The Jeep Wrangler Rubicon Story - Nearly Cancelled

A huge sticking point in the program was that marketing estimated they could sell 2,500 units each year while the engineers behind the program thought 10,000 was more realistic. Nearly everything that made up the Rubicon package except the tires and decal would be hidden, so marketing had a very hard time believing that more people would pony up the roughly $6,000 that the package would cost. The initial tooling was set up to build between 4,000 and 5,000 vehicles the first year. The company ended up taking orders for that many before the fist one went down the assembly line, which sent the team scrambling to increase the supply of transfer cases, axles and tires.

It was a constant sell job to keep the program from getting sanitized. Every time someone asked the team if you really needed (fill in the blank), they would take the person out to a course set up at the company's proving grounds called the Little Rubicon. They would put the person in a manual-trans equipped Rubicon prototype, tell them not to touch the pedals and just steer. They would pilot up and over huge rocks and emerge at the top of the trail with huge smiles on their faces.

One of the biggest hurdles was the argument to keep the 4:1 transfer case. The tooling cost for this particular piece was very large and it was pretty clear that it wouldn't have any other application.

The mud-terrain tires were another battle. To make this worse, some of the Lunatic Fringe thought that a respected all-terrain, like the BFG, might be OK and it might be best not to fight this battle. The mud-terrain tires wouldn't pass noise, ride and handling or any other internal test. Ultimately, Mike Smith and Bill Smith in Jeep engineering made it happen by varying from the internal standards and just making it as good as could be without compromising the off-road capability. And, ironically, marketing grabbed onto the mud-terrain tire because of the off-road statement it made, and the fact that it was actually a visual component in the package.

Once the vehicle was in production, one component after another became the limiting factor for volume. They'd catch up on transfer cases and then run short on axles. Then it would be tires and back to transfer cases.

And the Rest Is History
Three years after the first unofficial prototype was snuck into an executive ride and drive, and 12 months after the official start of the program, the first Jeep Wrangler Rubicon rolled off the assembly line in Toledo, Ohio - the same plant that had produced CJ-2As, 3As, 3Bs, 5s, 6s, 7s and 8s. As of December 2008, more than 100,000 Rubicons have been built and sold. Just over 10,000 were made the first model year, and the 2008 model was the best selling to date, with a total of 22,742.

The key to the vehicle's success was that there was an existing customer base that already understood. This wasn't an all-new technology that would require a huge education process. The customer already got it...all they needed was to be able to come to the dealership and buy it!

A few people dreamed this up, but hundreds put it into production. The project relied on people who cared and would look at this project in a different light. It didn't fit into any normal program guidelines. Anywhere along the lines, any one of the several teams required to bring a vehicle to production could have stopped it just by being closed minded.