Check out that original 1964 Jeep Gladiator, parked here behind its shiny new descendant. They both look cool, and frankly, we’d be happy driving off in either one of them. But their differences, both in engineering and buyership, are as far apart as their five and a half decades in model years.
The original Gladiator, if you can find one, is a fun collector’s item now, but in its day, it was basically a tool that people needed. The new one is something you want to buy. It manages to have an incredible amount of capability but can be ordered with Mopar kayak racks and mountain bike mounts. If the new Gladiator is a work truck for a farmer, it’s a work truck for a gentleman farmer who has 50 acres of pinot noir grapes and pays somebody to pick them.
The original Gladiator you see here was made available to us by our good friend and regular Autoweek contributor Ben Stewart. It’s a J200 wearing yellow steel wheels and a Thriftside (stepside to most observers) bed behind the cab. Stewart has wanted one for most of his life.
“When I was a kid back in the ’70s, my family used to spend a week every summer at Elk Lake Lodge deep in the Adirondacks,” Stewart said. “There were no paved roads within five miles of that place, and the closest town was about a half-hour away.”
Perhaps you know such a place?
“Each morning, the lodge crew loaded food scraps into metal trash cans, clanged ’em into the bed of a Gladiator pickup and took them to ‘the dump’ several miles into the woods. Kids staying at the lodge used to pile into that truck for the ride because they knew if they sat quietly after the cans were emptied, black bears would silently emerge from the woods and dine on all the leftovers. I went every morning.”
Heck, who wouldn’t? Four-wheelin’ and the risk of bear attack? I’d go today if I had the chance. So …
“As a car and truck nut, I filed away every detail about that Jeep. I still remember the distinct smell of that interior and the sounds it made as we bounced along the dirt road to the dump. Seatbelts? We didn’t need those. It was the ’70s!”
So, like Citizen Kane and Rosebud, Stewart was launched on a lifelong quest for a J200 of his own. He found it 10 years ago, the one you see here.
His perfectly preserved and highly modified—maybe even resto-modified—Gladiator highlights the distinct differences not only in the two trucks themselves, but in the buyers for whom each model was intended. Stewart recognizes the almost-agricultural duty and design his 1964 Jeep offered. It was a work truck, a farm implement, something used to feed cattle in the high-mountain pasture in the summer, or … haul food scraps to the bears in the forest. It featured none of the luxury appointments that would be slathered onto its modern descendant. It was, in its stock form, dangerous and scary to drive in our modern world, with its high-speed freeways and texting drivers.
“The clunky drivetrain, weak brakes and laborious steering worked OK around town, but it didn’t like speeds above 50 mph,” Stewart said of his J200 as it was when he got it. “So after one sketchy morning adventure, I decided Los Angeles freeways were no place for my Gladiator. That really limited its usefulness.”
He wanted something with the old truck’s character, but with a new truck’s modern drivetrain, brakes and safer handling.
So he took it over to Legacy Classic Trucks in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, for a drivetrain upgrade. Specifically:
“A modern EFI 5.7-liter V8 Hemi crate engine was sourced, and Legacy found a fun air cleaner with ‘Four Barrel’ on the cover to keep it looking old-school. The Hemi is mated to a heavy-duty NV 4500 five-speed manual, a transmission used in Dodge heavy-duty pickups back in the 1990s. It uses a nice, low 5.61:1 first gear that when paired to the Atlas transfer case with 3.8:1 low range provides turtle-like off-road crawling. In the rear, there’s a custom Dynatrac Dana 60 axle with beefy 1.5-inch, 35-spline shafts. A Dynatrac Dana 44 axle rides up front. Both axles have disc brakes, 3.73:1 gears and are loaded with Detroit Truetrac limited-slip differentials.”
He had created the best of both worlds.
Or had he? To find out, we took his 1964 truck and a brand-spankin’-new 2020 Jeep Gladiator Overland model and went wheelin’. I drove the 2020 modern miracle of muddin’ from that craft’s press intro in Sacramento while Stewart drove his original gangster up from LA. We met at a California State Vehicular Recreation Area an hour or so north of the city called Hungry Valley. There, anyone who pays the $5 entrance fee can drive or ride anything they want all dang day. So, for 10 bucks, we brought both Jeeps and had at it.
Mine was a midlevel Overland model, better than a base model but not as gnarly off-road as a Rubicon. It had the standard 3.6-liter all-aluminum 285-hp, 260-lb-ft Pentastar V6 mated to an eight-speed automatic driving the rear or all four wheels. Configured right, it could tow 7,650 pounds. (Get more Rubicon details starting on page 19.) Suffice it to say, my new rig had climate control and satellite radio among the long list of options.
Know that the Gladiator buyer, both old and new, isn’t your typical Wrangler customer. Not only does he and she want to go four-wheelin’ like any Jeeper, they want to carry a ton of gear with them when they go, as well as a crew of four or five. You can’t carry much in the otherwise-mighty Wrangler. If you wanted to go overlanding, for instance—that activity we used to call “camping”—it was something of a challenge in every Wrangler ever made, from the original U.S. Army General Purpose 1/4 Ton to today’s offerings. Because of the limited space in your typical Wrangler, all those guys in the Rubicon have to pack almost as if they were going minimalist backpacking instead of luxury glamping. Sure, a Jeep will take you way the heck out there in pristine wilderness where no other 4-by can go, but you just can’t bring very much with you.
This new vehicle solves every problem every Jeeper/overlander/camper/glamper has ever had: where to put all the gear. By cleverly adding some Ram-like pickup truck parts on the back end, the Wrangler suddenly became a fully functional camping and hauling vehicle. Payload is 1,600 pounds.
First thing we did in Hungry Valley was go rock crawling. There is steep dirt everywhere you turn in that four-wheeler playground, and we attacked it all. Stewart’s Gladiator had an advantage here. With its modifications and ground clearance, it represents just about the most of what’s possible with that ancient rig. His Jeep has a maximum crawling ratio of 80:1, for instance. My 2020-model Gladiator Overland model had a crawl ratio of 47.8:1.
Stewart’s Jeep had dirt-grippin’ 235/85R-16 BF Goodrich Radial All-Terrain T/As which measure about 32 inches tall. My 2020 Gladiator, in its midrange Overland trim, came with slick 245/75R-17 Bridgestone Duelers and slightly less serious Command Trac 4×4 system. Serious wheelers buying a new
Gladiator will get the top-of-the-line Rubicon, or they might just get the base sport model, strip it out and replace everything with an aftermarket setup. Our new Gladiator got next-gen heavy-duty Dana 44 front and rear axles and optional Trac-Lok limited-slip rear diff, so it was darn capable in the dirt and rocks. Plus, you could listen to all Bluegrass all the time on satellite radio.
Pull back on the transfer case lever of the 2020 model and you were in either 4HI or 4LO pretty seamlessly (most of the time). In 4LO, the new Gladiator crawled like a low-speed lizard up or down anything I tried. When I got into Ben’s Jeep, after manually locking the front hubs to engage four-wheel drive, it seemed more capable than the modern Gladiator, with its grippy off-road-tread tires, low, low crawl ratio, higher ground clearance and sturdy manual transmission. The new Jeep was easily better at doing donuts in the dirt with the traction control switched off, but neither Ben nor I wanted to risk breaking anything on his own, personal Jeep 4×4, so maybe we didn’t push it as hard when it came to straight-up hooning.
The biggest difference between the two is, of course, in the cab. The new Jeep with its four doors and luxury appointments is better all-around. Its bed is only 5 feet long compared to the original beast’s 7-foot box, but the original is just a single cab—if you wanted to carry more people, you’d just pile ’em in the back.
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