The Comanche was Jeep’s attempt to bust into a new segment of the truck market in the 1980s. It failed to gain Jeep a beachhead, and you could be forgiven for forgetting it existed at all. Even more obscure, though, was the sports model it spawned. Meet the Street Comanche, the race-inspired pickup truck the world forgot.
It sounds crazy, but it’s true. Jeep heads remember the Comanche pickup going on sale many decades ago, with somewhere near 200,000 units built over its seven-year run. Fewer remember the handful of Camanches that ended up in an obscure racing series that traveled across America. Jeep’s motor sporting success is something we rarely even contemplate, but in this case, it spawned an obscure special edition sold in just a handful of dealerships for a very short time.
The Street Comanche is a rare and unique thing. Hardly any were built, and it made almost no impact on the contemporary motor industry at all. And yet, years later, there remains a diehard fanbase of just a few souls who are keeping its memory alive.
Where It All Started
Back in the 1980s, the Sports Car Club of America had the great idea to go racing with pickup trucks. The result was the SCCA Race Truck Challenge, a series that would see a wide range of manufacturers bring their trucks to the track. The inaugural season took place in 1987, and almost everybody got involved. Ford and Dodge joined the grid with the Ranger and D-50, while Nissan, Mitsubishi, and Toyota showed up with their own mid-sizers.
As for Jeep, they brought the Comanche – a pickup truck built on the platform of the XJ Cherokee. The trucks were rear-wheel-drive models, kitted out with rollcages and racing fuel cells. They ran the 2.5-liter inline-four, which in stock form was good for 121 horsepower.
 The Archer brothers campaigned the Jeep Comanche in the SCCA series.Â
The Jeep trucks were campaigned by Bobby and Tommy Archer. The brothers would soon find success, finishing second and third in the 1987 championship, just behind the Nissan entry of Max Jones. Tommy ascended to the top step in 1988, ahead of Nissan’s Jeff Krosnoff in second and Bobby in third.
It was this sporting success that spawned the Jeep Street Comanche. Details are shaky on the exact history, because the Street Comanche was not an official project of Jeep itself. Search the Jeep archives of brochures and photos and you’ll find nothing, because the company actually had nothing to do with the model.
Instead, the Street Comanche was effectively a promotional trim package created by a dealership (or potentially multiple dealers). If you laid down the cash, you’d get yourself a two-wheel-drive Comanche with a short bed, the 4.0-liter inline six, and a five-speed manual transmission. While details are limited, there’s little to suggest this dealer package did anything to the engine—that AMC inline-six was likely stock, and putting out the rated 173 horsepower.
What set the Street Comanche apart was the sharp body kit, which most sources agree was built by Archer Brothers, along with a numbered plaque on the dash indicating the car’s one-of-one hundred status. It was sold for the 1987 model year, and potentially beyond, but exact details on its run are hard to come by.
I hoped to trace down more specifics on the model’s history, but there are only fragments of information floating out there on forums that hint at its origins. Perhaps the best source of information would be to speak to the Archer Brothers themselves; I’ve reached out to them to see what light they can shed on the matter.
In any case, the Archers continued to race the Comanche until the end of the 1990 season. The SCCA Race Truck Challenge would last one more year, with the 1991 season contested without any Jeep trucks on the grid. The series is all but forgotten today, though Tommy’s championship-winning race truck would eventually turn up on Bring a Trailer in 2022. As for the road-going Street Comanches, it’s believed only a handful still exist today.
Keeping The Dream Alive
If you attended SEMA last year, you might have spotted a bold Jeep pickup with a daring wrap, lowered stance, and yellow headlights. That vehicle belongs to Nathaniel Lanken of Timeless Motors. It’s #12 out of 100 produced, as per the plaque on the dash, and it’s had plenty of love and attention over the past few years.
“I’ve been an avid Jeep Comanche enthusiast since high school, and a Comanche Club forum Member since 2011,” Nathaniel told me. “I am into all things Jeep Comanche, and Jeep overall, but one thing stuck out to me the most also being a hot rodder,” he explains. “I was captivated by the Archer Brothers Dominance in the SCCA truck class, and the hidden racing heritage that was since long forgotten.”
He had a thirst for a Street Comanche of his own, but it was not easily satisfied. “These trucks are extremely hard to find, they are almost like a myth,” he says. “Only a few are still known to exist and it took me over a decade to find mine.” Nathaniel was lucky enough to actually own two at one point, but it was the #12 that he hung on to as the years went by.
As with any other stock Street Comanche, the #12 came equipped with the 4.0-liter inline six with Renix fuel injection, along with a five-speed manual transmission driving the rear wheels. That, the interior plaque, and the Archer Brothers bodykit are what makes a Street Comanche. The spec isn’t necessarily anything special, but the neat history and the sharp aesthetic are what made this truck special for Nathaniel.
Nathaniel’s #12 Street Comanche, filmed before the modifications.
For some years, Nathaniel has been sharing videos of his vehicles online, with the Street Comanche clearly one of his favorites. As seen on YouTube, the #12 was looking a little worse for wear when he first picked it up, with the original red paint badly worn and faded. He’s since turned it into an eye-catching show truck, but he hasn’t stopped there.
Not merely content to restore his own vehicle, he’s set about recreating what made this vehicle special from the ground up. “I have a strong passion for the Street Comanche heritage which led to my creation of Off Grid Research, where I’ve started engineering and manufacturing new parts so people can build their own Street Jeep in current times,” he says. “I think sharing this long lost Jeep history is so cool, and this past year at SEMA 2024 and Radwood LA, it was an absolute hit.”
Nathaniel started by 3D scanning the vehicle and then began tweaking the design himself. “I redesigned the body kit in CAD and have reproduced a new version,” he explains. “This truck is now featuring an Off Grid Research Evo 2 body kit with a custom wrap.”
He now sells the kits on the Off Grid Research website. With his recreation, he aimed to improve on the original. “I 3D scanned the whole truck, I redesigned the front bumper in CAD and made it more aggressive,” he told Gone-GPN in an interview last year. “It’s lower, it’s steeper, it has different vents with brake cooling ducts and all sorts of room for an intercooler and now, you can actually go and buy one of these and make your own street Jeep, whether it’s a Cherokee or Comanche.” For an extra tuner touch, he also sells custom hoods featuring the Jeep Rubicon power dome, too.
Beyond the body kit, though, a couple of other factors contribute to his truck’s badass presence. “Suspension-wise, we have lowered it another four inches all around, and its currently sitting on staggered 20-inch wheels,” he says. He’s also attended to the engine. “For performance, it’s a simple intake-exhaust combination,” says Nathaniel. “Pair that with a six-puck clutch, a lightweight flywheel, and a Hurst shifter, and its quite a fun truck to toss around.”
Jeep’s Own Efforts
It’s worth noting that Jeep wasn’t entirely oblivious when it came to the idea of creating its own sport trucks. They’re not really relevant to the Street Comanche itself, but we’d be doing a disservice if we didn’t mention them here.
Back in ’87, Jeep dropped the wild Comanche Thunderchief concept. It was a brawny off-road model with big flared guards, running boards, and a big light bar on the roof. It also rocked a spare wheel in the bed that took up a lot of space but nevertheless looked cool. Despite the sharp styling, it never entered production, and remained a concept only.
Later in 1988, Jeep launched the Eliminator trim. It was closer to the Street Comanche in concept, armed with the 4.0-liter inline-six and a five-speed manual gearbox. However, its 177 horsepower was the same as the other six-cylinder models in the 1988 lineup. Like the Street Comanche, it was mostly an appearance package, with the Eliminator offering exclusive 10-hole wheels, a tachometer, and fog lamps as standard equipment.
The worst thing about this model? Note the full name: the Comanche Eliminator. It’s one thing to use the name of a Native American tribe as a brand, it’s another to combine it in such a way that it hints at a major tragedy. Indeed, our own Matt Hardigree reported on this in 2013.
Not Forgotten
The problem with the Comanche is that it was never beloved enough to have its story properly recorded and preserved. As for the obscure Street Comanche, its history is still as clear as mud. At the time of writing, nobody seems to remember who actually sold these things, how much they sold for, or how long they were even on sale. And yet, a small community still exists to celebrate these vehicles.
Over on the Comanche Club forums, a handful of users still gather under the name of the Street Comanches. They aim to track surviving examples and record their existence. Less than 30 examples have been accounted for, Part of the problem is that it takes a trained eye to spot a Street Comanche—if you’ve never heard of one, you’re probably not going to recognize what you’re looking at. Still, the Comanche VIN registry stands ready to receive more entries if further examples are spotted in the wild.
It may have just been a body kit on a stock truck, but the Street Comanche is still a little bit weird and special. It was built to celebrate road circuit wins—a racing discipline usually reserved for sports cars alone. Racing trucks aren’t much of a thing outside of the oval scene, after all. Between that curious distinction and its good looks, it’s easy to see why it has some diehard fans.
The Street Comanche, and Nathaniel’s build in particular, also remind us of car culture as it used to be. We fell in love with the lowered look in the 1980s and 90s, making it the era of aggressive side skirts and air dams on every second Civic and Sentra in the parking lot. These days, we see a lot fewer body kits; the aftermarket seems to make more of its money from the jacked-up brodozer set instead.
Just because your taste is for something obscure and out of date, though, it doesn’t mean you can’t bring it roaring back into the present. As Nathaniel demonstrates, with hard work, you can remind everybody just how good a slammed Jeep pickup looks with dope graphics and the right plastic stuck on the body. No culture is truly dead as long as there are those that still remember.
Image credits: Bring a Trailer, Nathaniel LankenÂ
Love a good street truck
My dad had a new Eliminator for a few years. I remember riding in it. He would be disappointed to hear there wasn’t any additional HP. He’s said more than once it felt like a fast sport truck. I always liked the look with those wheels. I would be interested in a modern sport truck from Toyota or maybe even Nissan
Bring back sport trucks! I always loved the X-Runner. Haven’t seen one in ages.
I believe there was a mix-up with that engine bay picture. That is clearly a Nissan VG30i V6, as would be found in a 1986-89 D21 Hardbody pickup.
The worst thing about these is the BA10 transmission. No word on if he swapped it for a later AX15?
An 88 comanche was my first vehicle at 15. Mine had the “pioneer” stripe package. Basically the only option it had was AC. I still look at marketplace sometimes hoping to find a nice original truck for less than 10k. Most of them have been lifted to the roof and are completely rusted away. I used to watch the old videos of them racing in the early days of youtube. I even had a pic of the race truck set as the background on my computer sometime around 2000.
As soon as I saw the thumbnail, my mind went right to the Archer Brothers. I never really followed the racing, but as a pre-teen motorhead, I always watched the auto themed shows on TNN every Sunday morning, and the Archer’s did a regular segment on “Truckin’ USA”. I remember one they did about how they didn’t run a tonneau cover because it made no difference in their testing. Years later, MythBusters would test this and have the same result, and the science was just as the Archer’s explained it.
And the “Comanche Eliminator”. I never saw it then, (“Eliminator” was cool and reminiscent of Dale Sr) but looking at it in a historical significance, it’s hard to unsee. They might as well have called it the “General Custer”.
Custer Buster might’ve been more acceptable.
Interesting. I didn’t know about any of these except the Eliminator, as my uncle had one for a few years that he bought new. He didn’t like the Eliminator stickers on the bed, so he peeled them off but left the rest (which to be fair, it was an odd location and would have looked better at the end of the bed by the tail lights). It was a cool truck, and I always wanted to buy it off of him but was never able to.
“The Comanche was Jeep’s attempt to bust into the truck market in the 1980s.”
What??? Jeep started making trucks in 1947 and did so continuously until they were bought by Chrysler.
Maybe the Comanche was their attempt to enter the compact truck market, but not the truck market in general.
CJ8 Scrambler has entered the chat
Commando with half cab has entered the chat
CJ6 has entered the chat
I remember these, vaguely, I was pretty little. But this and the Nascar truck thing… just.. .never made sense to me. I get they have V8s and RWD, but why race things with the aerodynamics of a brick? Just seems counterintuitive.
End of the day, I really don’t like ‘aesthetics only’ ‘performance packages’. If it’s just some moldings and decals, and they didn’t bump the power a bit, or change the gear ratios, or put in better suspension, it just seems like a marketing gimmick.
All sales are a marketing gimmick. Especially car sales
There’s a nicely maintained Comanche in red that I see in town. I’m certain it doesn’t have this bodykit, but I’ll pay more attention now than I usually do when eyeing up such a nice truck.
I remember going to Sebring in 1988 for the 12 hours of Sebring in the fall, (Sept or Oct maybe?) and they had the pickup trucks racing as a support race. So cool, and the gamesmanship was to hold a bit off the best you could you do, and qualifying was in reverse of speed, so the slowest truck was on the pole. So fun to watch. I have rolls of film somewhere that I shot that weekend.
What’s ironic about the SCCA Sport Truck Championship is that while trucks are more suited to road racing than ever it’d never happen because the trucks are marketed so hard as being off-road workers.
Also I think part of the reason the the series never survived the decade turnover was because only Jeep and Chevrolet were making custom entries, and only Jeep was marketing their participation. The Chevrolet S-10 Cameo never advertised any involvement with the SCCA STC.
Oh man… imagine a race series for STOCK trucks, it could be awesome! Use the high speed oval, but then go into the infield, have a mud section, a roller section (like dirtbikes but appropriately sized) and maybe a water crossing?
I would watch this!
I believe you have just re-invented rallycross. I would also watch this.
Bookmarked for later, but I think the most important question on everyone’s mind is “At what angle is the license plate mounted?”