Why did you buy your Gladiator?

[TrailHiker]

I took my Trailhawk in for warranty work, and drove the JT home! Always wanted a Jeep truck.
Cheers

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[Jt-wrx]

The love child of the new Wrangler JL with my beloved Ram 1500 Pentastar! For this outdoorsy Dad it is the automobile equivalent of having your cake and eating it too. It comes with trade offs no doubt, it's tough to beat the comfort, space, ride/handling, quiet, versatility of a ram 1500 but all that is fairly boring and doesn't quite fit the best for a downtown job and lots of inner city time. The trade offs of going to the mid-size segment (especially the JT) give you other capabilities such as easier to park, funner to drive and own, attributes and capabilities of sports cars, jeeps, trucks all rolled in one very cool package.

I've been watching the mid-size segment for awhile hoping to have a choice picked out for when i was ready to upgrade from my ram, I wanted to downsize to the mid-size segment on the next ride. My 2014 Ram 1500 Pentastar was prematurely put to pasture by a rogue Honda CR-V recently so i'm in the JT ahead of schedule. The midsize segment has some seriously great options now so the competition is fierce, and that's a great thing, as it brought us the JT! The Colorado (especially ZR2's) and Ridgeline would round out my top 3 for the segment with the JT, each fantastic in it's own way and for the right user, the ZR2 had my attention for a lot of reasons including that diesel...if it had a manual transmission option it may have been a tougher choice. The JT just hits so many of the needs in the segment then adds in all the desires and wish list stuff on top of it. It has sports car attributes (convertible, t-roofs on hard top, manual transmission), it has work truck attributes (tow, offroad, haul gear, manual transmission), it can do family duty near the top of the segment, and it has an 'it factor' that is hard to explain. It's the only one in the segment that has this factor, it's the one the kids want to be dropped off to school in most etc.

That's a mouthful for repeating what a previous poster said...replaced his Jeep and his Ram. It does this and is a mid-size to boot.

 

[wch_Chip]

The love child of the new Wrangler JL with my beloved Ram 1500 Pentastar!/QUOTE]

She has her mother's looks and her fathers toughness.

 

[Robieman]

This is how it works for us - my truck needed new tires - so I bought the Gladiator.
The silverado was big and I didn't often put big things in the Chevy box and it wouldn't fit in our FULL garage and barely fit into the lean-to of my shop. Those were other reasons, uh, well, excuses.

Back in about 1990 when my wife's Camaro needed a front end alignment - we had trouble finding a shop that could do it, and that I trusted (lived in a house with no garage and all my tools were in storage) so we traded cars. It was easier.

When my son was looking for a car a while back - I went along with him to help him pick one out and my wife and I ended up trading her Grand Cherokee for a new one. Hey, we were at a dealership anyway, so it wasn't out of our way at all.

Any excuse....... need tires? Buy a new truck. Oops, the Jeep truck won't haul a heavy trailer - wife says - so go buy a lighter trailer.
That's ok, my other trailer needed tires anyway.
And we've had great luck with her Jeeps.

BEST REASON SO FAR!!

 

[Backwoodsraider]

I go through cars pretty quick. have had like 8 brand new vehicles since 2015. That being said, when jeep came out with the concept in 06 i fell in love and have been waiting.

Now that they finally came out, i went and got it. I love. best thing, if i get tired of it, i can change it. new lift, bumpers, etc, make it a different vehicle. And eventually put a hemi in it, but thats way down the road.

fits my needs as a daily, and occasional use as a pickup.

 

[sawman]

304,000 miles on my 2001 Z71, and the wife insisting on a "new" truck, so she doesn't worry about me on the road. This will be the second time I've bought a new vehicle for myself. First was a 1987 Chevy S-10. Currently have a 2000 TJ that will get sold as well.
Sure hope to get 20 years out of the Gladiator. Not so sure about these newfangled vehicles.

 

[ShadowsPapa]

I used mine as a grocery getter today - went to the grocery store and bought Barbara a rotisserie chicken,
went to Menards and bought a bottle of hydrochloric acid to use in my plating processes,
went to the post office to send out some restorations I had completed.
Never once opened the tail gate. Didn't need any plywood today.
Dang I love this truck.

 

[Bbannongmu]

I test drove it. Fell in love. Brought my wife to test drive it and she fell in love. Bought it.

 

[Tufelhundin]

I could could click on 3 of the polls.

I once had a Cherokee back in the 90’s but sold it cause I needed a truck.

Then in 2012 I decided I was going to get a wrangler but opted for a FJ at the last moment... sold it cause I needed a truck.

well Jeep has been teasing us for years about this military-ish looking JT and they finally released it. At the time of release I had over 109k miles on a 3yr old Diesel Canyon... great excuse to Replace it with the Jeep, and because I just wanted one.

 

[Moe_Fugga]

After selling a Silverado for a 2-door JK I gave up lots of functionality to have a “fun ride”. Had a baby and sold the Jeep to buy a family ride for the wife. The Gladiator comes along and it checks off several boxes for our family and my lost truck wants/needs. Functionality of a truck and top-down fun ride for the family? Yes please!

Couldn’t be happier.

 

[DAVECS1]

I have had a truck as a daily driver since about 2001. Once you get used to that it is hard to go back to a car for everyday stuff. You never know when you may need to grab that random engine block! In 2010 I bought my first new truck. Saved and traded in a used Denali I had made glorious with forced induction and other bits. Was feelin happy to have a 3/4 Ram 4 door. Then 10K later it literally spit transmission parts all over the highway on Xmas eve with a pregnant wife in the passenger seat. After 6 weeks of my first new truck being at a dodge dealer in Paducah Kentucky. My dealer up here set me up in a new Laramie with no additional financials and went and recovered my other truck. I was sweet on Ram again, and it was a great truck, but the kids grew up and there was no time for boating, so it was hard for me to stomach the cost of daily driving a diesel, and 2011s were known for screwing up if not tasked with hard work often enough, fixing or replacing the cummins was a tall order I did not want to make. Traded it on a 2015 sport, blue streak. I made that truck awesome, like really awesome, so awsome infact, I had a guy bug me insistently for 3 months to buy it. He finally offered me 3k less than what I paid for it with 28k on the clock, so I said fine, and got a 2019, super sweet truck. The limited has everything and is such a well thought out ride, and with that said, it was hard to put my touch on it. I did not realized it bugged me that much. Enter the Gladiator. I have customized many a jeep that was not my own and love it, but needed truck utility. Jeep+truck holy smokes! Heaven on earth. I watched alot of the press releases reviews, engineering articles, and talk to friends on the inside. This gladiator was engineered for the apocolypse and that is just so cool in my book. Well my oldest daughter went gaga over one on the lot as we came home from Gymnastics, so we drove it. I was blown away by how unJeep it drove. I couldn't get it out of my head, couple months later I convinced my self if it gets my daughters out in the garage and gives me a chance to personalize, I am in. So far it has checked all the boxes and then some. My daughters ask me to take them everywhere. I was only a couple hundred out of pocket and I bet this will have better resale than my RAM.

 

[Bbannongmu]

Family Jeep Camping...errr. Overlanding was getting crowded

 

[NC_Overland]

I had a 2017 Canyon. First year for the 8 speed auto in those and they had some teething issues. I still owed for another few years on it and it was about to run out of warranty. I had some equity and the transmission never was right in it and GM really pissed me off. Plus, I got the features that weren’t available on the Canyon. My All Terrain had every available option, but proximity key, blind spot monitoring, sunroof, etc weren’t available. I had always wanted Gladiator, but they are so expensive. When I got a huge discount on mine, it made it affordable.

I thought I’d miss my Canyon more since it was so much faster, handled so much better, and much much better mpg, and was a damn good looking truck. However, the Gladiator has character and I have a weird weakness for Jeeps (my 4th). The only thing I really miss is the vastly better mpg. My Canyon got the advertised mpg. The Gladiator is light years away. I get 16 mpg hwy bone stock. Got 24 in the Canyon. I need to take it in, because that’s not even close to advertised. I get the same in the city as I do on the hwy.

 

[EezyE]

I loved my 2014 Tacoma TRD Sport access cab. It was lifted and I thought it was the perfect truck. That was until the Gladiator was introduced. I’d always wanted a Jeep but always needed a truck. The Gladiator was the best of both worlds. My wife’s family had always had Jeeps and she’d been wanting one and felt the Gladiator was a good compromise. I got the truck I wanted and it was a Jeep. I bought my hydro blue Gladiator and never test drove it. In fact, the dealer was 2 hours away and delivered it to me. I know it was stupid to buy it without driving, but I just knew it was the truck for me. It’s funny that I loved my Tacoma but I have found I don’t miss it at all, but after a week and a half, I’d miss my Gladiator.

 

[Blade1668]

My rock crawler XJ transmission gave up moving it My other XJ not been on road for years I bought to replace #1, MJ floor rusted out, salt used on roads in Europe and when shipped back to States delivered to a non Army base, they stored it next to Atlantic ocean.... damn near had surf lapping non the tires.
LJ clocked over 250000 miles. Was about time for a new Jeep.... Been waiting for another Jeep P.U. got close to a million miles in or driving Jeeps. My experience with them has been good.

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