Jeepers, we love these Moab concepts

The Easter Jeep Safari in Moab, Utah has represented a traditional pilgrimage for Jeep enthusiasts for more than 50 years now. In recent times, the mud-plugging maestros have taken more “ownership” of Moab festivities and have produced some rather stunning concepts and custom versions to celebrate heritage milestones.

In doing so, we reckon they’ve consistently produced some of the coolest concepts ever.

This year is no different, with thousands of Jeep fans converging on the desert city to admire each other’s Dana axles, winches and all-terrain tyres. And, of course, the Jeep displays.

Never content with a single concept created to sum up a particular designer’s feverdream, Jeep goes all-out, producing a handful of concepts based around existing fare, such as the Wrangler (well, duh) and the Grand Cherokee.

You can kind of break the concept vehicle themes down into two categories though: Doomsday Prepper, and Nostalgia Fan.

On the former front, the J-Wagon Concept apes what a Wrangler might look like if Mercedes-Benz’s iconic G-Wagen were more closely mimicked.

Considering the Wrangler is probably the closest cousin to the German SUV, it’s not a long stretch, but looks great regardless.

Here in the Good Oil offices though, we couldn’t go past two awesome concepts that hark back into Jeep’s voluminous history books. One was a restomoded mint green Wagoneer dressed up as if – according to Jeep designer Mark Allen – “on a road trip to Yellowstone Park” in the 1960s.

Our favourite is the Jeepster (pictured); a two-tone beach hopper that started off as a Wrangler Rubicon but has had its windshield raked back 2.5 degrees and a hardtop roof added which sits a couple of inches lower than stock.

The rear seats have been sacrificed to make room for a BF Goodrich KO2 off-road tyre and the classic sloped rear roofline too. Gnarly, dude.