The Gladiator is cool

In a world where French cars are becoming less French and coupes are becoming SUVs and sports cars are also becoming SUVs and everything is becoming SUVs...It feels like cars are all melding into a samey mass of boring but efficient appliances. Like if you blend a bag of fun colorful jellybeans and you’re left with un-fun colorless goop.

Illustration for article titled The Gladiator is cool
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The Gladiator bucks that trend. It’s great to see something so fully designed for purpose, in the way that Citroens of old were. Even if heaps of people will only ever use them to do boring-ass SUV duties - that’s incidental. Jeep want it to be used for lifestyley outdoorsy type stuff, and the design wholly caters to that.

I’m talking about the lack of a proper fixed roof option, that optional rugged bluetooth speaker, the big tyres (but not big wheels), the removable bits, the optional bar doors, and especially the rubber surround around the infotainment system. The G-Wagen may still be a fairly capable vehicle (at least in some trims), but by and large it’s a poser’s car. It doesn’t have the focused purpose of this thing.

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I’m not a Jeep guy. Jeeps aren’t as big in Australia. You see them around, but we don’t have the patriotism aspect driving those sales. I’ve never much fancied them, I prefer sports cars. But the Gladiator is cool.

Disclaimer: Perhaps the same could be said about other Wrangler models too. I’m not really sure. I just watched Doug’s vid alright, thought it was worth commenting on.