The sport utility vehicle (SUV) market might be at its most rampant right now, but it has a long history with a lineage dating back to the military Jeep. That means there's a rich tapestry to explore as the SUV rose to prominence, and that history is full of missteps, bold ideas that should have worked out, and good ideas launched at the wrong time. Add to that a market that was less global than it is now, and you have a lot of vehicles that fell through the cracks you might not have heard of. These are some of the more interesting examples.
Rewinding the clock more than 40 years, we have the wonderfully bizarre Jerrari Wagoneer. It was William Fisk Harrah, of Harrah's Hotel and Casinos fame, who commissioned a pair of Jeep Wagoneers with 4.4-liter Ferrari V12 engines replacing the AMC factory V8s. The idea came about because Harrah asked Enzo Ferrari to make a four-wheel-drive vehicle, but Ferrari refused. For the first Jerrari, a 1969 Jeep Grand Wagoneer was given the engine and transmission from a Ferrari 365 GT, then the front end of the classic supercar was grafted on. The second vehicle was a 1977 Jeep Wagoneer that was kept mostly stock with its looks, but a few extras from the donor car were used, such as the quad-tip exhaust and the Ferrari steering wheel.
Full Monteverdi Torrent
The Isuzu trooper sold incredibly well due to being a solid workhorse of an SUV and a perfectly adequate family vehicle. And because it appeared on other automakers dealers lots with their badges on. However, the Isuzu Trooper RS was overlooked because at the time it went on sale, as three-door SUVs were dropping hard in popularity. As well as two-less doors than the standard second-generation Trooper, the RS model was shorter with its 91.7-inch wheelbase compared to the full-size model's 108.7 inches. The rarest is the first generation Trooper RS, which appeared in the U.S in 1989, sold poorly, then disappeared as quickly as it appeared. The first-gen shown below is active in Arizona, and its owner, Kyle Knoll, keeps it alive using the wealth of parts available from salvage parts from full-size Troopers. 2ff7e9595c
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