From the July 1981 Issue of Car and Driver.
“But what’s a Jeep for, anyway?” If you’re driving the new Scrambler, no stoplight smart ass will ask you that. Obviously, it’s a pickup truck. See, it has a five-foot-long cargo bed. The Scrambler furnishes the increased carrying capacity that Jeep owner have been hollering for, butts heads with Japanese four-wheel-drive pickups both here and abroad, and liberates Jeep fanatics from the impertinent questions of passers-by. Unlike the CJ-5 and CJ-7, the Jeep Scrambler has a mission in life that almost anyone can understand.
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The Scrambler looks so simple, you wonder why Jeep didn’t think of it sooner. Just new styling pasted over familiar mechanicals, right? You’ve got some standard Hollywood glitz, such as plastic fender flares and a plastic-coated hardtop, and some optional Hollywood glitz, such as a chrome grille, chrome wheels, Marchal lights, and wooden trim strips. The most impressive styling lick is the optional-at-no-cost soft top, which can be folded and stored behind the Scrambler’s twin bucket seats so you can face the world with the top down and the windshield folded Oat. AMC is quick to point out that the Scrambler is the first convertible pickup (Blazers don’t count)—an important feature for what AMC considers the truck equivalent of a sports-car market.
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Though its mechanicals come from the same parts bins as those of the CJ-5 and CJ-7, the Scrambler differs from those vehicles in more than styling. Sure, the suspension and driveline are the same, and the optional six-cylinder (90 pounds lighter this year) is still the hot setup under the hood. But the Scrambler chassis is derived from the old, long-wheelbase CJ-6, a utility vehicle noted for carrying around drill bits in remote sections of the world. Jeep reinforced the aft section of the CJ-6 frame for more torsional rigidity and slid the whole business under new coachwork. What you get is a Jeep with a wheelbase ten inches longer than the CJ-7’s and an overall length two feet greater.
The longer wheelbase enhances the Scrambler’s stability over off-road rough stuff and helps it handle a bit more predictably. Although the Scrambler insulates you from the battleground beneath your tires better than a four-wheel-drive Datsun or Toyota, it is actually better at crawling over obstacles than flying over them. The Scrambler doesn’t slide as readily as the CJ-7, it feels mighty tippy in the corners, and the low-tech seats punish your backside. You summer people who use a Jeep only to negotiate the ten miles of bad road to your vacation homesteads probably won’t care anyway, since the Scrambler will haul a bunch of mail-order goodies from Eddie Bauer to your cabin and then hotfoot it down the drive to the nearest tennis court with perfect equanimity.
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The most important benefits of this long wheelbase chassis are felt on the highway, where the Scrambler brings a long-awaited dose of refinement to pavement Jeeping. Unlike the CJ-5 and CJ-7, the Scrambler doesn’t pitch back and forth like a yearling saddle bronc over Interstate expansion strips. As a result, you can squeeze the last drop of fuel from the Scrambler’s 15.5-gallon fuel tank during a highway ramble without fearing for the health of your kidneys.
When you draw the bottom line to the Scrambler, you must admit it’s a lifestyle device rather than a genuine cargo carrier. While a five-foot cargo bed might represent a step forward in the Jeep world, it doesn’t really measure up in the truck world. Even so, the Jeep people reckon their truck should be a terrific success, given the evaporating market for full-sized pickups and the recently established tariff on Japanese trucks, which gives the Scrambler price parity with Datsun’s and Toyota’s four-wheel-drive devices.
In any case, the Scrambler benefits from the presence of the traditional Jeep geegaws, like a doorstep, a windshield hinge, hood locks, and battering-ram bumpers, while offering a measure of Wagoneer-like civility on the highway. And that makes it perfect for all you asphalt cowboys who prefer to do your four-wheeling on Main Street. Thanks to the Scrambler, you can be a Jeeper and not walk like a rodeo rider who’s been bucked off twelve times too many.
Source: Reviews - aranddriver.com
