It’s spring time and for off-road driving enthusiasts, that means it’s time to head back to Moab, Utah for the Easter Jeep Safari. Jeeps have long been among the most personalized and customized vehicles on the road or off.So just as they have for many years now, the designers at Jeep have cooked up some fun new concepts for the 2025 Safari. There are 3 all-new concepts based on the Wrangler/Gladiator platform, plus four others that are mainly focused on highlighting what owners can do by dipping into the Jeep Performance Parts (JPP) catalog from Mopar.
Given that Jeep sales were down 10% year-over-year through March, anything the company can do to get people excited about the brand is important. The big theme here seems to be: Remember how cool the past was?
J-Truck Meets Gladiator
The Convoy concept brings together Jeep’s military utility vehicle origins with the fondly remembered J-Series pickup trucks of the 1970s and 1980s, like the J10 that David owns, on the platform of a modern Gladiator Mojave. The bodywork forward of the firewall has been completely replaced with new parts that draw heavily on the look of the classic J-trucks, but doesn’t actually use any parts from the old trucks. A 12,000-lb Warn Zeon winch is integrated into the minimalist front bumper to help maximize approach angles.
The forward leaning J-truck face includes modern LED headlamps and is combined with simplified Wrangler-style fenders. The Convoy has chocolate brown canvas half-doors and a canopy top that calls back to those earliest MB Jeeps of World War II. The bodywork is finished off in a grey-ish tan paint that Jeep calls Ghost Ops.
Inside, the cockpit is mostly stock 2025 Gladiator, but there are low-back seats finished in a distressed brown leather. The entire floor has also been coated in mil-spec O.D. Green.
The whole truck has been lifted and rolls on 40-inch BF Goodrich Krawler tires on 17-inch Warn wheels. The front edge of the tires is basically fully exposed, so the Convoy could almost climb up a sheer rock wall.
It’s Time To Bug-Out
For the overlanding crowd, the design team conceived the Bug-Out concept. One of the challenges with overlanding rigs is weight. My neighbor is building an overlander right now based on a Ford F-550 chassis cab. While he might be able to survive clickers of the Last of Us in his truck, even without the camper fitted to the Bowen utility bed, it weighs about 10,000 lbs meaning there’s a lot of places it will have a hard time going.
The key to the design of the Bug-Out is cutting weight wherever possible. This one started life as a four-door Wrangler Unlimited 4Xe. The rear doors and rear seats have been eliminated, and the Mopar front half doors are installed. The roof has been lifted by four inches to allow for more in-cabin space. Behind the front doors is new carbon fiber side bodywork that extends back an extra foot and incorporates a Gladiator-style tailgate. The body sides where the rear doors used to fit are now filled with auxiliary battery packs to help power your gear during those extended off-the-grid camping trips.
The new lightweight framework that supports the roof has also integrated beefy aluminum D-rings in the windshield header and rear end. With the front seats folded forward, these can be used to support a hammock hung diagonally so a six-footer can sleep inside the Bug-Out. Also included in the cargo area is a fold-up electric off-road scooter that has about a 40-minute run-time and can be charged from the Jeep’s plug-in hybrid system.
To enable the Bug Out to get further from what’s left of civilization, there are 37-inch BF Goodrich KM3 mud-terrain tires on 18-inch Forgeline lightweight wheels with high clearance flares. Approach and departure angles are further enhanced by a minimal steel front bumper and a tube style rear bumper. The whole thing is finished in a matte silver paint job with bright yellow accents on the grille and body sides.
Jeep hasn’t said exactly how much lighter the Bug Out is, if in fact it is, but it sure has the right kind of minimalist look and it’s definitely gonna be less than Mark’s behemoth, although it will offer less protection from the zombies.
Bringing Back The ’80s
The final all-new concept is a Rewind to when much of the Jeep design team were kids in the ’80s and ’90s. The Jeep Rewind is a two-door Wrangler Rubicon in bright Grimace purple with the kind of colorful neon graphics that were de rigueur on Trapper Keeper binders of the era. In fact, when we saw the Rewind at a preview in the design studio, there was a Trapper Keeper sitting on the passenger seat.
The multi-colored seat and dashboard coverings themselves were sewn up from a 1990s vintage ski suit and definitely look the part. While a cassette deck would have actually been more befitting of a CJ5 or CJ7 of that period, the crew couldn’t find a way to integrate that with the stock Uconnect 5 infotainment system. However, they got the next best thing with a portable DiskMan sitting in the center console and plugged into an auxiliary port along with a vintage car phone from the days when they were hard-wired in. While the DiskMan works, the first-gen analog cell networks that those phones used were decommissioned nearly two decades ago.
The Rubicon is powered by a stock 2.0-liter turbocharged four-cylinder with an eight-speed automatic, but the rolling stock has been upgraded. The 17-inch AEV five-pocket wheels are a rewind to the design that was common on Lamborghini Countach posters that were commonplace on young boys’ bedroom walls in the 1980s. The wheels are custom painted in silver with gold pockets and wrapped in the same 37-inch KM3 tires used on the Bug Out and there’s a 2-inch lift.
Let’s Sell Some Accessory Parts
The other four vehicles Jeep is bringing to the Safari are more focused on highlighting what’s on offer from JPP. The Blueprint has a cool-looking color scheme of a black main body with a range of bright blue accessory,es including the tube doors, high top fenders, rock rails, and 17-inch alloy wheels.
There are actually two different types of wheels on the Blueprint, with bead-lock capable units on the passenger side and standard wheels on the driver’s side. The wheels are all fitted with the latest 37-inch BF Goodrich K03 tires.
There’s also a blue snorkel, blue seats, and blue bumpers with a winch on the front. As has become the custom for Jeep at the Easter Safari, all of the JPP equipment has QR codes that attendees can scan to take them directly to the ordering site if they find something they like.
The Sunchaser is a four-door Wrangler 4Xe finished in a solar flash yellow and satin black two-tone treatment. Like many of the other Jeeps here, there’s a two-inch lift kit to help accommodate the 37-inch KM3s and a Warn winch to help extract less capable off-roaders.
While most of the custom parts are production pieces from JPP, there are a few experimental bits that Mopar is trying out. On the Sunchaser, this includes the gear boxes that fit where the rear quarter windows would normally go and vented versions of the high-top fenders.
In addition to the storage rack on the roof, there is a new Mopar ILLUMINAT3 pivoting light bar. This has 3 segments that can individually pivot to help light up a campsite.
The Gladiator High-Top Honcho is a pickup truck with very 1970s red, orange, and brown stripes on the sides. The white steelies are equipped with 40-inch raised white letter K03s and experimental steel flat fenders are used to provide enough clearance. Heavy-duty Dana 60 axles with 5.83:1 final drive gearing are fitted at each end.
The American Expedition Vehicles steel front bumper has been modified with an extra steel hoop to provide protection for the winch. The bed is fitted with a roll bar and a decked storage system.
The final entry for 2025 is actually a replay from 2019 when Jeep brought out the J6 Honcho. It’s based on a four-door Wrangler Rubicon, but it’s been converted into a two-door pickup with a 6-foot box that’s 12 inches longer than Gladiator bed, but the overall length is still a foot less than a Gladiator.
The J6 has been repainted from its original Mopar blue to white with blue stripes. There are new bronze wheels fitted with 37-inch KM3 tires, and there’s a custom spare tire carrier in the bed. Other than the color scheme and the new tires, the J6 is otherwise largely unchanged from its 2019 appearance.
Easter Jeep Safari is always a great marketing opportunity to sell accessories to the most diehard Jeep fans and also try out some new ideas in public. Will anything from the new concepts make it to future production Wranglers and Gladiators? Who knows, but that new front end on the Convoy would be a nice update for the next-generation Gladiator.
Too bad the Jeep Africa concept went away. It would be a solid D130 sized truck. Fixed hard top, swing open rear door, 2 and cargo or 3 row inside. Most soccer moms don’t take the roof off a Wrangler. Then stuff them like a sausage until they have to upgrade to a Suburban sized ride. The Wagoneer/GW are cool but not that ‘I’m still a cool Jeep owner with a family’ type ride.
I’d be all over the J6 if it was ever produced with a manual trans that didn’t self-destruct. Like, taking out a loan and spending hard earned dollars on a NEW one – not waiting for it to depreciate to nothing.
Alas, never happening….
Super cool. I wish they were all 15% smaller in every dimension.