Think Big
First featured in 4x4 Magazine, Jult 2017
Most Jeep Wranglers nowadays come to Britain with a diesel engine up front. Petrol power has come back to the fore in the last couple of years, however – though even Jeep’s most ambitiously specced showroom models come nowhere near the scope of this 6.4-litre Hemi-powered Rubicon recently built by UK specialist Nene Overland. Big engine, big lift, big tyres… ain’t nuthin small about this one!
It’s pretty much exactly ten years since the current version of the Jeep Wrangler came to the UK. From the moment it arrived, it sold in numbers which dwarfed those for previous Wranglers – and that’s thanks to two things.
One is that for the first time, it was available in five-door form. The second is that, again for the first time, you could get a Wrangler with a diesel engine.
Of all the Wranglers imported since then, the vast majority have been powered by the torquey 2.8 CRD oil-burner. In fact, when sales began in 2007, the option of a petrol engine was reserved only for the low-volume Rubicon model.
What we have here is a long-wheelbase Rubicon, something you couldn’t get here at the time but which has since become available in the UK. Not that this is a UK car, because the steering wheel is on the left.
Anyway, it’s a Rubicon and it’s petrol engined. The engine in question is not the original six-pot, though – it’s a 6.4-litre V8 Hemi developing 470bhp.
Jeeps are popular in America, and so are big engines, and so it putting big engines in Jeeps. So this one is every bit as authentic as its left-hooker status would suggest.
The engine instal was, however, done not in the US but in Cambridgeshire. That’s where Nene Overland is based – and among the many other services the company offers, it’s now able to convert 3.6-litre Wranglers to Hemi power.
Engaging it to do so is definitely not cheap – the quoted price starts at £24,995 before VAT. But this is no ordinary repower effort, and few engine conversions we’ve ever seen have looked as much like an OE job as this.
One of the reasons why big engines are so popular Stateside is that so are big tyres – and even with deeper gearing, you need enough power to be able to spin them up when necessary on the rocks. The 3.6-litre engine is just fine in most situations, but when you get to extremes like that and you’re running 37” rubber, you need an engine that won’t get bogged down.
And that’s the rubber we have here. You see Wranglers with bigger tyres yet, and the V8 would certainly be able to rock them, but there has to be a limit and on a 4.5” AEV suspension lift this is a Jeep with what looks like a decent sense of balance.
You do feel the extra height on the road, with a higher degree of body roll which makes it feel like a handful at first – especially given what happens when you put your foot down. But we’ve driven enough old-school 90s to know not to trust our first impressions when climbing into a lifted vehicle of any kind, and once you get to grips with its handling this Jeep is not so different to any other five-door Wrangler. We’d not be too keen to leave off the front anti-roll bar disconnects on anything but the shortest of hops from trail to trail, though.
In truth, with 37” muds and a locking diff at each end, it’s hard to picture yourself ever actually needing to disconnect an anti-roll bar. Maybe at the start of a playday, but the number of British trails rocky enough to present that much of a challenge to this vehicle can pretty much be counted on the fingers of no hands.
It would be easy to say that that’s not relevant anyway because the only people who can afford a Jeep like this are the kind who’ll only use it as a posing tool. But if you can afford to do ninety grand on a 4x4, you can almost certainly afford to do what you want with it – pose, off-road, go lamping, whatever.
And most of the posing going on does come from the sort of kit you want if you’re going
off-road, too. Heavy-duty bumpers and skid plates, jackable sills, LED lighting, Raptor coating – it’s all good stuff whether you want to look at it or use it.
There’s a full Mopar soft-top on this vehicle, too, which adds a traditional element of Jeep image. Taste is a very personal thing, but we’d have made the most of it by finishing the vehicle in a bright, contrasting colour rather than grey – we always say that only cool cars can get away with being painted yellow or orange, and for sure this Wrangler is cool, so we’d have gone bold as brass to make sure everyone knew about it.
Again, perhaps if an £88,995 Wrangler represents something other than a ludicrously unattainable dream to you, blending in is something you actually aspire to rather than seeking to avoid. We can definitely only speculate on that one (though there are enough Lambos and so on going around to suggest it’s not true). Either way, yes, taste is personal.
And the same can be said about creating an off-roader with a 470bhp Hemi up front. You might even be looking at this Wrangler and thinking it would be nice, if only it had a proper old diesel engine going on; of course, if that’s the case then Nene can certainly still help, because the bolt-ons you’re looking at here can all be bought separately.
With Jeep having just announced a version of the Grand Cherokee with a 707bhp V8 engine and lowered suspension, anyway, praise be to Nene Overland for not creating an abomination by doing something similar with this Wrangler. It’s not everyone’s idea of off-roading, this, and it’s certainly not in everyone’s budget – but it’s loud, proud and very capable, and that’s everything a Jeep should be.
