My issue with mud is that driving through it does absolutely the most damage to the trail out of any terrain. I’ll present to you snow as an excellent alternative. There are so many hugely different textures and tractions, similar buried obstacles, the same wheel speeds, same ruts, same getting stuck, same demands on…

Ford, truckiest? Ha, no.

... you don’t get Lada parts from Canada. Canadians don’t even get Lada parts from Canada. They come from the Internet, shipped from Ukraine. 

It’s clearly factory equipment. Why would you get rid of it?

This is excellent.

That does make sense. Most vehicles have payloads below 1500lbs, so even that would be more than some braking systems would’ve been intended to handle without really putting much extra strain on the vehicle itself. California’s trailer laws are a little extreme though. The 55mpg speed limit is ridiculous, and only a…

And the last one could be specced with higher payload and towing than the entry-level Gladiator, and had a longer bed even in “short” form, despite weighing over 1000lbs less, despite being designed 30 years prior.

Except there isn’t a sister-brand truck in this segment. And the rest of the segment is available with smaller cabs and longer beds. Considering the effort they went to just to be able to say the truck has “best-in-class” towing (even going so far as to make up their own class for it) you’d think they actually want to…

And that logic just proves my point. It’s a useless fashion accessory, and frankly FCA wasted engineering dollars on that cooling system just so they could claim it’s the best at one thing in their made-up class.

There are sub-2000lb campers that need to charge batteries, which you can’t do over a four-pin connector. My jurisdiction also requires brakes on any trailer over 2000lbs, with a brakeaway requirement that almost guarantees it’s charging a battery too. I’m not sure where exactly the Gladiator’s bumper hitch fits in…

I’m not sure why you’re so offended by someone hoping Jeep was actually going to build a useful truck. All previous Jeep trucks have been useful, so it’s pretty disappointing the latest one isn’t.

All the minivan-spec does is add dimension. I’m sure you can find a bunch of junk to fill the extra space as well as I could, but a five foot bed is so small it’s almost to the point of “why even bother”. Every other truck in the class is available with an “extended” cab and a 6' bed, which was still just the shortbed…

So when are they coming out with an extended (or better yet, regular!) cab and a useful bed?

This is a good thing. Too many people are out there measuring shit in units of “torques”. Now they have another reason to actually use proper units with their torque figures, which is good, because apparently not looking like an idiot isn't enough of a deterrent. 

If that’s what you’re paying, you need to find a better shop. I’ve had an engine removed and reinstalled plus a bunch of other “while you’re at it” stuff changed for under $1500 total, and the shop even had a tech come in on the weekend just to do it. Yeah it’s a big price tag, but it was fixed after that. The truck…

Unless it’s lived it’s whole life as a taxi, a 9-year old car that has been properly maintained isn’t going to “shit the bed” in a way that it’s more cost-effective to outright replace it with something with known history that’s in as good condition, and the now-repaired car is going to be in better condition than a…

“a bad place to be If you need to buy another car”.

Pretty much, yeah. That one was a couple years back I think. Before I moved to Alberta I want to say.

Yeah, you’ve really got to be watching. I think in about seven years of watching kijiji on a national level I’ve seen four or five Niva trucks come up for sale. The oldest one was an ‘82 or ‘83 IIRC, and was really well done but looked a bit backyard DIY ish, just a chop of the back portion without extending the bed…

Not entirely. Some of them used s10 tails. That sort of thing happens when you’ve essentially got the boys in the warehouse doing the custom coachwork. The Lada Canada facility that kitted out all the vehicles “at the port” for the Canadian market (mostly just adding DRLs) was responsible for turning a very small…