The annual Easter Jeep Safari in Moab will kick off later this month, meaning we’re in for a deluge of teaser shots for whatever the mad scientists have cooked up in the Jeep labs ahead of this year’s gathering.
Straight out of the box we have this artist’s rendering of a Wrangler, clad in High Velocity paint and showing up for duty in Willys trim. We speculate this is a Wrangler and not a Gladiator thanks to the charging door peeking out from the right-hand side of the image, a dead giveaway this thing rocks a 4xe powertrain. Although, it’d certainly be cool if Jeep used this year’s EJS to show off a preliminary look at a Gladiator 4xe.
In addition to the in-yer-face hue, the Willys trim level is embossed into the hood of this thing instead of showing up as a set of vinyl stickers. One-off details like these are what make the EJS concept rigs so appealing. We’d be remiss not to mention the jumbo tires sticking up from the bottom of the frame, suggesting this Jeep will have all manner of suspension modifications – some of which may or may not eventually be available through the ever-growing Jeep accessories catalog.
A shout-out to the so-called ‘Universal Jeep’ is seen in the background, a sure-fire reference to the term Willys applied to its quarter-ton CJ utility vehicles after the war. This is a term which showed up in advertisements throughout the 1950s and well into the ‘60s. Historians of the brand may argue the term may apply for any CJ produced between 1942 and 1986, at which point the Wrangler name entered the lexicon along with square headlights, the latter of which roiled the fan base into a frothing frenzy.
This year’s EJS takes place at the end of March, due to a twist in the Gregorian calendar which places Easter prior to April Fool’s for the first time in several years.
[Image: Jeep]
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