Jun 22nd, 2010 by Dean Hightower
A Jeep pickup truck could be on the way in the near future. Jeep‘s new CEO Mike Manley (a perfect name for the head of an off-road vehicle company if there ever was one) has said that a Jeep pickup truck could be profitable and that the company is considering building one, according to Autoblog.
The small pickup market is a strong one, and it has been largely neglected in recent years as the Dodge Dakota, Toyota Tacoma and Nissan Frontier have all grown larger. The only competition for a Jeep pickup would be from the Ford Ranger, the Chevrolet Colorado and GMC Canyon twins, and the upcoming Mahindra diesel-powered small pickup.
A Jeep pickup truck would most likely be based on the Wrangler.
The last Jeep pickup truck sold was the 1992 Jeep Comanche, which was based on the Cherokee SUV. In the 18 years since the Comanche, a small but passionate group of Jeep fans have been desperate for a Jeep with a truck bed that would be better suited for holding off-road equipment than the SUV Wrangler with its rear seats.
Those Jeep fans have been so desperate that off-road equipment company AEV currently makes a conversion kit to turn a regular Jeep Wrangler into a pickup truck. The AEV Brute pickup conversion kit costs $8,995, plus installation costs, which will not be cheap (AEV estimates a 60-hour installation time). If there are fanatics willing to shell out more than $10,000 for a conversion kit on their brand new Wrangler, Jeep could almost certainly make money by offering a factory option with a less extreme price.
The AEV Brute.
AEV Brute image via AEV.
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