Main Street Rides

I’m in Las Vegas, NV this week preparing for the 2025 SEMA Show. This year, I’ll be working with Carlyle Tools, promoting our recently refreshed tool line. I think in honor of SEMA week, it’s appropriate to tell the story of my Jeep Wrangler Rubicon 4xe that I displayed in Bestop’s SEMA booth a few years ago.

2022 would be the year that I would special order a vehicle for the first time. I had purchased a brand-new vehicle a couple of other times, but this time, I checked my own boxes. At that time, I already had my 2013 Jeep Wrangler Rubicon which I’d purpose built for off-roading. I had quickly fallen in love with traversing the trails that a normal vehicle, even one with four-wheel-drive, could not travel. There is something liberating about tackling terrain that looks nothing like something a vehicle of any kind would drive across.

While attending Easter Jeep Safari earlier in the year, I had a mishap while navigating the Z Turn obstacle on Moab Rim and I rolled my Jeep down a large rock ledge. I’ll have more to share on that trip with another post, but suffice it to say, it was beat up bad enough that I wasn’t sure I’d be able to keep it. I was devastated and acted as if I’d lost a family member. While I still assumed old Dozer was a total loss, I ended up special ordering a 2023 Jeep Wrangler Rubicon 4xe.

At the time, the Wrangler 4xe was an intriguing proposition as the potential replacement for the JKU. Being a plug-in hybrid, the idea of being able to commute to work on an electric charge was attractive. I was working for Bestop in Louisville, CO at the time and with several fast chargers at work, it gave me the flexibility to extend the very modest 22-25 mile electric range of the 4xe.

By the time summer rolled around, my new 4xe had been built and was being delivered to Peterson Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram, back home in Idaho. As one of the highest volume Jeep dealerships in the Nation, I was able to combine a factory rebate I was entitled to as a Bestop employee with their highly competitive pricing. I had ordered my new JLU in Rubicon trim in a beautiful Gobi color, like the color of a sand dune. All 4xe models come with royal blue accents, which seems like an odd combo, but I felt that it really worked on the Gobi.

Flying into Boise, ID, I was looking forward to the 12-hour drive home to Colorado to get acquainted. I love the honeymoon phase with a new car. As it would turn out, my boss and good friend would be in Salt Lake City with some friends on a guy’s trip, they were going to a Switchfoot and Collective Soul concert. That was my kind of music and I’d admittedly never been to a live popular music concert. I took my route home through Salt Lake and crashed their party.

Comparing the JLU to JKU as I drove across multiple states was a fun exercise. I loved my JKU (I still own it today, spoiler alert) but there was no denying that the 8-speed automatic, quiet cabin, and technology advancements of the JL Wrangler were big improvements over the previous generation. While my JKU is powered by a 3.6L V6, the trusty Pentastar that is still offered within the Jeep lineup today, all 4xe’s are motivated by 2.0L turbocharged 4-cylinders, in conjunction with a pair of electric motors. I loved the comfortable and more modern cabin of the 4xe and while some have complained of a jerky transition between the internal combustion power to electric, I found my 4xe to be well mannered and smooth.

The 4xe didn’t have much of a charge when I took delivery in Idaho, so the trip home was primarily under the power of the internal combustion engine. 4xe’s only have about a 25-mile range under electric power, so long road trips aren’t really their strong suit. With an average of 18 MPG across the 800 miles home, the 2.0L 4-cylinder returned a slightly better fuel economy than the 3.6L equipped Wranglers.

Once I got the 4xe home, however, I was able to drive from my house when fully charged to work without ever using the internal combustion engine. I lived about 22 miles from Bestop and was able to make to work on a single charge, charge the Jeep at work and drive home again on a single charge. I was able to stretch a single tank of fuel over several weeks, with refueling only needed when I would take a longer trip. A strong selling point for any plug-in hybrid vehicle. You get the benefits of an electric vehicle without the range anxiety.

By this point in the year, I had been able to navigate getting my 2013 Jeep Wrangler repaired, and it was back home. I had sold my truck, 300zx, and trailer that I’d been using to haul my Jeep around on for off-roading excursions in order to pay for the new Jeep. So now we were a two Jeep family, supplemented by our family van. At this point, I had fantasies of family off-roading excursions, with a his and hers approach to our Jeeps.

As the second half of 2022 began to tick away, an opportunity arose to take my new 4xe to SEMA and I had plans to build the 4xe Wrangler to a similar capacity as my JKU. I was continually impressed with how much better my Jeep drove on the road with the Teraflex suspension system than it had with the OEM setup, and it was incredibly capable off-road. That one-two punch made it the most versatile vehicle I’d ever owned.

I followed the same blueprint with the 4xe and equipped it with a Teraflex Alpine CT3 3.5″ lift, pairing it with their HD steering upgrade and their beefier spare tire carrier to accommodate a 37″ tire. Rounded out with the Teraflex Falcon shocks the already improved handling of the JLU vs the JKU was leveled up even further. While the JLU doesn’t quite have the same approach and departure angles of the JKU on 37″ tires, it was still going to be a very capable rig. I’d seen 40′” tires successfully run on factory JL Rubicon axles, the DANA 44, but I was wanting to keep a modicum of the 4xe’s efficiency. I didn’t plan to regear the Wrangler 4xe as I’d done with my JK because of the higher torque of the 4xe’s powertrain and truthfully, I didn’t know how complicated regearing a plug-in hybrid would end up being.

Heritage was the theme of our 2022 SEMA booth for Bestop. Established in 1954, Bestop was approaching 70 years in business, having started making soft tops for the old Willy’s Jeeps of the era. Over the years, Bestop would have an evolution of brand with various logo styles which we would incorporate into our booth design. I also chose to make my Wrangler 4xe a 1 of 1 Bestop Heritage Edition with a custom badge and with Bestop’s legacy logos ghosted on the hood, along with several other supporters and some retro graphics inspired by the Jeep Wrangler Renegade.

As SEMA approached, I continued to outfit the 4xe with products from the family of brands under the Bestop umbrella. Working with a local customer, The Edge Automotive 4×4, we outfitted the Wrangler with off-road lighting from Baja Designs, lightweight but tough aluminum bumpers from Aluminess, customer seat covers from PRP, and lockable storage from Tuffy Security. Wheels came from Method Racing, wrapped in the same Mickey Thompson Baja Boss A/T that I was running (and still run) on my JKU Wrangler Rubicon. The Aluminess bumper had a trick receptacle for a winch which I filled with a Warn ZEON 10,000 LB unit. For SEMA, I swapped the factory hardtop out in favor of Bestop’s new Supertop for JL. Lastly, Rockslide Engineering rocksliders with a power retractable step made ingress and egress a breeze.

With the build details out of the way and SEMA fast approaching, I also helped oversee the preparation of the other Bestop SEMA vehicles, which included a pair of new Ford Broncos and a couple of old iron examples of the original Ford Bronco and a flat fendered Willy’s. The Bronco’s were wrapped to be consistent with the heritage them, with the 4-door Bronco being more retro. I took a risk on that one but I thought it turned out great, you certainly couldn’t miss it when walking by, particularly with the matching custom seat covers from PRP. The new Bronco’s were sporting the new Bestop Trektop on the two door, and the Bestop Skyrider, a dual row version of the best-selling Sunrider for hardtop on the four-door. The old Willy’s and Bronco were outfitted with heritage tops, period correct examples of the tops offered by Bestop when they were new (and still offered today). Also included in our booth was a Jeep Gladiator that was provided by one of our customers who performed at home installations of soft tops on Jeeps. His Gladiator was outfitted with a custom crane and rigging system to allow for transporting and storing of hard tops being removed from his customers Jeeps.

Helping guide the direction of our SEMA efforts that year and having my Jeep included in our booth presentation was a treat. We’d shipped all the vehicles out to SEMA with the exception of my Wrangler, I drove it out to the show. At the end of SEMA each year, showcase and exhibited vehicles can pull out in a parade for the public, the SEMA Ignited Parade. I’d done it in the past a couple of times, with the most memorable being in Premier Performance’s Six Pack, the rat rod we’d built for SEMA in 2015. I also got to do it in 2024 in Z1 Motorsports 600R, before driving it to LA for Larry Chen to shoot that car with Hagerty and a GQ article with Sung Kang. For 2022, I got to do it in my own vehicle, one that I’d built to my preferences, hilighting my companies’ brands and products.

Looking forward to the road trip home, I took the opportunity to take a little detour and hit an off-road trail on the way. Toquerville falls is a short trail and not difficult for really any 4×4 with decent ground clearance, but it takes you to a scenic waterfall, one which you can actually ford at its top. It’s a popular SEMA photo spot for those that exhibit in the truck and off-road category. I decided to check it out for myself on the way and tried out some electric only off-roading. I like the growl of an internal combustion engine as much as the next guy, but there was something serene about enjoying a scenic trail with just the hum of the electric motors of the 4xe.

Shortly after SEMA in 2022, I would end up taking a job opportunity with Z1 Motorsports and we’d sell our home in Colorado and move across the country to Georgia. The 4xe would make that trip without issue as well and while the Jeep 4xe’s have generally been plagued with recalls, I thankfully did not have any issues with mine while I owned it. I would still end up selling the 4xe in favor of the keeping the 2013 Wrangler Rubicon as I felt more comfortable pushing the JKU harder and was certainly more invested in that Jeep after repairing it after the roll.

My years at Bestop certainly opened my eyes to the world of off-roading and helped me develop a love for the Wrangler. Prior to 2020, I’d had zero interest in owning a Jeep but now rank the Wrangler as one of my favorite models. My JKU currently holds the title for the longest I’ve retained ownership of a vehicle, that’s saying something! More Jeep stories to come :).