UPDATE: Bill shared David Tracy’s updated to this commercial. Apparently, there’s a disagreement on the history of the truck between the former owner and jeep. While an interesting story, I still think it’s a big issue over nothing.

https://jalopnik.com/jeep-bought-his-awesome-1963-gladiator-and-then-crushed-1845936078

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Originally Posted Feb 2, 2019:

Several folks have emailed about the controversy over the new Gladiator Jeep ad. The new ad shows an old Jeep Gladiator being crushed from which the new Gladiator emerges. Some folks resent the fact that the old Gladiator was crushed, as it appears to be in restorable shape. Given there were over 100,000 of them produced, I don’t think crushing one will cause the world to end. There are also plenty of cheap ones available. I found these two on my very first search:

2 for $3000: https://olympic.craigslist.org/cto/d/bremerton-rare-jeep-gladiator/6799254554.html
1 for $1100: https://seattle.craigslist.org/tac/cto/d/gig-harbor-1971-jeep-j2000-gladiator/6804750817.html

The actual crushing aside, my problem with the commercial is this: If the point of creating a new Gladiator was to benefit from the nostalgia of the original Gladiator, crushing the life out of an old Gladiator doesn’t do that. Nostalgia should be about reliving happy memories not, literally, crushing old memories.

For fun, here’s an old Jeep Gladiator commercial (the first 30 seconds is an introduction, but the remainder of the video is a commercial or 2 separate commercials):

On a side note, there’s already a Jeep Gladiator Forum ready for the new Gladiator.