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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.

Jeep reveals annual Moab Easter Jeep Safari concepts

Jeep has unveiled its annual spate of concepts before the Easter Jeep Safari. Those start with the Grand Cherokee Trailhawk Concept (below left), complete with the company's EcoDiesel V6 engine. Designers threw in a set of 35-inch Mickey Thompson tires wrapped around 17-inch Rubicon wheels, and a set of custom fender flares help keep all that rubber under wraps.
Meanwhile, the Wrangler Mopar Recon (below right) packs a 6.4-liter Hemi V8 good for 470 horsepower. All that grunt gets to the ground via a five-speed automatic transmission and a set of a Dana 60 axles frond and rear with 4.10 gears. The Recon also makes use of a 4.5-inch prototype long-arm kit and a set of prototype eight-lug bead lock wheels.
The Wrangler Stitch (below left) builds on the momentum of the Wrangler Pork Chop Concept. Engineers once again set out to strike as much weight as possible from the vehicle, and actually managed to trim the curb weight down to 3,000 pounds. That effort has given the machine the same power to weight ratio as the Grand Cherokee SRT8. Plenty of carbon fiber, door deletes and a chrome moly roll cage all help trim those pounds, and a set of DanyTrac Pro Rock 44 axles with 4.88 gears and ARB lockers front and rear let this machine scramble over whatever is in its path.

Chrysler teases upcoming outlay of SEMA cars

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles is hauling a multitude of modified models to the annual SEMA show in Las Vegas this November, and the company is releasing the first teasing sketches of many of them.
Unfortunately, FCA isn't giving many solid details on any of the concepts other than saying the vehicles from Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge, Ram and Fiat all benefit from tuning from its Mopar performance brand. The teaser photos include a sinister-looking Chrysler 200S, Fiat 500 Abarth with two-tone paint and a scorpion on the hood, a red and black 500L, seemingly two different takes on the Jeep Renegade, a green Dodge Challenger wearing the T/A badge, an orange and black Dart, a very neon Charger, just the outline of a red and black Viper, a Ram ProMaster in Mopar livery and a Ram pickup called the Outdoorsman.
Take a look through the gallery to see what you think of the sketches for these concepts, and scroll down for the full announcement from FCA.