THE IMPOSSIBLE JEEP TOUR

Jeeping the USA, Norwegian style

- Trenton McGee

There are many different levels of Jeep dedication, from the guys that restore old flatfenders to those that build hard-core rock crawlers with only a Jeep grille, and everything in between. There’s no question that the United States is full of Jeep enthusiasts, but almost none of us have the level of dedication to partially disassemble six Jeeps, stuff them in a single container, and ship them across the ocean to another country. But a couple of years ago a group of crazy guys from Norway did just that with five CJ-7s and a YJ. They called it The Impossible Jeep Tour (TIJT), and they have the distinction of being among the few Norwegians that have wheeled the Rubicon and Moab, in Jeeps they built at home.

We caught up with a couple members of TIJT in Moab during the Easter Jeep Safari. What first attracted our attention were the mild but well-built CJ-7s having no trouble keeping up with the JKs on 40s on several red rock trails. Then we noticed that these Jeeps had funny looking license plates, and their occupants had funny-sounding accents. After striking up a conversation with one of them, we were amazed to hear that there were a total of six Norwegian Jeeps running around Moab, and that they’d been traveling all over the Southwest for nearly a year. Easter Jeep Safari was actually the tail end of their voyage, and after the Jeep Safari they would be making their way back to California, where the Jeeps would be loaded in a container and shipped back to Norway before each vehicle’s one-year visa was up. They had quite a few stories to tell about their impossible Jeep trip to the U.S, and we were happy to hear it.