#2019JeepScrambler

There’s never been a vehicle more difficult to camouflage than the upcoming Jeep Scrambler, the pickup version of the new-for-2018 JL Wrangler. Unlike the anonymous rolling blobs we call crossovers, Jeep’s insistence on a traditional, square-rigged design makes for easy spotting.

As we can see in these spy photos, the #PolarVortex didn’t stop Fiat Chrysler engineers from wheeling around in a prototype JT Scrambler. Production begins in 10 months, meaning off-road fans will have to warm themselves with photos of the conventional Wrangler until the wraps comes off later this year.

The leaks concerning Jeep’s next-generation Wrangler have been like a screen door on a submarine, with FCA itself fueling the fire by releasing a couple of official images during the recent SEMA show in Las Vegas.

Rumours of a Wrangler-based pickup began swirling ages ago, with Fiat Chrysler eventually assuring us that one will appear at some point during the new Wrangler’s product cycle. Now, in a report from Automotive News, there is speculation the new-age, four-door Scrambler will be offered as a convertible.

In the early 1980s, the Jeep CJ-8 Scrambler was so cool, even Ronald Reagan owned one. A lengthened CJ-7 with a pickup bed just large enough to be usable, the Scrambler ended its six-model-year run in 1986, just as the more conventional Comanche was entering the market.

Jeep’s found itself without a pickup variant since the Comanche’s exit in 1992 — a grievous omission for hard-core Jeep aficionados — and no amount of four-door Wrangler Unlimited is going to satisfy the crowd until something with seven slots sprouts a bed.

Well, the reveal of the Wrangler-based pickup remains just over a year away, but a new report tells us what to expect. Based on the next-generation Wrangler arriving late this year, the pickup variant sports a longer wheelbase and a familiar name: Scrambler.

Satisfied?