While carpet works well in passenger cars thanks to its noise reduction qualities, anyone who’s left a rug outdoors will know that carpet is a terrible flooring for an off-road vehicle. It gets all logged up with dirt and mud, can harbor mold, and is generally unpleasant to clean. Jeep seems to recognize this and is launching an available fix for the roughest, toughest Wrangler owners to get excited about.
The marque announced Tuesday that a new option called the JPP heavy-duty flooring system is now available for current four-door Jeep Wrangler models. That’s a vague name, but it really amounts to replacing the plush carpet with rubberized flooring like you’d find in many work trucks these days. Sure, it’s a good thermal insulator and should hush a certain amount of road noise, but the real reason to buy it is ease of cleaning.
Taking a closer look at the flooring, Mopar’s team (or, let’s be honest, its supplier) appears to have done a great job designing channels to direct muck and water toward the Wrangler’s standard floor drain plugs. A coarse-grit surface and stylish chevrons in the driver’s footwell should offer good grip so long as nobody Armor-Alls the flooring, and Jeep demonstrates the ability to just hose the footwells right out. That sounds rather convenient for when you simply can’t be arsed to break out the chemicals and bend down into the footwells.
However, there’s a big downside to this rather smart flooring – it’s surprisingly expensive. Should you order a brand new Wrangler with weatherproof flooring, expect to pay an extra $995 compared to carpet. If you’re looking to retrofit your current JL Wrangler, it’s a $750 kit that doesn’t include labor. For context, vinyl flooring is a no-charge option on the Chevrolet Silverado 1500 LT pickup truck and a $50 credit on the Ford F-250 XLT pickup truck. While the Wrangler sees nowhere near the volume of half-ton and heavy-duty pickup trucks, nearly a grand for hose-down flooring sounds a bit rich. Also, if you own a two-door Wrangler, you’re out of luck.
Still, for a fair subset of Wrangler owners, I reckon the JPP heavy-duty flooring system will be a useful upgrade. From caked-on salt in the rust belt to swampy organic matter from the Florida Everglades, the need for easy cleaning doesn’t seem region-specific. In fact, it makes you wonder why all Wranglers don’t just come this way. If you’re going to build one of America’s most-capable off-roaders, why saddle it with the fussy urban decadence of carpet?
(Photo credits: Jeep)
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One, Weathertech, on top of carpet, does pretty much the same thing, for less money. I did that in my ’09 Tacoma and am currently doing it in our ’15 i3 and ’18 Crosstrek. Two, I had rubber floor covering in my base ’65 Corvair and all three of my ’70 and ’71 VW buses. In every case, the more-durable, non-carpet option has worked fine/was preferable for how I live my life. Carpet is like white upholstery. If you don’t get it dirty, it looks great, even more “classy”, but once it gets messed up, it’s very hard to get back to perfect.
this wasn’t already the standard? how can you pretend to be such a great off road open top machine with mold magnet flooring? I would love it if way more cars had hose-out interiors, but I don’t buy cars new so car companies don’t care what I want.
Hot take: This should be installed in all new vehicles, and come standard. I hate whoever decided that carpeting is an appropriate floor covering for a vehicle. Such a small area with concentrated foot traffic wears out quickly, and it’s difficult/expensive to replace (at least if you want it to be done properly and aesthetically pleasing). Especially when you live in a wintery, salty climate as I do and go from a soggy, salty mess in the winter to an impenetrable salty crust in the spring that’s embedded in the carpet and impossible to scrub out. I don’t need the drain plug but I’ll gladly take vinyl over carpet. I always end up buying WeatherTech mats for all my cars for this very reason.
This looks like Armorlite flooring for Jeeps that costs around $800 for a four door Wrangler, so the $1,000 installed at the factory number doesn’t look quite as bad. To me neither of those numbers are something I’d spend on my Wrangler interior to replace my carpets.
I don’t know much about Jeeps, so I was surprised they don’t have rubber floors by default. Kinda weird to put carpet in a ruff-n-tuff offroad vehicle.
Now that we’re on the subject, why in the ever loving fuck do minivans come with carpet? I mean, do you know how many goldfish crackers can be ground into it? The answer is more than you think.
This totally should be an option in the Pacifica. It’s much more likely to have gross stuff on the floor regularly.
Thats what I did, I got some heavy duty floor mats from 3D maxspider, they cover everything, you don’t see the carpet anymore. It makes my life so easy to clean, now my only problems are kids kicking the back of the seat lol
I did this too, and it looks really good when new – but all those little 3D pyramids make it impossible to clean and keep clean. All I do is take them out, scrub, hose, reinstall, repeat in approx 5 days.
Around here, Wranglers Unlimited are de rigueur mostly feminine fashion pieces which never, ever, ever go off-road and are generally cleaned by lesser beings, so there is no need for such flooring. Ironically though, exactly because it costs so much, I expect it to immediately appear on nearly half of them so that bragging rights may be maintained.
You simply must have a rubberized Rubicon to look cool. Seriously, you can’t spit outside without hitting an Unlimited. When they do go out of fashion, I’m going to be living my David Tracy dreams buying cheap Jeeps off Craigslist.
But otherwise, it seems like an awesome option for those who will filth up their WUs.
I hate carpet in cars. kids, dogs, mud, snow, and it’s a matted mess in a few years.
I don’t really want carpet in my car any more than I want carpet in my kitchen
As a (recent) owner of a Wrangler, one that has hopes to take it offroad and one that has a newborn at home, I like the sound of anything easy to clean and more so if it gets rid of the carpet.
However – this option is ridiculous for two reasons IMO. (1) Pricing is nuts for both the floor and the vinil seats at >$2.5k and (2) it doesn’t cover the cargo area, so there still is carpet in the car.
As someone who has OEM rubber flooring in their 20 something year old VW Transporter…I can assure you that the enemy of this will be sand – especially at the joins with hard plastic mouldings. Also, if it doesn’t come with a polyurethane (non water absorbent) sound deadening backing, then I’d strongly suggest a nope… especially at that cost.
Noise may well be an issue. I tore what was left of the stinking rotted* carpet out of my 225k rusted to hell Subaru GLF back around 95. Initially I used grip tape for traction, then sprayed bed liner in it to try to bring the noise down. Didn’t do much if anything. I junked the rotted shell after pulling the engine shortly thereafter.
If I were to try it again, I’d apply the rubber (not foam) sound-deadening mat first before the bed liner. Not sure how the mat would take the wear, tho
*had the ‘bright’ idea of parking the car in a river to wash it. Between the fuel pump finally shorting out at 1am in a sketch part of town a day later and the stench of that carpet, yeah; I’ve made way better decisions. Don’t do this.
Only for the 4 Door -_-
For comparison’s sake, I visited LMC Truck, where you can order OEM-style rubber flooring for a “squarebody” crew cab for $249.
Add $750 for the Jeep Tax™
Here’s the question. Is it just a vinyl liner akin to a rubber mat, or is it actually spray in bed liner applied directly to the metal? Back in the early naughties I worked a a truck supply place that did an off brand rhino liner called Arma coat. We had many jeep and truck owners come in and have us remove the interior and spray it in.
I wonder if the JL tub is similar enough to the JK that we poor bastards could retrofit this over.
There are plenty of roll on bed liners for way less than $1000
I was all in on their practical thinking until I saw the $1000 price. For shame.
Decontent everything electrical/ with a CANbus, throw in hand crank windows while we are at it and then charge extra for as a special model.. Reduce the need for microchip and shrink the build of material.
Porsche can do it with the RS / special models.. why can’t everyone else?
Didn’t Toyota do this as the stock option for the FJ Cruiser back in the ’00s? And the pay-more upgrade was getting carpet mats/pieces that go over the rubberized setup?
That’s exactly how Ford does it on upper trim Super Duties
Given that most Wranglers will never wrangle anything more hostile than wet asphalt, and that four-door Wranglers are the least likely of the breed see dirt, this all just smacks of automotive virtue signaling.
It isnt expensive to make, it is expensive to buy. I refer you to the $1,000+ stereo system that came ordered by the dealer Yugo. I think it was a $150 Jensen unit with 2 $20 speakers. But every $4,999 Yugo at Roger Dean Chevrolet had this $1,000 option.
Can anyone else name a car where the dealer/ manufacturer stereo was 20% of the sticker price?
This is clearly trying to copy what Ford did with certain models of the Bronco, but the fact that you 1) need to pay extra and 2) can only get it on 4-doors kinda undercuts it, at least for me.
I think a perfect situation for some go getter to create an after market custom or semi custom similar product. I’m thing Weathertech or Dr. Scholls.
Weathertech already lists liners for 2 and 4 doors which would be a good cheaper compromise for most folks. Maybe not the power washer mud men, but then again how water resistant is the interior of a typical modern Jeep anyway?
I know Auotpians generally don’t like Teslas, but I am impressed with the range of 3rd party accessories that are made for 3 and Y. You can get cheapo Aliexpress floor mats to WeatherTech high end ones. Commoditizing / digitizing the drawings and standardizing does make them standard apart, but not enough to figure out which white Model 3 belongs to who. Basically Model 3/Y is iPhone equivalent for accessories.