- The nine-day festival begins Saturday and stretches through Easter weekend, hosted by Moab’s Red Rock 4-Wheelers club.
- Jeep product planners attend Easter Jeep Safari to connect with trail lovers who spend much of their spare time modifying, lifting, and reinforcing their Jeeps.
- The brand has a solid track record for integrating elements of Easter Jeep Safari concepts into production vehicles.
From an amped-up all-electric Jeep Wrangler Magneto and a short-bed Gladiator to a 20th-anniversary Rubicon and a Jeep covered with QR codes for easy accessory shopping, this year’s concepts for the Easter Jeep Safari in Moab, Utah, will offer something for every off-road enthusiast.
Jeep’s parent company Stellantis doesn’t own this annual event, now in its 56th year. Instead, the Moab Chamber of Commerce created it as a one-day trail ride, and today it’s a nine-day festival that begins Saturday and stretches through Easter weekend, hosted by Moab’s Red Rock 4-Wheelers club.
As a brand and product design team, Jeep has embraced the Easter Jeep Safari as an ideal way each year to connect with hard-core trail lovers and Jeep loyalists who spend much of their spare time modifying, lifting, and reinforcing their Jeeps for extreme rock crawling.
“It shows that we’re tuned in with the customers,” Mark Allen, head of Jeep Design, says in explaining his team’s involvement during a recent media briefing in the Stellantis design dome in Auburn Hills, Michigan.
“There was a point in time when I think we sort of strayed and lost focus with the enthusiast group, and these vehicles reopen that for us. And we’re out there watching, listening—these are great conversations. I love nothing more than rolling up on a bunch of Jeeps getting ready to go out on a trail ride with a few of these freaky Jeeps, and they want to come talk to us.”
In all, Jeep will present 10 concepts (including three shown previously at the SEMA show) to feature prominently in downtown Moab throughout the event. With the soaring popularity of the Ford Bronco—eager to eat into Jeep’s dominance in this market—it’s easy to see why Jeep arrives at Moab with so many compelling, eye-catching concepts designed to keep Jeepers dreaming and scheming about their next project.
Allen describes the concepts as “fully mission-capable vehicles that will be driven aggressively and hard” while at the event. “We set them up—these are not show queens at all. We will lower the tire pressure and take the sway bars off.”
Allen says Jeep has a solid track record of integrating elements of Easter Jeep Safari concepts into production vehicles. Features such as steel winch-ready bumpers, beadlock wheels, the 392 Hemi V8, deeper gearsets, half-doors, and the foldable Sky Slider roof all found their way into factory installations after being featured in Moab.
Jim Morrison, senior vice president and head of Jeep Brand North America, says he is confident in the customer acceptance of many of the features on this year’s Easter Jeep Safari concepts. “I absolutely envision parts of these or all of these coming together as packages (for market), but we’ll wait until our customers tell us what they want,” Morrison says.
