Moving (on) mountains: Driving a Jeep Gladiator in New Zealand

It made one as long ago as 1947 and first introduced the Gladiator name in 1962. A pick-up stayed on sale, latterly as the Jeep Comanche, which looks like an aftermarket hack job of an XJ-series Cherokee, until 1992. But since then, there hasn’t been a pick-up Jeep, which seems like an odd oversight given the kind of use Wranglers get in a country where pick-ups are some of the best-selling, and certainly the most profitable, vehicles.

The Gladiator isn’t a workhorse or commercial vehicle, though. It’s a fun wagon. Its payload is 620kg rather than 1000kg-plus – despite having a rear axle from a Dodge Ram – and its towing weight is 2721kg.

It’s what Americans consider a mid-size and what we think of as a big truck, at around 5.5m, the length of a Volkswagen Amarok and Ford Ranger. Think of it as a Ranger Raptor rival if it comes to the UK (still in question), where it would have a 3.0 diesel. In the US, and here in New Zealand, there’s a 285bhp 3.6 V6 mated to an eight-speed automatic. EVs and plug-in hybrids are coming, Jeep president Christian Meunier assures us. Given the high current fleet CO2 average of Jeep owner Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, they’ll have to. But with that come advantages, too. Think of heading softly down a track, roof down, making no noise to alarm the wildlife. Think of setting up camp and having the electrical power you brought with you. Think of the advantage of being able to dole out precisely how much torque each wheel’s grip can handle, with instant response. Meunier says the firm will use electrical power to make Jeeps “more capable than ever”.

Personally, I’d love to see the return of a forward control Jeep, too, but flat windscreens are out these days, because while they can be made aerodynamically efficient (and while with a pure-electric powertrain that wouldn’t matter so much anyway), pedestrians don’t respond well to impacts with them.

Like all big pick-ups, the Gladiator is a separate-chassis off-roader. Here, though, that chassis is very obviously, given the size and shape of the front half, from a Jeep Wrangler – another Langhals design.

Jeep has managed and curated the Wrangler through its incarnations with the kind of care that has kept it relevant and incredibly successful. It helps, I suppose, that Americans live the lifestyle and have the space and access to enjoy it that most of us in Europe can only imagine. But still, getting it right enables Jeep to sell a quarter of a million Wranglers a year, while Mercedes sells less than a tenth as many Mercedes-Benz G-Classes and Land Rover has sold no Defenders since 2016.

For the Gladiator, the Wrangler’s frame has been extended by a fairly whopping 780mm, with 490mm of that in the wheelbase and the rest behind the rear axle. It’s neither a cheap nor easy car to assemble, says Meunier, formerly of Infiniti and who has headed Jeep since April last year, joining just in time for Jeep’s annual jamboree in the Sierra Nevada mountains.

As per the Wrangler, different trim levels don’t just give different interior options. All have the same functional and chunky centre console inside, and the same rear-seat space, but Sport and Overland models get one kind of low-ratio transfer case, with top-spec Rubicon cars getting a lower-speed crawl ratio, heavier-duty axles with locking differentials and a disconnecting front anti-roll bar, rock rails, tow hooks and heavier-duty bumpers. The approach angle is an astonishing 40.7deg and there’s 250mm of ground clearance and a 760mm wade depth.

Common to all Gladiators, too, as with Wranglers, you can take the doors and roof off, and removing four bolts lets you fold the windscreen flat onto the bonnet, making this the only convertible pick-up on sale today. You can even have tubular bars in place of doors.

That’s a feature that, when rain is falling at 40mm per hour, may be a suboptimal choice. Standing in a rock field, which the Gladiator is traversing with more ease than a pick-up should, and looking up at the 3000m Mount Aspiring, I’ve never felt rain like it. The trouble with it is that it washes away land, rocks and roads and everything else between. Normally, car makers don’t want us going places their off-roaders might get stranded and advise on routes accordingly. But going by their faces when we find the river flowing beneath a flooded field – the Gladiator dips into it and bow waves form from the bonnet lip, threatening the 760mm wade depth (and drenching the feet of some colleagues who have made the poor door option) – I’m not sure that’s the case here.

There’s no denying a short-wheelbase Wrangler will go further off road than a Gladiator, on account of its wheelbase being shorter. The Gladiator’s breakover angle is 18.4deg and departure angle 25deg, owing to its long bed. But this is still a vehicle that will get you much further than you need. It’ll do the Rubicon Trail, after all.

With that – especially in Rubicon trim, which comes with 32in off-road tyres as standard – there is a slight agricultural feel to the Gladiator, on road. But the same is true of the Wrangler and any pick-up onto which you start putting serious off-road extras. Choose a Sport or Overland model and, immediately, there’s improved steering response and a more settled road ride, and I still think they’ll go further than not just any rival, but further than most owners will realistically expect.

At a little over 100,000 square miles, New Zealand’s land mass is about 10% bigger than the UK’s, but with a human population of 4.7 million (and over a million and a half of those living in Auckland) and a sheep population of 30 million (not so many in Auckland), it’s considerably less dense. Because it’s so green, there are shades of Wales and Scotland to it, but it goes on further and higher, and even Scotland’s grandest lochs and glens don’t match the scale and beauty of it. If you had to pick a country in which enough grows that you’d probably survive post-zombie apocalypse, it’d be right up there.

For 95% of the time, even away from the publicly accessible rough tracks that scatter across the New Zealand landscape joining farmsteads to main roads, and onto the dirt and mud tracks that sheep and cattle farmers have let us use and that are usually traversed only by tractor or quad or hoof, even the most basic Gladiator will get you through.

As ever, it’s tyre choice that settles most arguments one way or the other most of the time. But put sufficiently aggressive rubber on it and a Jeep will climb slopes you can’t walk up, ford rivers that would drag you off downstream, and make a cosy noise like a tent thanks to the patter of rain on canvas roof.