This Wild Van Previewed The Modern Overlanding Craze Two Decades Before It Got Popular

The term “overland” is so sizzling hot in the RV world right now. Everyone from small independent manufacturers to the big guys wants to sell you something that, at minimum, looks like something you’d use to explore the wilderness. In 1998, a Michigan company rolled into the North American International Auto Show with a one-off vehicle it thought previewed the future of 4×4 adventures. The Gear Box was a camper van meets 4×4 and it’s shockingly close to what off-road vehicles go for today.

The Mobility Outfitters Gear Box vehicle can currently be found on display at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles, California. That’s where I found it parked near such greats as the Chrysler ME Four-Twelve and the Cadillac Cien. Honestly, all three of these cars should have been produced.

The Petersen says the Gear Box is in the ‘Modern Concepts’ exhibit, which will be around until July 2025. The part that shocked me about the Gear Box was that it was so incredibly far ahead of its time, almost as if its builders took a time machine to 2024.

The year 1998 was a big one for the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. Volkswagen displayed the hot New Beetle while Chrysler wanted you to get amped up about its Chronos. Ford teased Americans by hauling in the South American market Courier F1 compact pickup truck. Oh, and who could forget about the fantastic Jeep Jeepster?

One of the great things about Detroit shows in the past is that the show wasn’t just home for the big guys, but also for upstarts. That year, Michigan native Stewart Reed rolled into the show with a one-off vehicle from his company, Mobility Outfitters of Macatawa and later, Holland, Michigan.

This company appears to be somewhat of a ghost. From what I’ve been able to gather, Mobility Outfitters was a company specializing in the research and development of gear for outdoor vehicular travel with the hope of getting auto manufacturers and suppliers on board. Mobility Outfitters was the brainchild of designer Stewart Reed. In 1963, the Traverse City Record-Eagle reports, he was a high school student and won a design award in a competition sponsored by General Motors. The very next year, that competition scored Reed a scholarship, which he used to jump-start his career in design. Reed is a graduate of the ArtCenter and the institution has written a nice biography:

A 1969 graduate of ArtCenter, Reed has had a distinguished 35-year career in transportation design. Career achievements include a special-mission military vehicle for Lockheed Martin, an innovative SUV-van hybrid concept called the GearBox for Mobility Outfitters, and the spectacular Cunningham C7 luxury GT coupe for Bob Lutz and Briggs S. Cunningham III. He has served as vice president of design for Prince Corporation (now Johnson Controls), where he developed design tools, resources and practices to advance interior vehicle design, and was chief designer of Toyotaʼs Calty Design Research studio. At Chrysler, he developed pre-production new-vehicle categories in the advanced design studio.

Reed has designed and developed more than 30 concept vehicles throughout his career. In 1994, he established Stewart Reed Design and became consultant to the manufacturing industry in automotive and consumer products, with clients including Michelin, Icon Aircraft, Herman Miller, Nissan, Hyundai, Ford and Lockheed Martin. Recently, the Mullin Automotive Museum sought him out for coachwork design of a historically significant Bugatti. Reed maintains activity in design, spanning from GT high-end/performance-luxury to off-road vehicles. He has patents involving lighting, seating, healthcare and automotive innovations.

Reed is a judge at numerous concours—including Amelia Island, Pebble Beach and the Louis Vuitton in Paris—and a design jury member at both the Los Angeles and Detroit International Auto Shows. Also, for the past 10 years, he has been chief juror for the Michelin Challenge Design, an international design competition for students and emerging designers.

In 1998, Reed decided to show off his design skills and his company’s capabilities to interested parties. The vehicle for this exercise was the Gear Box, a vehicle that combined the practicality of a van with the off-road prowess of a 4×4 SUV. Basically, it was something like a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter camper van before those became popular with overlanders.

Let’s just start with the body, because the wild starts immediately. The body of the Gear Box is made out of reinforced plastic. Attached to the sides of the body are saddlebags that store and pass items through to the interior. The rear end is configurable so that you could keep the Gear Box as a van or convert it into a pickup truck.

Of course, plastic isn’t the strongest material for off-roading, so the Gear Box is covered in metal bits from the rock sliders to the chunky winch-equipped front bumper. The vehicle is also covered in exoskeleton-like bars that are supposed to provide mounting points for gear.

Inside, Reed seemingly thought of everything. The floor of the Gear Box is made out of molded plastic and contains drain holes so you can get the interior wet and not have a total disaster. From there, the features list reads like every camper van I’ve written about. There’s a hair dryer, radio, TV, VCR, a table, a swivel seat, and other camping essentials.

For an additional twist, the Gear Box has a roof covered in solar panels that opens up revealing a viewing deck. You could also just remove the roof components to have an open-air van or pickup truck. Under the van’s body is an apparatus to mount a house battery or a generator and the interior also contains structures to mount more gear. There were even enough fold-away bench seats to give the Gear Box a seating capacity of nine people. However, it appeared the vehicle as it sat at the Petersen was missing a lot of this stuff.

In the press release, Reed is quoted as saying that the Gear Box is a “space vehicle for Earth exploration.” As Autoweek reported, the van wasn’t just a concept, either. It was a road-legal, working, and registerable vehicle complete with a 4.3-liter six from GM making 190 HP, a four-speed automatic, and four-wheel-drive. The catch was that it wasn’t going into production. That said, the Gear Box was so loved at the Detroit show that Mobility Outfitters said it would make a second with the V8 from a Corvette.

It looks like the second Gear Box wasn’t created. Instead, Reed said he was hoping to create a vehicle accessory package that contained some of the elements of the Gear Box. The Traverse City Record-Eagle reported that some elements of the Gear Box also made it over to the Ford Ex concept, an off-road concept vehicle that looked like today’s side-by-sides, but jacked up and pumped up.

Reed was also involved in a revival of the long-dead Cunningham Motor Co. with the design of the Cunningham C7. While the neo-Cunningham did fire off a handful of new cars, the C7 never became a production vehicle.

As for the Gear Box, it was easily a couple of decades ahead of its time. Sure, people have been using vehicles for long-distance travel since there were vehicles capable enough for the job. However, I agree with the Petersen in that the Gear Box previewed what overlanding is like today.

Update: By that, I don’t just mean driving a 4×4 van because those have been around for a lot longer. I mean the craze of piling a van full of accessories that could easily be left behind like viewing platforms, entertainment systems, and structures to mount even more stuff you bought online. We recently wrote about an Airstream van with giant speakers and underglow. That’s what I’m talking about.

The Gear Box could just as easily been something parked at an Overland Expo this year, just replace the old VCR and TV for a PlayStation 5 and a 4K TV. I know Reed didn’t want to put the Gear Box into production, but I could see something like it now.

If you’re interested in seeing more of Reed’s work, check out his social media accounts. He’s not active on them, but you’ll find some cool stuff.

(Images: Author, unless otherwise noted.)