1990 Jeep Wrangler Yj....ready For Summer Fun! on 2040-cars

Auto blog

Junkyard Gem: 1983 AM General postal Jeep DJ-5L

When neither snow nor rain nor gloom of night will stay you from your appointed rounds, you don't need fancy styling or futuristic technology. All you need is a simple steel box with four wheels, one seat (on the right-hand side), a mail-sorting tray, and an engine. The Jeep DJ was that vehicle, and DJs served as workhorses for the United States Postal Service starting in 1955 and — in some rural areas— into our current century. Here's one of the last ones made, found covered with snow in a Denver self-service wrecking yard. Related: Postal truck prototypes spied from Oshkosh and Karsan When American Motors bought Jeep in 1970, it built and sold DJs via its AM General subsidiary. The DJ-5 was a stripped-down, two-wheel-drive version of the pretty-spartan-to-start-with Jeep CJ, and there wasn't much to go wrong with it. The final year for the DJ-5 was 1984. During the AMC era, the DJ received an ever-shifting array of engines, depending on what looked like the best deal in Kenosha at a given time. Starting with the Chevrolet Nova straight-four, Jeep DJ engine compartments boasted AMC straight-sixes of 232- and 258-cubic-inch displacements, followed by Audi 2-liter straight-fours (yes, the same engine used by the Porsche 924), then the 2.5-liter GM Iron Duke four, and finally the 2.5-liter AMC straight-four. This DJ-5L has Duke power. The early DJs had manual transmissions, but all the AM General DJ-5s came with automatics. If you think an Iron Duke powering a Jeep is odd, consider that it's bolted to a Chrysler Torqueflite transmission. Once the USPS was done with them, cheap DJ-5s flooded the market. This one has had a random junkyard seat swap, but retains the handy mail-sorting tray. Featured Gallery Junked 1983 Jeep DJ-5L View 21 Photos Jeep Commercial Vehicles Classics amc mail truck

Jeep Renegade configurator switches on

Less than a week after letting loose with pricing information for its 2015 Renegade, Jeep has powered up the configurator for its new compact CUV, giving us our first complete look at pricing for the model's healthy options catalog. If you've messed around with any of FCA's other online configurators, the Renegade's will be immediately familiar. Pick a trim, interior and exterior color, optional extras and packages, and you're done. Of course, we don't write these posts just to let you know about a configurator going live. We do them because it gives us an excuse to mess about with all the different varieties of a new model, and, on occasion, to build something surprisingly expensive or cheap, just to see if it can be done. The Renegade certainly has no issues when it comes to the former. If you want the priciest model, you'll need the $25,995 Trailhawk, which can be priced up to $33,330. We got to that figure by adding the $1,495 Trailhawk Premium Group (heated, powered leather seats, dual-zone climate control, heated steering wheel, 40/20/40 split-rear seats), the $595 Safety and Security Group I (blind-spot monitoring with cross-traffic assist and an alarm), the $395 Trailer Tow Group, the $1,395 powered MySky system, a $150 hood decal (which might mean that you can get a Trailhawk without a black stripe), a $1,295 navigation system with satellite radio, a $495 nine-speaker stereo, a $295 push-button starter, a $200 remote starter and a $75 tonneau cover. Will you need all of those options? Not really. But many of them would certainly fall into the "must-have" category for customers. Head over to Jeep's consumer page and mess about with the configurator, and let us know what you think of the full pricing (and what your ideal spec looks like!) in Comments. Related Video:

Watch this R/C Jeep Wrangler plow snow

There's no denying the fact that the Jeep Wrangler is one tough and rugged vehicle, and there is apparently little lost when the SUV is shrunk down for a 1:10th scale radio-controlled version. Proving that the Axial SCX10 Jeep Wrangler is not your run-of-the-mill R/C car, YouTube user Andrew Dykiel posted a pair of videos showing it clear about an inch of snow from his sidewalk and driveway during a snow storm last month.
Starting at $379.99, the Axial SCX10 costs more than most budget snowblowers, but other than paying a neighbor kid to shovel your snow, this might be the best way for a car guy to clear snow without the need for hot chocolate and ibuprofen. Better yet, it's electric, so it's zero-emission answer to snow removal! Scroll down to see how this R/C Jeep can help "shovel" snow from the warmth of your sofa. We've also thrown in a bonus video showing the mini Jeep negotiating the Rubicon Trail.