Kit makes Wrangler a pickup

A 2007 to 2011 Wrangler Unlimited can be a JK-8 Wrangler Pickup with the $5,499 Mopar kit. It takes 12 to 16 hours of body shop work. Enlarge

After teasing Jeep enthusiasts for over six years with promises that it was "considering" making a Wrangler-based pickup truck, Chrysler Group LLC this week officially launched its first Jeep pickup -- sort of -- since the Toledo-built Comanche disappeared in 1992.

Mopar, Chrysler's in-house parts unit, has begun selling a "kit" that converts any 2007 through 2011 Toledo-built Jeep Wrangler Unlimited equipped with a Freedom hardtop into a two-door pickup truck with a 50-inch-by-44-inch bed that Chrysler calls the JK-8 Wrangler Pickup.

The kit, introduced Monday on Mopar's Facebook page and to dealers on Friday, has a manufacturer's suggested retail price of $5,499. It includes a bed floor, inner and outer body panels to cover what was a second-row entrance of the Wrangler Unlimited, which is a four-door vehicle, and a bulkhead and half hard top that mates to the Unlimited's Freedom top to enclose the cabin.

The custom-order kit will come built-to-order, and likely involves 12 to 16 hours of body shop work to put together and paint, according to information on the Mopar site.

The kit was shown to journalists in April, but pricing was not announced until this week. Although it will work on both new and used versions of the popular Wrangler Unlimited, a pickup conversion, once done, is permanent, Mopar warned.

"It's cool-looking," said Denny Amrhein, co-owner of both Grogan Towne and Charlie's Chrysler Dodge Jeep dealerships, in Toledo and Maumee, respectively. Mr. Amrhein said he thought his dealership would probably buy one of the kits for itself and transform a 2011 Wrangler Unlimited from its lot into a pickup, to see how it is received.

"We'll probably do one, and see how it goes," he said.

The JK-8 kit debuts six months to the day after Chrysler chief executive Sergio Marchionne told The Blade that "chances were better than 50 percent" that a Jeep-branded pickup similar to the automaker's 2005 Jeep Gladiator concept would be built alongside the Wrangler, despite protests from Chrysler's truck-only Ram brand.

In August, 2010, Mike Manley, who heads the Jeep brand for Chrysler, excited a dealer meeting in Florida when he rolled out the 2005 Gladiator concept in yellow paint.

"I like that vehicle. I liked it the first day I saw it. There's a better than 50 percent chance that you'll get one, regardless of what Ram says," Mr. Marchionne said in January at the North American International Auto Show. Officials with his truck brand, he said, are "totally peeved off at the fact that we're going to have anything that looks like a pickup truck with a Jeep brand, with a Jeep badge on it, but I actually think there's space for that vehicle."

The JK-8 kits may represent a compromise as Jeep officials try to answer demand for a pickup while worrying about meeting global demand for the Wrangler at Chrysler's Toledo Assembly Complex.

Mr. Manley told reporters last month he was worried that demand for Wrangler could outstrip its production capacity in Toledo.

Contact Larry P. Vellequette at: lvellequette@theblade.com or 419-724-6091.