With the rollout of the Gladiator upon us, we were expecting the lineup of concepts Jeep built for the upcoming 2019 Moab Easter Jeep Safari to be heavy on the pickups. And we were right. In fact, all six colorful one-offs featured a bed. There was one Wrangler in the mix, and even it had been modified to sport a bed on the back.
This is, in retrospect, no surprise. “For me, personally, it’s an all-new palette to play with,” Jeep designer Mark Allen says of the Gladiator. Thing is, the Easter Jeep Safari concepts have long been a way to dabble with the idea of a Jeep pickup in a semiofficial context, keeping the idea alive even after a quarter-century-plus out of production with the likes of the FC 150, the NuKizer and Mighty FC concepts.
But now, with the Gladiator here, it’s officially official. “We finally got a truck,” Allen says, “and we’re so damn happy.” With the Gladiator as a starting point, here’s what they came up with.
The Jeep Flatbill is what happens when you let actual designers build a brodozer. The seats' covers are made from motocross jackets; the decals are loud; the Off-Road Evolution 4-inch lift and 40-inch tires probably make loading the dirtbikes into the bed harder than it needs to be (they’re mounted on slide-out ramps).
But as far as lifestyle trucks for the Monster Energy-and-extreme-sports set go, it’s a coherent package. And one with a fair amount of self-awareness; it even came complete with a custom flat brim hat, and yes, it still had the holographic decal on the bill. There are nods to off-road practicality, too, like a compact tube bumper and custom work on the end of the bed that helps improve the truck’s departure angle.
Expect to see pale imitations of the Flatbill in suburban strip malls in short order. Don't expect them to be done this well.
It was only a matter of time before someone stuck a rooftop tent on top of a Gladiator. The Jeep Wayout goes even further, combining the pop-up tent with a 270-degree swing-out awning. The Jeep folks deployed the whole thing right before our eyes in mere moments, then dimmed the lights and touched off the (fake) campfire to complete the picture. As if we needed to be sold any harder on the overlanding thing…
Basically, this concept is designed to show you how easy it is to convert the Gladiator into a go-anywhere adventuremobile; the truck’s 1,600-pound payload capacity means you can load it up with tents, awnings, roll-out bed storage systems and so on and so forth. The range of aftermarket parts that will be offered by both Jeep Performance Parts and a slew of third-party suppliers will allow you to tailor your rig to whatever demands you can dream up.
The Wayout’s very cool gator green exterior paint is headed to production, and its 2-inch lift is available through Jeep Performance parts. The bed rack system that allows the mounting of that rooftop tent is, for now, just a prototype, but we’d bet a few different companies are working on their own versions as you read this.
There’s nothing holding you back from making your Gladiator look just like the Jeep Gladiator Gravity concept — aside from the rock-climbing decals, a nod to the sport that inspired the truck, just about everything you see here is available from Jeep Performance Parts (or will be available soon), from the metal tube doors to the bed cross rails to the mesh sunbonnet.
Like most of the other concepts here, it sports a 2-inch lift kit, which allows it to run 17-inch wheels and 35-inch tires with no other modifications. All in all, there’s about $8,000 worth of accessories shown here. That’s a lot, but remember, you don’t have to buy it all at once!
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