In the class of sub-5-second 0-60 mph supercars it’s the Sweathog. What it lacks in carbon-fiber body panels, exotic titanium trinkets, and low-flying avionics, it achieves with good ol’-fashioned American pushrod V-8 savagery, a full-time four-wheel drive system, and fat, sticky Pirelli tires. It’s a big, porky, 5,300lb man cave on wheels that bathes you in luxury while pummeling the quarter mile in just over 13 seconds, thanks to the laughably underrated 470hp baby elephant under the hood. And what of the euro-trash aficionados’ rallying cry: “But what happens when it gets to a corner?” Well, banana-hammock, it turns. Quickly, fiercely, violently, and with authority, thanks to full-time 4WD, active electronic rear diff, and race-tuned active Bilstein suspension. Up your nose with a rubber hose.

In the hot rod world a “survivor” is an old vehicle that hasn’t been restored but is still in pretty decent, if not great, shape. The same can be said for old factory-original or old vintage-modified Jeeps. But that isn’t how we are using the word “survivor” here. We first saw this Jeep at the end of the infamous Sledgehammer trail out in Johnson Valley, California, and it was obvious both the Jeep and its owner knew their way around the Hammers.

Each year the Jp staff scours the Las Vegas convention center to check out the latest creations of the automotive aftermarket industry. The annual convergence is a spectacle for the eyes and punishing to our feet, as over 2,000 exhibitors fill up two million square feet of floor space with vehicular frivolities to astonish nearly 100,000 attendees. Premier car builders from across the nation face off for the annual who’s-who of automotive customization. In the months leading up to the show, limitless budgets merge with unstinted creativity to produce some of the most useless vehicles in existence. Amongst the sea of superfluous new product ideas and non-functional show cars, we always seem to find a gem or two that are worth shooting—whether it’s for target practice or magazine content. Our primary mission with SEMA coverage is to point out cool stuff that will make you smile (or drool). Typically we only report on what we feel is relative to Jeep vehicles. However, this year we decided to take a little different approach and include some of the most obscene things we found during our four-day trek and contrast them to their real-world Jeep equivalents.

Trent Fabrication of Sparks, Nevada, produces some of the most capable rock buggies around. That being the case, it was no surprise when Trent Fab owner Derek Trent took the torch to his wife’s ’04 TJ Rubicon. Lisa Trent already had 37-inch-tall tires and a long-arm suspension on her Rubicon, but instead of getting an engagement ring, she got engagement beadlock rings. Derek performed a slew of upgrades that provide the TJ with more strength, ground clearance, and articulation on the trail. The Trent couple recently took the opportunity to show off the Jeep’s capabilities at Off Road Innovations of Reno’s new Giant’s Throne OHV Park. Unlike the purpose-built buggies, this Jeep is still street legal and the cage fits under the factory hard top. This allows the couple to use the Jeep for snow bashing during the brutal Tahoe winters, and it can still be legally driven on the street to access the nearby Rubicon Trail.

The staff of Jp magazine is not picky. We run through Jeeps like Kirstie Alley through a Hostess factory…or a congressman through hot nannies…or a…well, choose your simile. Currently we have dozens of Jeeps parked in our collective driveways and garages, ranging from the earliest flatfenders to the latest JKs. We realize, however, that not everyone has the bank account of Hazel’s sugar momma, Trasborg’s complete lack of self control regarding anything with a seven-slot grille, or Stover’s wheeler-dealer savvy. In short, unlike the Jp staff, we realize most of you can’t try to own ’em all. So, in an effort to narrow down the selection process, we are going put all of our expertise to work to help you pick your next Jeep project. That’s right! Just answer the questions below to determine which Jeep is right for you.

When Trasborg saw this Comanche roll into town during the Easter Jeep Safari in Moab, Utah, he chased it down like a creepy old guy following the college cheerleaders back to their dorm rooms. He didn’t care that the MJ wasn’t completed. Regardless of the lack of a rear bumper, window, or rock rails, it was ’caged, locked, and running. So, rather than waiting a year for it to get completed, he had John Underwood agree to go wheeling the next day before it was even off the trailer.

One of the original features that made Jeeps so appealing, both to the military and for recreational use, was the fact they were small and maneuverable enough to go just about anywhere. Sixty years ago though, no one thought that “just about anywhere” would include climbing ten-foot-tall vertical ledges. No Jeep that has the wheelbase of a Yamaha Rhino is going to climb the kind of obstacles found on today’s rockcrawling trails. This is what Robert Baird realized when wheeling his CJ-5 on the infamous trails of Las Cruces, New Mexico. Baird hails from nearby El Paso, Texas, and chose to replace his trusty CJ-5 with an ’82 CJ-8 Scrambler for added stability on the big climbs.

We called out for you to send us your Jeep projects that you’ve built in your garage, and you responded in a big way. Originally we thought that this story would be about complete frame-off kind of restifications. But along the way we received a lot of partial rebuilds, engine rebuilds, Jeep repowers, and so forth. We always enjoy learning about your ideas, and for this story it’s no different. This story is influenced by you—the pictures are your pictures and the words are yours as well. Except for the stuff we made up, of course.

In a world where building a big JK is as easy as putting on your pants in the morning, it is hard to find one that stands out from the crowd. In the JK arena, even a fancy paintjob, big tires, and a Hemi isn’t a guarantee that you’ll catch someone’s eye. But when you take a four-door Wrangler with all that stuff and make the B-pillar removable like it should have been from the factory, then put in a well- thought-out full cage made from actual tube, you are onto something.

It’s finally happened. The JK Wrangler is getting old enough to become affordable. Hell, a buddy of ours just scored an ’07 Rubicon for under $20,000. And if those deals are around in rust-free southern California, then you should be able to do even better in other areas of the country. But like any vehicle, the JK Wrangler has its weak points and areas of concern. Some of these problems surface if the vehicle is abused or neglected, and some are simply from inherent design or manufacturing deficiencies. But for any JK, no matter what the year, model, or mileage, here are some things to check out before you write that check.

We run around the country every year finding Jeeps we think are cool and preserving them for time immemorial by printing photos and writing features on them in our little magazine here. And like anything else, sometimes you hit it out of the park, and sometimes your peers just don’t see eye-to-eye with you. When it comes to these features, obviously, the editor who shot it really likes the Jeep. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have taken the trouble to grab the camera, collect the owner’s info, and write it all up. But what about the other two guys on staff?

Craigslist and other dump-your-junk-for-cash websites offer a great way to grab some deals or get rid of some unwanted junk. Unfortunately, sites like these can also be a playground for scammers trying to take advantage of unwary bargain hunters. They’re not hard to spot. An ‘05 Dodge Viper with minor damage for $10,000! Wow, you better jump on that. Thing is, the seller also has it for sale on eBay, so you’d better act fast before the auction ends! But wait, this swell dunghoarder will stop the auction if you PayPal him a $1,000 deposit and give him the remaining balance at delivery. What a guy, eh? You could spend all day flagging great deals to warn other perspective buyers that a decent TJ with low miles for $1,500 is probably a lie. The ads all read the same. “I’d list my phone number, but I can’t take calls at work,” or “The car is stored in Fargo, North Dakota.” The courts are full of people who bought a car sight unseen and forgot the “buyer beware” mantra. But once in a while, if you know what to look for and if you can stand the BS, an ad turns out to be as real as the Motor City.

Sometimes it’s funny how things work out. Most of the time we find features out on the trails, but this one we flagged down on Main Street in Moab, Utah, during the 2011 Easter Jeep Safari. After a week of tripping over cookie-cutter TJs and JKs, all we’d managed to rack up for feature Jeeps were a bunch of 50- and 60-year-old Willys. We were lamenting the lack of originality in so many of the newer rigs when this thing drove past.

Whether it’s that spare tire you’re carrying around behind your belt buckle or a bunch of unnecessary trinkets and doo dads on, in, or around your Jeep, extra weight kills performance, increases the likelihood of breakage, and requires more energy and effort to move around. Shedding unnecessary poundage from your Jeep will make your engine feel more powerful, help your drivetrain components live longer, and allow your suspension to react more quickly. We came up with fifty things you can do to lighten your Jeep. Some may not be applicable or realistic for everybody. And some may not seem like they’d make a ton of difference. But as we demonstrated in “Skinny-Time!” on page 84 of this issue, the cumulative result of just a few of these mods can really make a difference.

Twin red flatties
A lot of the time we feel like we are chasing ghosts. For a few days during the 2011 Easter Jeep Safari in Moab, Utah, we were asked by many people if we’d seen the father and son flatfenders. Of course, we hadn’t, and when we finally did, we almost didn’t know it. We saw one flatty in a tire shop parking lot and while it was definitely nice, we decided there was just more chrome involved than we’d normally shoot. Plus it was very clean, and we were wondering if it really went wheeling. So, we went about our business until a van moved revealing the other flatfender to us. That’s when we went over to talk to the father and son team of Gerald M. Roberts and Gerald Roberts, Jr. (Jerry).

It was the best worst kept secret. Over a year ago everyone knew the 3.6L Pentastar V-6 would make its way into the ’12 Wrangler. But several questions remained. How much more power would it make than the old (and generally hated) 3.8L minivan V-6 and how would the JK drive on- and off-road with the new engine? We headed up to the mountains of the Lake Tahoe area and on the Rubicon Trail to find out.

Usually Hazel is the one hunting down vintage orange Jeeps. If there’s one in a five- mile radius, you can be sure he’s on it like stink on a monkey. But this time the tables were turned. The owner of this Monarch-orange ’52 Willys Wagon saddled up alongside Hazel at the 2011 TDS Desert Safari event. And before Vista, California, resident Bryan Kilcrease could get more than a couple of words in greeting out of his mouth, Hazel was dragging him off to a photo-shoot location. Orange…Willys…mmm…feature.

If you read Jp magazine with any regularity, than this is not the first Jeep rat rod you have seen on our pages. While they will likely never be as common as TJs with long-arm suspensions and 35-inch tires, we love the creativity that’s possible when you put a seven-slot grille on the front of a hot rod. Brain Shirley, from Dodge City, Kansas, has upped the ante with his new flatfender rat rod, and the best part is that he has less than two grand in the whole thing.

The Jeep thing is supposed to be fun. It isn’t supposed to be an expression of how good ones credit rating is. The Jeeps that are the most fun to build and wheel are the old ones. They are easy to work on, dirt simple to fix when they break, and leaf springs make for lots of available cheap upgrades and modifications. Today, the problem is most people think that an old Jeep is worth its weight in gold. When we got into the Jeep thing, AMC-era CJs could still be had at used car dealerships at reasonable prices. Nowadays it seems that even non-running junk AMC CJs are commanding more money than first- and second-generation Wranglers and that is just upside-down no matter how you look at it.

It’s become a thing. To be specific: a Jeep thing. Not too many years ago, a few maverick employees at Jeep who called themselves the Mopar Underground started it. They built up some cool concept vehicles and loaded ’em on a single transport truck headed for the Moab Easter Jeep Safari, where they were unveiled to a small group of hand-selected media. These concepts were wild—to a degree. A Wrangler-based pickup, no-lift JK sporting 40-inch tires, stripped-down base Wrangler with all the Rubicon gizmos, a military-themed J8 nicknamed “Sarge,” and others whetted our appetites and gave hope that true off-road enthusiasts still rattled the halls of Jeep headquarters.

Hey, wait a minute. Aren’t we part of some billion-dollar corporation that specializes in providing its customers with the finest in enthusiast news, information, and entertainment? And as part of that huge infrastructure, don’t we now have access to a treasure trove of vintage archival footage from the glory days of motorsports, racing, and (more interestingly) off-roading? Duh!

“License To Ill” is arguably the Beastie Boys’ best album, and as soon as I saw Mike Baggerman’s Jeep, the song

Much like the he is a guy after our own hearts. If it was broke, he’d think about replacing it, but otherwise, it stays around. Over the years we’ve seen this Jeep grow from a mild bolt-on lift to the beast it is today and at every step of the way, Lyon has come up with some neat innovations. We’d run into him out on the trails from time to time and he’d always be scheming the next big round of modifications to the Jeep—once the money fairy left it on his porch, that is. A couple of years ago he started a big teardown of it and we thought nothing more of this CJ-7. Like so many projects we’ve seen start, we figured it would be a long time in the making. Imagine our surprise when we found this brightly colored Jeep in place of the grey machine it used to be. Lyon is a go-anywhere, try-anything-once kind of guy, so we tagged along with him and his new machine to get some insight on a super-capable Jeep that is still something accessible to the rest of us.

Rumors of Jeep building a pickup have been running rampant likewell, rumors of Jeep building a pickup. It’s on, it’s off, it’s on again, it’s off, and it’s on again, in a noncommittal sort of way. Like Charlie Sheen and sobriety, there’s just no telling anymore. Even Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne left us scratching our heads earlier this year regarding the Jeep Gladiator truck concept. He said, I like that vehicle. I liked it the first day I saw it. There’s a better than 50-percent chance that you’ll get one.

You can plow through mud. You can blast over sand. You can bash through snow. But you gotta tiptoe over rocks. Let’s face itrock is the one obstacle you’ll encounter that’ll beat you 9 times out of 10. Wood may splinter and ice may shatter, but rock will dent, rip, tear, and make a mess of most components on your Jeep. If you’re heading in the rocks, you’ll want to up-armor the underside of your Jeep for survivability.