Each year there is a crazeballs, insane creation Jeep presents at the Easter Jeep Safari – this year, it’s the Jeep Five Quarter Concept. Also known as the M-715, which is the platform it’s based on, this ain’t no Gladiator. Nope, in every way it’s a fully customized, sick-in-the-head, love child of head of Jeep Design Mark Allen.
Thank god for that.
While we loved the modern Jeep Gladiator-based concepts at the 2019 Easter Jeep Safari prototype event, the Jeep Five Quarter Concept stands out. After purchasing a 1968 M-715 from Craigslist for a few grand, the Jeep design team tore it to pieces.
Standout additions? It has to be the Hellcrate, 707-horsepower, supercharged Hemi. Seriously. It’s stupid powerful and sounds like war.
Driving – and a slight misadventure:
Yes, I drove it off-road! For half of the very short off-road loop, I even had power steering! Yep, all was well until the power steering gave out (hose) and I had to steer it manually back to the staging area. It was a beast to turn with the power steering working, so you can imagine how fun it was sans power… but you can watch me wrestle in the video!
The engine snarls and blerts with the slightest pressure on the accelerator. Had I sneezed, I would have skyrocketed into a sandstone wall. Very sensitive indeed. Most the time, you can let it lumber at idle and it will rumble over Sentra-sized boulders just fine.
Despite its three-speed automatic transmission, it seemed happy to shift smoothly. The engine note is loud, but not racecar-loud. I did wind it up a little, but that was after the steering was gone and I only had a short distance to play.
All the details and technical minutia are in the video and you can click (here) for more written material as well.
