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2015 Easter Jeep Safari Concepts First Drive

Imagine if once a year your grandmother made a chocolate cake. Not a chocolate cake, that chocolate cake. Blow-your-mind chocolate cake. But she won't ever let you have any – you can only have the spatula and whatever's left over in the mixing bowl. And you don't care. You look forward to that spatula and bowl every year because – "Gadzooks!" – that is some stupendous cake. For us, that cake is the Easter Jeep Safari. An annual pilgrimage to Moab, Utah for a taste of what Fiat-Chrysler's off-road brand has cooked up in its Design Dome. "No, you can't have any," the company tells us, "but you can taste it here, then dream about it until next Easter." In Detroit, Jeep gave us a close look at the seven concepts it built for this year's 49th annual event. Then it went a step further and took those show cars to Mill Canyon, UT, to crawl the red rocks in Jeep's natural habitat. After all, the company calls Moab, "Our home away from home." And it's not true that we never get more than a taste of Jeep's conceptual goodness – 2011's JK8 pickup conversion kit is a slice of Safari creation we can now take home, for instance, as are the hood decals that adorned two of the concepts we drove this year. Pietro Gorlier, President and CEO of Mopar, told us that the evolution of Jeep Performance Parts came from listening to journalists and customers in his first year on the job in 2010. So there's that. But still, we want more cake. Like a full-on production Wrangler Africa. These being one-of-a-kind prototypes traipsing through a canyon of nearly immovable objects, we didn't go fast, we didn't go far, we didn't push hard. But we did drive all the Easter Jeeps, and even just this small taste was outstanding. View 30 Photos Jeep Chief While we listened attentively to the detailed spiels on all this conceptual candy, one question ran through our minds: "How am I going to get in the Chief before everyone else?" And we could see the same thought every colleague's face, those scheming bastards. And why not? The Ocean Blue tribute to the venerable Cherokee of old grabbed everyone's attention since the first teaser images weeks before the event, in part because the vintage truck is up there with mermaids for rarity and lustworthiness. Anything that goes this far in obeisance to that classic Jeep is always going to score huge marks. The Chief is a four-door Wrangler underneath, but in many ways it feels nothing like a Wrangler.

Automotive News Recap for the week of 9.2.16 | Autoblog Minute

A look back at the week in automotive news, including spy shots of the next-gen Mercedes-Benz GLE SUV, and a look at the 2017 Jeep Grand Cherokee Trailhawk that is soon to hit dealers in the United States. Jeep Mercedes-Benz Autoblog Minute Videos Original Video mercedes-benz gle trailhawk

SUV lifts you up where you belong and leapfrogs traffic jams

So, you're at a dead stop, stuck in traffic, when it pulls up behind you. It appears to be a garden-variety Jeep Grand Cherokee. That is, until its undercarriage lifts the Jeep 9 feet into the air, and the whole rig straddles you and the cars ahead of you in a bid for open road. The car is called the Hum Rider, and no, you can't buy one at the Jeep store. It's a one-off publicity stunt intended to promote Verizon Telematic's Hum platform, which plugs into a car's OBD port and for $10 a month provides vehicle diagnostics, roadside assistance, location tracking, and speed and geo-fencing alerts. (Not sure if Hum tracks vertical leaps.) Verizon enlisted viral marketing agency Thinkmodo to promote the Hum, and this idea was head and shoulders above the rest. "We saw this one [and said], 'Wow, that is crazy,' said Jay Jaffin, Verizon's VP of marketing. "We loved the idea." Thinkmodo co-founder James Percelay told Mashable that they wanted to represent the upgrade Hum brings to cars. So the car goes up. Get it? Here's the star of this story: Hum Rider's designer, Scott Beverly, has done visual effects for Hollywood in The Dark Knight, Inception and Interstellar. He works for A2Zf, a Lancaster, Calif., design and engineering firm that keeps the world filled with Batmobiles, Red Bull Can Cars and beautifully designed VWs and Audis. A2Zf has also worked with NASA on X-planes and with Northrup on the B2 bomber, so compared to those projects, a car-straddling car is hardly a stretch. So what does it take to make a car do this? How about: Over 300 feet of hydraulic lines that operate everything - the lift mechanism, steering, braking and power to the drivetrain. A gas-powered Honda generator under the hood that powers hydraulic pumps pushing out 900 pounds of pressure. A lot of mechanical structure. Hum Rider weighs 8,500 pounds, almost double a standard Grand Cherokee. Heavy-duty truck tires to support all that weight. Four undercarriage cameras that allow the driver to see and clear what's beneath him. What did it cost? They're not saying. What would it be worth, the next time you're stuck in traffic? Priceless.