Jeep people love to Jeep. Whether the famous wave or buying a set of 33-inch tires, the Jeep community is as long-running as it is strong. For the Jeepers who want a bit more on-brand space when overlanding, Jeep has teamed up with a company called ADDAX Overland to make a Jeep-branded trailer.
The ADDAX Overland Jeep trailer features independent suspension, a bit like BMW’s crazy multi-trailer, but relying on torsion axles rather than coil springs. It may seem a bit funny that a trailer cosigned by Jeep has independent suspension when Wranglers have solid axles, but it makes a lot of sense when you think about it. Most trailers use a solid axle with semi-eliptical leaf springs just like many pickup trucks. While low-cost and generally fine, this setup does present some challenges when off-road due to how low all of the components hang. In contrast, ADDAX Overland’s trailer packs 17 inches of ground clearance, impressive stuff considering tongue height looks fairly well-matched to stock Wranglers.
In addition to the novel suspension, there’s some clever design going on with this trailer. At the back, you’ll find a two-inch receiver for bike racks and the like, while the folding tongue sounds genuinely great for storing the trailer at home. Maximum payload clocks in at 1,200 pounds, while four 8,000 pound corner jacks seem just a little bit excessive as a way to level the trailer on uneven terrain.
So why a tiny trailer rather than a roof tent? Well, if you want to remove and re-install your Wrangler’s roof, it’s best to not have anything to move up top. In addition, packing four people into a two-door Wrangler is already pretty tight, so a little five-foot by six-foot trailer offers a useful 35 cubic feet of storage space for alligator jerky, oversized hats, and all sorts of outdoorsy stuff.
Should you really want to go hard speccing your trailer, ADDAX Overland offers such options as a slide-out fridge and a slide-out kitchen, perfect for lemonade and massive diner-style breakfasts respectively when out on the trail. Mind you, adding such luxuries as a fridge and a kitchen don’t come cheap. The Jeep-branded trailer itself without any options starts at $14,995, and you could buy a lot of YJs for that sort of money. To get the fridge and the kitchen, you’ll need to step up to the Summit model which costs $30,995 with the Jeep branding.
[Mercedes’ Note: ADDAX Overland is only one of a number of companies building what are essentially trailers with roof tents. Taxa Outdoors will sell you a Wooly Bear for $12,498 for the basic version or $18,500 for one better equipped for off-roading. And for a similar price, you can get a Tribe Basecamp, which is similar to both the Taxa and the ADDAX.Â
While the idea of a roof tent on a trailer seems silly, I see why they exist. Like Thomas said, these are for the folks who don’t want to deal with a roof tent on their vehicle, or otherwise can’t install one. They’re also smaller than the typical off-road camper, while still being able to carry stuff like a camp kitchen. Oh, and you can get one for well less than $50,000.]
That’s a lot of cash for a fully-loaded trailer, but it also comes with a lot of toys. In addition to a fridge, a kitchen, and a table, it comes with a four-person tent, an annex, an awning, a water system, a lithium battery, bigger wheels and tires, and all sorts of little enhancements like tie-downs and lighting. While still an expensive proposition, it’s likely somewhat palatable to the person spending more than $50,000 on an optioned-up Rubicon and then dropping thousands more dollars on modifications.
Curiously, this trailer from ADDAX Overland is far from the first trailer designed to work well with Jeeps. Back when Willys MBs and Ford GPWs were fighting on the frontlines, troops needed quarter-ton trailers to pull behind Jeeps. Cue the American Bantam T-3 and Willys-Overland MBT trailers, simple utilitarian units designed to tow whatever cargo a Jeep needed to tow. After the war, American Bantam kept cranking out Jeep trailers for civilian use, and these civilian Bantam trailers still pop up for sale occasionally. The ultimate accessory for your CJ-2A? You decide.
As for the ADDAX Overland Jeep-branded trailer, it’s expected to start rolling out of the factory in early 2023. While it’s definitely a niche product, I could see the Jeep branding granting it collectable status in the future. Plus, overlanding is more popular than ever and definitely isn’t a trend that’s threatening to disappear. Then again, Jeep perfume and Jeep bicycles aren’t exactly collectible, so there’s every chance these trailers will be obscure Craigslist finds in 20 years or so.
Lead photo credit: Jeep
I was hoping Mercedes would chime in as the site’s resident dauphine of RVs, and she did not disappoint. Great read, as usual!
I’ve really enjoyed the coverage on cool camping trailers, but the pricing is always insane to me!
It’s time you ran an article on Space trailers: https://spacetrailers.com/
Mine would be $5k brand new even with recent price increases and weighs in at 560 lbs dry. I pull it with a Mazda5 loaded up with a 17′ canoe, four mountain bikes, and all the camping stuff we need to tent camp very comfortably, and it’s also a great platform to throw a RTT on if we want to in the future. Check out the space trailer fans page on FB to see some really cool uses and mods!
We’ve camped all over with it, used it for hauling wood, helped my mother in law move twice, etc. Worth every penny.
Super cool, and I’m for anything that encourages people to get out and explore this world, but I’m going to need some serious convincing to not laugh at that pricing. I’d check the site to try and figure out exactly what list of options you can get with 30 large, but I’m willing to bet you could find a local fabricator, hand him a check for $12,000 and tell him to build this and you’d probably end up with something just as rugged and useful.
Brand cachet certainly comes at a cost, but I think they’re banking off only building and selling a few hundred of these to some very wealthy people, and calling it a day.
I worked in MOPAR automotive glass when Jeep was just starting to put those little Jeep logos all over everything. You can’t stop a customer from making a DOT-compliant piece of glass of the right shape to match a Cherokee windshield, but you can trademark those little logos. Customers would pay 3x the price to get an OEM window with that little Willys climbing a rock in the corner.
The company that is making these (Hinckley Overlanding) has a product of their own that is very similar but costs significantly less. The premium price for Jeep-branding seems like a waste of money to me, but I suspect a lot of people will disagree with that assessment.
Came here to say thr same thing. Hinckley has been in this space for quite a while and the specs seem almost identical.
https://hinckleyoverlanding.com/trailers/
This is absurd!!
A company called Scottorn made trailers for Land Rovers in the 1970s that were powered! As well as vacuum brakes they had a convulted drie system, from a very geeky, er, well researched, Land rover forum,
The trailer drive for the trailer was a PTO that attached to the rear PTO hole on the back of the transfer box. From there two propellor shafts connected at a strut bring the drive to a coupling that passed through the rear cross-member. The trailer connects to the 101 via a male bit that fits into female receptor on the cross-member. The two are held together via a perimeter chain system. The trailer tongue is articulated to allow the trailer to pitch up and down, rotated left and right and twist clockwise and anti-clockwise in respect to the 101. This is a “treble hooks joint nose coupling”. A Scottorn Bushmaster advertisement claims that this coupling allows articulation 60 degrees in all directions. To achieve this, there are two universal joints betwen the male coupler and the solid part of the trailer tongue. Then the drive passes through a bearing, and through two more universals to get down to the differential. The differential is the same Salisbury as found on 101FCs. The tires and rims are the same too.
Four of these were used in the first unsupported east-west crossing of the Sahara in 1975, and at least two still survive, and maybe a Rubery-Owen one in Australia but after a dozen or so prototypes tha Mod gave up on the idea. I cannot imagine why.