Jeep is back on a firmer footing with Fiat

THE LOOK of horror on many people’s faces when you tell them that the Jeep Renegade which you are driving and which also they are inquiring about is now basically a Fiat, has to be seen to be believed.

It appears to stretch credulity that the previously American-owned giant of the SUV market is now owned by the Italians and runs on their drivetrains.

The very name ‘Jeep’ inspires all sorts of memories and emotions in petrolheads and it is lost on few of them that the original Jeep was a diminutive Bantam 4x4 BRC40 reconnaissance car designed in just 49 days in response to a US Army request to some 135 companies to make such a thing for them. That the Bantam company was subsequently deemed by the military to be too small to make the numbers of vehicles needed is of little concern.