Everything you need to know about Jeep – Top Gear Philippines

Whats Jeep, and when did it start making cars?

Jeep is an American manufacturer of 4x4s and SUVs, as well as a source of subtly branded clothing to illustrate your affinity for all things off-road and Murican. Or at least your affinity for cut-price clothing bins.

Jeeps start date is officially 1943, when the trademark application was first lodged. But then the company claims it kicked off in 1941. Um. Right.

Really, Jeeps birthday (and etymology) is fuzzier than the three-day growth of the GIs who drove them. Was it March 1941, the anything goes era where prototypes and pre-production models got the nod and were press-ganged into duty? Was it July 1941, when full production started? Or maybe April 1942, when that same army was awarded the patent for its design, despite the fact that it was the work of Willys, Ford, and Bantam? And how did we get the name Jeep in the first place?

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Its probably easiest to just say the 40s and great question before changing the subject. Theres an idea that Jeep comes from the Ford GPW, much like the Humvee came from HMMWV, but another idea that it comes from an old Popeye character called Eugene the Jeep. But did you really come here for a history lesson?

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And that, kids, is how you change the subject.

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Mostly in America, as youd expect. Given its iconic status and proclivity for a bit of parochial pride, Jeeps tend to be built in the US of A, generally in towns that wouldnt look too out of place in the opening half of The Deer Hunter. Of course, theres a plant in Mexicoa company cant be truly American until its outsourced something to its southern cousinsand apparently a total of 10 plants across six countries, including the US and Mexico.

Jeep has also had factories in roughly every country a sixth-grader could point to on a map, and unlicensed copies of its most famous vehicle have cropped up across Asia as well as in Europe and the Americas. Well-traveled, you might say.

In terms of sales, you can generally expect between one million and 1.8 million sales a year. Which, presumably, means about the same number of cars built in the same period. Recent hits to supply chains, microchips, and so on are sure to have hurt things (and put a severe dampener on plans to double Jeep sales by 2023), but it keeps trucking along, as it were.

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No cars, if were being pedantic. Thats kind of what the last line of the last paragraph was alluding to: Jeep builds trucks. Not, like, truck trucksthats the preserve of Ram, which is like if Chevrolet created an entire brand to sell commercial vehicles. Ram, like Jeep, is under the Stellantis umbrella, which is the new, larger umbrella made by stitching the Fiat-Chrysler umbrella to the Peugeot-Citroen umbrella and hoping nothing leaks. But we digress.

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Jeep is known for the Wrangler, an off-roader that rides on a truck-ready ladder frame. It also makes the Gladiator, a pickup truck based on the Wrangler off-roader that rides on a truck-ready ladder frame. Simple.

There are also SUVs that should really not be called the Cherokee and the Grand Cherokee anymore, surely. In any case, they break the mold by having unitary bodies, like youd find in a car, but a lot more ground clearance than youd find in a normal car.

The Wagoneer is making a comeback after three decades as a full-size SUV, which is Americanese for a vehicle the size of a mining truck. It used to beyou guessed ita ladder-frame-based heffalump, but will join the rest of us in the Anthropocene and offer a unitary body this time around. Just kiddingits going on the same ladder frame that underpins the Ram 1500 pickup. Mm. Refined.

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Then there are the little SUVs and crossovers that try their damndest to be a real Jeep, with all the Jeep badging and jingoistic names like Patriot and Renegade. Honestly, theyre interchangeable enough that you might not even notice one of those weve just mentioned hasnt been on sale for years. The Renegade, on the other hand, might be the best combination of ironic and adorable weve ever encountered. Look at that little face! It may as well come as standard with a sticker that says, When I grow up, Im going to be a Wrangler.

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The cheapest is going to be the little Renegade, rolling all the way up to the big daddy Grand Wagoneerthat is, if the Wagoneer is coming to your neck of the woods. Otherwise, its going to be the Grand Cherokee L, a three-row SUV with a slightly smaller unitary body.

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Well, its definitely going to have Trackhawk in the name there somewhere, given that its how Jeep denotes its Hemi-powered Lance missiles. In particular, its the Grand Cherokee Trackhawk, replete with a 700hp supercharged V8, a 0-100 sprint in the low-threes, and a claimed top speed of 290kph. So, quick enough, no?

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Were going with the jeepney. For those of you who havent been to the Philippines, the jeepney is the kind of vehicle thatd make MacGyver tumescent.

Jeepneys started life as surplus Army Jeeps, left behind after the Americans kicked the Imperial Japanese out of the Philippines toward the end of World War II. But because the Japaneseand some pretty serious American shellinghad destroyed pretty much everything, including fleets of taxi-share cars, Filipinos got creative.

Simple Army Jeeps were reborn as proper passenger buses, operating as cheap share-taxis and getting the Philippines moving again. Decades later, the ornately decorated, MacGyvered-together buses are still the cheapest way to get around Manila. Jeepneys are, to all intents and purposes, a cultural icon, like Londons double-decker buses or the canary-yellow cabs of New York. Okay, theyre about as safe and environment-friendly as a fracking rigwhich is a big part of why theyre being forced out in favor of safer, cleaner transportbut after more than seven decades of faithful service, theyve probably earned their keep. And, were sure, would continue to do so for decades yet.

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Really, the victory is more Filipino than American, but for creating a vehicle with such incredible ruggedness, simplicity, and utility, well still hand a best moment nod to Jeep.

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Easy one, this: the Jeep Commander. So bad, even the boss hated it. The late Sergio Marchionne was reported to have said it was unfit for human consumption, and that despite selling some, I dont know why people bought them.

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Oof.

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Lets make this answer multiple-choice, no? Because thats definitely how answers work.

For some, it might be spinning an entire car company, ethos, and mythos off a simple wartime conveyance. For others, it could be the sheer number of companies whove owned Jeep since its inception in the 40sfirst Willys, then Kaiser, AMC (with a bit of Renault input), then Chrysler in three different guises (Chrysler, Daimler-Chrysler, then Fiat-Chrysler), before settling in under the vast agglomeration that is Stellantis.

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Or, of course, it could be that time Jeep launched the then-new Grand Cherokee by driving it through a plate glass window.

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Jeep, especially recently, has done some staggeringly good concept cars, from best-of restomods to insane, barrel-chested off-road monsters that should run on human growth hormone, not gasoline. And they take them all out to Moab every Easter to use them as Our Lady of Blessed Acceleration intended. None of this careful, its just a concept car nonsense; these are proper things that work properly.

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Our favorite, unequivocally, is the Wagoneer Roadtrip concept. We like it so much, in fact, that weve already written a story about it.

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When someone from Jeep says that one of its vehicles is an icon, itd be fairly easy to dismiss it as regular-strength American braggadocio and move on with our lives. But when theyre talking about something thats not only the most iconic vehicle from historys greatest conflict, but also a bona fide design icon, it might actually be time to pay attention.

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In fact, the Jeep M38A1 is the only American vehicle on display in Manhattans Museum of Modern Art, in among an ultra-rare Cisitalia 202, an E-Type roadster, a Citroen DS, a first-gen Porsche 911, and the prettiest Formula 1 car of our generation, the Ferrari 641. Not a bad effort for one of the most utilitarian vehicles ever created.

NOTE: This article first appeared on TopGear.com. Minor edits have been made.

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Everything you need to know about Jeep – Top Gear Philippines

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