November 2021 – Page 2 – 4×4 Radio Network

This Week In Jeep

As If To Thumb Its Nose At The Year 2020

Price hikes in the auto industry seem to be the norm now. Jeep’s hybrid-electric Wrangler the 4xE has already gone through two price hikes since its debut, and now the Gladiator gets its turn. Call it supply and demand, blame it on covid or the chip shortage. Pull whatever headline out of the air you want to explain it, but the price increase will set you back an additional $2020. Unless you’re buying the stripped-down base model that is. According to the order guide, the 2022 Gladiator Sport will be priced at $36,910 (includes $1,595 destination charge), showing a $355 increase from its 2021 pricing of $36,555. While the base increase seems normal, the other trim levels will have price hikes of $2,020. That’s for the Overland, Mojave, and Rubicon. Maybe it’s because hindsight is 2020, and you should have bought one when they were cheaper? Or maybe it’s to associate the feeling you get with paying more for something with the year 2020, which I think we can all say can just go F itself and this is how Jeep agrees with all of us. I really don’t know, but we encourage you to call in with your own conspiracy theories. Here’s some other interesting Gladiator news, the 8.4-inch Uconnect 4C navigation system will be standard with all the aforementioned trims. Sorry Sport owners. Whether this is good news or bad news I suppose it’s up to the buyer, but with the only real noticeable difference in model years being the infotainment system and a price increase, it leaves me wondering if the 2021 model year owners got the better deal.

Jeep Wrangler Now The Least Depreciating Vehicle.

Maybe you buy a vehicle based on the love of the vehicle itself and statistics be damned, you’re going to get the one you want. Right? We get it. Those other people, the practical types, however, are going to research and parse the data available on everything from safety ratings to depreciation values. Why? Because they want to know that they’ll have a better chance of putting money back in their pocket when they’re ready to trade it in. It’s ok, we like both types. And so does the automotive research firm and car search engine “iSeeCars” …who crunches all these numbers on a daily basis. They have recently presented their findings from an analysis of 800,000 the model year 2016 car sales. There are a number of charts listing the lowest and highest loss in value from MSRP after five years in just about every category. iSeeCars says “record high used car prices over the past 15 months as a result of the chip shortage has slowed down the average depreciation rate across all vehicles.” Its latest study showed that last year, the average depreciation of a five-year-old vehicle was 49.1 percent, and that has slowed to 40.1 percent in 2021. Compared to the roughly 40 percent average, the Jeep Wrangler comes out way on top, showing just a 9.2 percent average five-year depreciation. Just behind that is Jeep’s Wrangler Unlimited at 10.5 percent. And just for the sake of comparison, I wanted to share with you the other end of the spectrum, the bad apples if you will. Considering the big push for EVs in the last few years of the new car market, it may be a surprise to you that Electric Vehicles (or EV’s) are actually seeing the largest decrease in value. Obviously, 4xE company excluded. Bringing up the rear, it’s the Nissan Leaf which comes up with a big loss in value with an average five-year depreciation number of over 65 percent. Hope you don’t have one of those in your driveway. Will this trend expand into the future of the 4xE? It’s hard to say with the way sales have been going for Jeep’s first hybrid offroader. But as I always say, time will tell…. So we’ll let you know in about 5 years.

Dumb Criminals are Minors…

It was in the last couple of weeks that I had a dumb criminal story involving some minors stealing a Jeep and during the chase throwing a loaded handgun out the window. Come to find out the driver was an 11-year-old boy. As if these kids have been listening to the show and have now come up with a new Jeep Talk Show Internet Challenge, where they see if they can outdo the dumb criminal story from the week before…. We have another stolen Jeep with minors in it. And if there was an award for this level of stupidity, we’d have a winner. This time coming out of my own backyard in my own state’s capital, Salem Oregon, where a 14-year-old boy driving a stolen Jeep Wrangler, grossly exceeded the speed limit and ran several red lights in an attempt to escape deputies after they initiated a routine traffic stop for faulty equipment.

Sheriff’s deputies not having any of this crap go down in their county successfully deployed spike strips, catching all four tires. Police say the boy then drove for another two and a half miles on the flattened, blown-out tires before stopping the Jeep, where he and his 5 passengers jumped out and made a run for it. I’m just going to pause here for a sec… So if you were doing the math like I just was, then yes, that means you came up with 6 people in a Jeep Wrangler just like I did. It gets better. The Police and Sheriffs out here in Oregon and Washington have had nearly two years of weekly if not daily riots and protests to contend with, so 6 minors making a run for it went absolutely nowhere fast. Deputies from the Marion County Sheriff’s Office were able to locate and detain all six people within minutes. Here is where the one-upmanship comes into play. Inside the stolen Jeep, deputies found not one, but two stolen handguns, as well as an AR-15 style rifle. The felonies don’t stop there… There was also an undisclosed amount of methamphetamine and cash found as well. Now, this may or may not pan out, but to put a cherry on top of the list of crimes these “outstanding young citizens” have racked up, additional evidence believed to be related to a series of at least three commercial burglaries in Camas, Washington was recovered from the vehicle too. Of the six people arrested in this, four of them were minors, one was 19, and the other 23. Ok, you guys want to hear all the charges? Here’s the list:

Unauthorized use of a motor vehicle, attempt to elude felony & misdemeanor, reckless driving, seven counts of reckless endangering, possession of a stolen vehicle, unlawful possession of a firearm, criminal trespass II, delivery of methamphetamine, theft, falsifying information to a police officer and assault IV.

Who thinks these little bastards will ever see the light of day again? Well if this happened in any other state, then yes, likely the minors would all be imprisoned until they were 25, and the two adults in the vehicle would likely not be out until their 40’s.

But this happened here in Oregon, and the current state DA isn’t prosecuting anything but murder and rape crimes. My bet, is these punks get a slap on the wrist if anything at all. Welcome to Oregon!

Camp Fireside Chat

It Takes All Kinds, So… Who Should NOT Own a Jeep?

The neighbor down the street? The person in front of you at the stoplight?

That one lady with all the cats?

The 16-year-old in your living room maybe?

You can join us around the virtual campfire every Thursday night at 9:45 pm when we record the latest episode. Subscribe to our newsletter to get weekly reminders and how to join via Zoom, or follow us on Facebook (https://facebook.com/jeeptalkshow) for notifications.

Tech Talk with Jeep Talk

TOPIC/QUESTION: Cheap and Easy DIY Under Seat Storage (97-02 TJ)

Forget Tuffy, Forget Quadratec or WetherTech, or any of those.

We’re going to do some under-seat storage in the back of the TJ for under 20 bucks.

And it’s as easy as a trip to the hardware store. What you’re buying is two 12″ paint trays, preferably plastic, for the sake of they’re cheap and easy to modify.

Do not get the paint tray liners!! These are plastic too, but they are paper thin and won’t work for this. If you want to use metal, that’s totally fine, but it’s going to cost more and require a little more work. Either way, it’s as easy as this. Flip the trays over, so they’re bottom-up. Typically on the bottom of the skinny side of the tray, there will be two support legs to help level the tray. Not always, but usually. Cut these bad boys off, and in some tray designs, this may leave a small hole, but that’s ok, we’re not keeping marbles or paper clips in these, so it’s all good. On the larger side, on the face of the front of the pan, drill a finger hole. Now paint the whole thing black with a bed liner or spray paint that will bond to plastic. Let it cure for 24 hours, and then slap ’em under the seat. Now in 2003, the TJ went through some subtle changes to the seat configuration and tub, and this may not work as well for TJ’s newer than 2002. Other than that, customize as you wish. Add a handle instead of a finger hole, maybe cover them in speaker box carpet, or glue a diamond plate to the front of them. Get crazy, the only limit is your imagination, skill set, and budget!