By Kamil Kaluski
The delivery of your new Jeep Gladiator may take a little longer. A 33-car train derailed near Caliente, Nevada, on Wednesday. The derailment was so severe that the rail cars came completely off the rails, rolled over, and the train accordioned into a big pile. In those rail cars were cars, as in passenger vehicles, mostly pickup trucks. Those included the new Jeep Gladiators, presumably heading to California dealerships.
As can be seen from the above the picture, the Gladiator can nicely support itself on its new roll-bars, which now extend to around the windshield, as in on the new JL Wrangler. The windshield still folds down but the frame remains, connected to the B-pillar frame.
Looks like several new GM trucks were also put out of their misery. Since all those vehicles have never been titled but are probably insured, expect them to go directly into the scrapper and not a local Nevada junk yard. Automakers to their best to prevent such cars from going to idiots people like us.
Interesting – looks like the GM trucks are shipped on temporary steel wheels. I wonder if that has anything to do with the recent theft of wheels from new car dealerships.
Images – Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office. Source: kdvr.com
Ross Ballot
So will GM and Fiat-Chrysler-Automat go back and do some math on how well they survived this? It would seem to be a great chance to get some real world data on crash worthiness that you could never recreate anywhere. Like you were saying about the roll bars.
The only math involved will be in how much the accident cost them.
There is still crash data here from a lot of different angles. Oh and I’d imagine that insurance has that covered.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the batteries were disconnected during shipping.
From witnessing the unloading of vehicles from the trains at the inter-modal yard near where I used to work I don’t think the batteries are disconnected. Many years ago there was not an overpass for the road so more than once I saw the workers walk in and drive right out.
From witnessing the unloading of vehicles from the trains at the inter-modal yard near where I used to work I don’t think the batteries are disconnected. Many years ago there was not an overpass for the road so more than once I saw the workers walk in and drive right out.
Too many unknown variables for the data to be of any use. Sure, we know the roll bar kept the roof of the car from deforming but we have no idea how much Force was applied or from what directions.
Image you come home and discover that your five-year-old is holding a paper bag with two eggs in it; one broken and one unbroken. You have a general idea what happened and specific knowledge of the outcome but there’s no way to figure out how the one egg got broken or why the other egg didn’t.
The big steel wheels on some new Chevrolet and GMC trucks are due to that specific vehicle being ordered with LPO (read: accessory) wheels. The trucks ship to the dealers on steel wheels. When the dealership receives the accessories for that unit from their GM accessories distributor, they swap the wheel and tire package off, and send the steel transport wheels back to the distributor where the tires are dismounted to be used for another wheel package. The steel wheels are then crushed or otherwise rendered unusable, and disposed of.
Why not just send them back to the factory? That is how it worked with the special vehicles factories (HSV & FPV) here, they would use yellow-painted wheels for transport from the manufacturers’ factories, before all the conversion work was done.
Is GM still struggling with too much pickup stock? If so they won’t be too sad to ‘sell’ a few to the insurance company.
What I’ve read elsewhere is that the dealer is charged a “core charge” for those wheels and they are shipped back to the factory for the next vehicle to come off the line.
That makes more sense. Sounds awfully wasteful otherwise.
I inquired to get new steel wheels for our Camry’s winter tires last year. The response was: “Nobody makes steel wheels anymore, and yours are fine anyway”.
Coker still sells steel wheels, so somebody is still making them: https://www.cokertire.com/wheels/steel-wheels.html
And obviously they’re still available for all those donut-spares, so you could have four skinny winter tires ;-D
I think bare steel wheels are under-rated. I’ve seen some Jeep XJs running Mopar spare-tire steelies with pizza-cutter tires, and they have a great retro look.
That’s the first I’d heard that there is a frame behind the Gladiator’s (and I assume, JL’s) windshield, and I wonder how many people will actually ever lower it to notice. I know the purists want to preserve the folding feature, but I think its an almost useless vestigial remnant of the original Willys MB. Given that most people don’t need to haul injured soldiers, fire mounted artillery, or stack their Jeeps upon other Jeeps for mass transport, it’s kind of a stupid feature. There’s only one use I ever found for it in the modern era: lowering the windshield does, surprisingly, keep dust from entering the open cabin when ‘wheeling in dry areas.
I had my windshield down exactly once on my CJ-7, and that was just for the novelty. Around 35mph– unless wearing goggles– you realize quickly that you prefer it up.
My dad, TheGentlemanFarmer, back in the day purchased new from Central Dodge in Springfield, MO, a brand new Dodge Ramcharger that had fallen off the back of a railcar. It had a salvage title and he drove it for many years. Sadly he’s no longer around to gather up one of these rides for our amusement.
Unfortunate and kind of a waste though.
Huh, well, there goes my theory that the new Silverado’s looks could be vastly improved if involved in a massive train derailment.
Huh, well, there goes my theory that the new Silverado’s looks could be vastly improved if involved in a massive train derailment.
I couldn’t honestly tell that they were damaged.
I guess a train of Volvos in a similar predicament would just have spit out a huge amount of those small “QC passed”-stickers.
truck wheels