My next commuter Jeep

Flatfenders are cool, but they aren’t usually the first choice for a daily driver. The 0-60 time is glacial. The brakes are as useless as the microphone at a Brittany Spears concert.

But this one, for sale right now here on eBay, has something extra. Something special. Something that I think makes it the perfect car to drive in stop and go traffic.

Pike’s Peak

A few weeks ago I had family in town, and we finally did that Colorado thing, and drove to the top of Pike’s Peak. It’s a fantastic drive to take in any vehicle - it’s not a Jeep trail, just a really high mountain road.

Every year for a long, long time they’ve had a race up the hill (it’s the 2nd oldest car race in the U.S.). This year’s just finished last weekend.

This is an amazing video of Rhys Millen storming up the mountain.

It’s over 12 minutes long, so here are some highlight points, if you’re impatient:

At 5 1/2 minutes he screams past the check gate. On the way back down on normal days, they stop you here to make sure your brakes are still cool enough.

At 8 1/2 minutes he gets above tree line into the alpine stuff.

At 10 1/2 minutes he’s way up there, and skidding on the dirt. Even at 25 miles an hour this was scaring my family! He gets pretty close to the edge a few times.

At 12 1/2 he crosses the line at 14,110 feet.

It’s a great video of an impressive drive. It’s not related to Jeeps or Bestop, I’m just sharing.

Rausch Creek

Rausch Creek is a popular four wheel drive park in Pennsylvania.  It has over 1700 acres, all of it land that was previously used by coal companies.  So there are dirt hills, creeks to ride through, mud and rocks - it gives a nice diversity for a full weekend of wheeling.

These photos are from Rich, who drives from Long Island to Rausch Creek.  He’s better known as KBR97,  over at WranglerForum.com, where he organizes others into trips to this playground.  Rich drives a 97 TJ with 32″ tires and a bunch of other aftermarket stuff.

Bestop UTV’s

We work with Tucker Rocky to distribute our UTV products, and they’re doing a big  show right now in Dallas.  A couple folks from our marketing team are there. That’s Megan in the photo and Jim behind the camera (as always, click the photo to see full sized).

Want to check out our UTV products? We’ve got a whole web site for ‘em. www.BestopUTV.com. Check it out.

Tinted Windows, Before and After

It’s hot out. You’ve been putting some thought into those tinted windows, right?

Here’s a nice before-n-after type shot showing how they look.

This 2000 Wrangler Sahara is owned by Dave C, who posts at WranglerForum.com as “daanbc.”

He’s been following that Jeep owners mantra that great Jeeps are built, not bought, and he’s now done a lot of work on his TJ. But these shots are just showing the windows, the clear ones he got when he bought the Jeep, and the tinted ones he added earlier this summer.   Dave says it makes the white Jeep really pop.

Visit WranglerForum.com for other shots of Dave’s Jeep.

Colorful Colorado

The snow takes a long time to melt way up in the highest mountains of Colorado.  The tallest peaks are the ones people call the 14′ers (meaning 14,000 ft. in elevation). We have 54 of these in Colorado and over the week of July 4th Dave (he works in quality here at Bestop), myself, and a couple sidekicks had the opportunity to take the Jeep to Imogene Pass.

Imogene Pass doesn’t quite reach 14,000 feet, but it does get up to 13, 114 feet - close enough if you ask me ;-)  There was still a ton of snow at the top. They actually were able to just open the trail a few weeks before, after enough snow had finally melted.

We took the pass all the way from Ouray to Telluride, two small mountain towns in Colorado.

Snow in July

The sidekicks

An old mine

Great views!

At the top!