powered one was the regular TV pickup and delivery rig for a repair shop I managed while the diesel one was pickup and delivery of aircraft parts, including propellors, between two cities where the fuel mileage was its greatest advantage (and the fact that it ran on JetA fuel supplemented with a bit of motor oil for even lower fuel cost.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isuzu_Florian
That tells you about the four-door sedan that provided the basis for the LUV.
I don’t need to tell you what a Ranchero was, do I? A dull sedan, of various sizes over the year…with the rear end modded into a truck box.
The Isuzu Faster/LUV was even cruder than the Falcon-based Ranchero – but with a ladder frame and upright, unstylish body to begin with, it was apparently perfect.
Just a little more crude than a Model A about to be modified into a farm truck.
While I do agree there appear to be some similarities between the Florian and the LUV, that doesn’t make the LUV a derivative vehicle; the LUV was a separate cab/body vehicle like all other trucks, unlike the El Camino/Ranchero which was unibody-styled (even if body on frame) through out its operational life. So no, I would not call the LUV an Isuzu “Ranchero”.
The LUV is definitely a derivative of the Florian. From the B pillar forward they share mostly identical parts with the only real difference being grilles. You can take a door off of a Florian and stick it on a LUV or take the dash out of a LUV and bolt it into a Florian.
Just because they bed was not permanently attached does not mean that it is not derived from, and share a ton of parts with the sedan it was derived from.
Isuzu didn’t have the funding to build a truck from scratch so they took the cheap way out and cobbled it together with parts from their sedan.
Scoutdude,
American pickups are not that much different then, being cobbled together with parts from other vehicles.
Look at full size engines and drive trains of yore and even rear axles, seats.
Nowadays full size pickups don’t have the large American car to find bits and pieces from.
The Comanche would more than meet my minimum truly-small-truck needs, but I’d still prefer some room behind the seats to set a large tool box, bag of golf clubs or 3-ball roller of bowling balls. After all, not every day that I drive it would be clear and sunny. At least, not where I live.
Buy a mini Ram van come Fiat Diablo. It will do precisely what you just put into your comment.
How come people fawn over this ridiculous brand building but can’t appreciate how delicious the coffee is down at JdN’s CaddyCafe?
Or at the BMW Roundel Boutique.
The inheritors of Cadillac are just copying what they see as working…not understanding, of course, but who CAN understand the appeal of such overpriced mediocrity? If banksters want overpriced, mediocre European cars and are impressed with coffee-bars while they figure out how to borrow the down payment, after being approved for the base loan, while figuring out how to meet Biff’s Yale tuition and Buffy’s orthodontia and breast implants…
…if that’s how you build a trending, with-it brand, then they’re all there. Even to the foreign name of the alleged master of the marque.
I believe Buffy’s rhinoplasty has to come before the breast implants…but they usually take of those before the Bat Mitzvah.
You don’t get out much, do you.
You’ll find very few of the new-money banksters who know what the inside of a synagogue looks like. They’re variously Protestant or religion-free, or the adult children of lapsed Jews.
They have something in common but it’s not the Star of David. And I don’t know how you blame a religion they renounce, for their amoral deeds that their RENOUNCED religion forbids.
He *claims* to run on h8teraide, but he really runs on bigotry.
VoGo,
Didn’t you know everyone goes to Soho to have a Caddy Coffee.
Why drink swill?
“Some of the unique changes make this truck better than the CUV on which it’s based.”
Thar be no truck to be seen. Jwwwarr.
2-door unibody pickup > subcompact CUV
A longer wheelbase Renegade might actually be a decent thing if it doesn’t have the 9-speed transmission of awfulness.
hey Adam, what about the RED jeep? the one that looks old skool, next to the others? now, THAT is a jeep i could get into! love the jeeps made from 1945 to 1953!
That one is just a current Wrangler with the doors off.
They do come off, still, although it’s more of a PITA than it was in the CJ-7 era. Lot of users out this way do it.
I, on the other hand, would like to see more of that SJ-derivative Cherokee recreation; the baby-blue one with the white roof.
Almost looks like the real thing, except that the side windows are missing and the roofline and posts are a bit different. But the tailgate is a dead ringer…
The Red Jeep is called the Jeep Shortcut. It’s a chopped down two door Wrangler that is supposed to echo the CJ-5.
Even if Jeep actually built the Comanche, its likely MSRP would mean most of us would still do better with a base Chevy Colorado or GMC Canyon. Frankly, if I were back in the market for a pickup these days and were buying new, they’d be the only two I’d consider. Rubber floor mats and all.
While the C-twins are on my ‘possibles’ list for my next vehicle purchase, it is not because of price or size because honestly I want more than a base-model version when I go for a 4×4/AWD vehicle. Almost nobody buys a base model retail (yes I do know some “cheapskates” do) and to be quite honest, I am not a fan of the $35K price tag of the C-twins at my minimum-acceptable trim level. I’m pretty sure the Comanche would fall significantly below that number at a similar trim level and honestly I don’t need the massive cargo and towing ratings of the C-twins; I’ve never carried more than 800 pounds in the bed of ANY truck I’ve owned, even though I’ve had the bed overflowing with event tables and other goods. These are things that simply won’t fit in an enclosed body but simply don’t load down the suspension of any of the current near-full-sized trucks to make them ride decently while you still have to contend with the VERY poor maneuverability of those larger trucks.
So while the Canyonrado might be the only two YOU would consider, they are low on the list of models I would consider.
Vulpine,
Ever since I’ve been on the net for …… years now you’ve been talking about buying a pickup.
The C twins are a midsizer. Even in the US there has been midsizers to choose from for years. Your story is sort of like Goldilocks and the Bears, except it didn’t take Goldilocks very long to make decisions.
If you are just “talking” and might one day buy a pickup wait until the next Frontier (Navara) is released. This is slightly smaller than the C twins or even global Ranger.
Or if you wait long enough FCA and/or Mitsubishi might even sell the Triton pickup. This is smaller than most other midsizers.
Rather than stating “you are waiting to buy”. It might be better to state “I’d like to see” this or that on offer.
Big Al, you know from all my posts on commentary threads we have shared that I have owned three different pickup trucks. My first, and my favorite, was the Mitsubishi Sport I bought brand-new back in 1983; my second was a 1990 F-150 I bought used about five years ago (maybe six) because I had an absolute need to carry a large, but not heavy, payload. I paid more to get it road-worthy than I paid to buy it and it was simply too big and too thirsty to serve as a daily driver. I put only 3,000 miles on it in four years.
My most recent is a 1997 Ranger I inherited from my step-father who was the stereotypical “cheapskate.” Yes, it is an XLT model with carpet and tape player (among a few other minor luxuries) but no power windows and standard cab. It meets my needs VERY well, though lacks the one thing I really want: Room behind the seat to carry more than an umbrella and the tire-changing tools. It does live up to its EPA rated 27mpg on the freeway at the speed limit even when the bed it loaded with a few hundred pounds of other things I picked up from my father and my step-father and brought back home across the Appalachian Mts. including a bin and a half of books containing my father’s stamp collection and other things of personal value. Again, the Ranger meets the needs, but not quite the wants. It also means I know have three vehicles each of which serves a specific purpose to which I cannot simply sell one and retain it’s capabilities in the others.
Something like the Hyundai Santa Cruz or Fiat Toro would offer the open bed capability I need, AWD/4WD capability I need and an enlarged cabin I want WITHOUT being as large as a Canyonrado and very probably give me better fuel mileage as well. It would allow me to exchange two manual-transmission vehicles for an automatic that my wife would be able to drive in an emergency. It would also allow me to reduce my vehicle insurance costs by almost a third, saving money in the long run. I will be selling my JKU, no matter what. What I replace it with determines whether we keep my wife’s car or my truck and to be quite blunt I Don’t Trust Fords.
Oh, and that “mini Ram van come Fiat Diablo” (don’t you mean Doblo?) does NOT fill the bill. Some of my loads would require the back doors open, leaving the interior of the vehicle open to carbon-monoxide poisoning and weakening the overall structure in the event of a collision or other unforeseen accident. I don’t want a “Mystery Machine” van, I want a pickup truck that isn’t ridiculously large.
Jeep every year puts out some great ideas.
The best Jeep concept I like was the Safari Wrangler.
The Comanche here looks great and I’d say would have a market ….. if it met safety requirements. It need a proper high and low range tx case as well, backed up with a little diesel.
The highly accessorised Wrangler is just a piece of marketing. You can go on the net and see what is on offer for after market kit.
These vehicles are all just marketing.
The diesel/9-speed pairing in the Comanche is terrible. I also don’t think you’d see a transfer case or locking diff because the Renegade doesn’t have one.
http://www.jeep.com/en/4×4/
That Renegade/Comanche would certainly have a place in my garage.