The “Dodge Nitro”:http://trucks.about.com/od/conceptsuvs/ss/dodge_nitro.htm will be manufactured at the Jeep plant in Toledo. It only makes sense sine the Nitro is the bastard Daimler child of the Jeep Liberty.
This is also a great leap for the economy of Toledo which has suffered as of late. Daimler has budgeted $600 million to upgrade and retool the plant. The plant is also slated to add a third shift, so that production will now be a 24 hour operation.
The Jeep Grand Cherokee has been awarded zero stars in a test aimed at measuring pedestrian safety. Who buys a car worries about pedestrian safety? What we want to know about is our safety while we are riding in the car. The Jeep Grand Cherokee scores very “well”: http://www.automotive.com/2006/12/jeep/grand-cherokee/safety/ on this front.
JP Magazine has written a very interesting article on the worst Jeep concept vehicles of all time. My favorites being the Wagoneer 2000 and the Tabasco Wrangler. Yuck all around.
Pull out your yearbook or virtually any photos from childhood and high school, and you’ll be sickened that you were out in public looking that way, let alone allowed yourself to be photographed. Proms, graduations, birthdays – you may have seemed happenin’ at the moment, but time reveals you were fairly hideous. And a walk down Jeep’s past can offer up a few examples of automotive leisure suits, man-perms, and double-wide ties too.
It was around 1950 when the first “idea car” was born at Chrysler. Since then, we’ve seen many experiments in advanced technology, environmental overreaction, and out-there design. Some have actually changed the automotive world forever, while others have led us to believe that Jeep has an “organic garden” on the premises. For every mind-blowing Hurricane revealed there’s a mind-exploding Varsity trailing enthusiastically behind in its cowboy boots and football helmet.
“Worst Jeep Concepts Ever”:http://jpmagazine.com/featuredvehicles/154_0509_lame/
The New York Times has written a not so flattering review of the Jeep Commander, even envoking a little “Hummer envy”.
bq. The Commander performs such chores with an undeniable presence, like it or not, and one with overtones of the Hummer. There is a blunt seven-slot grille, a bunkerlike greenhouse and squarish windows. While the Commander doesn’t compete directly with any of the three existing Hummers, it could be seen as a retort to a brand that has stolen some of the rough-and-ready image that Jeep used to claim exclusively. (The chicken-or-egg debate doesn’t end there, given that several of Hummer’s styling cues seem to have been borrowed from Jeep in the first place.)
“MotorTrend”:http://motortrend.com/future/spied/112_0510_spy_jeep_compass/ has posted the first pictures of a camouflaged 2008 Jeep Compass. While it definitely is not pretty under the cammo, it does look promising.
bq. While we had to travel around the world for the official unveiling, Jeep has been parading a heavily disguised Compass through the hills near our Los Angeles offices, allowing us to chart its trail to production. Fanatics deny that Jeep would ever allow the tank to hang so low in the rear, but welcome to a new world at the Chrysler Group, where they build Jeeps on Mitsubishi Lancer platforms.