Rough And Ready Rubicon

The four-door JK Rubicon is incredibly popular for a damn good reason.

- Dan Everett

4 WHEEL drives are all somewhat versatile, but they still tend to fall into certain niches depending on the gear you fit to them. Want to travel to the ends of the earth and back? A two-inch lift and some 32s will be bang on for that job. Aiming to take on the toughest tracks you can point your winch at? How about a set of 37s and enough lift to see you looking down on most yank-tanks like they’re little city runabouts?

In a dream world we’d all have Jay Leno-style garages with a different 4x4 for every day of the week. After all, you’re not going to punt a stock Navara through six stages without days of winching, and you’re not weaving your way through Cape York looking for remote campsites with an eight-inch-lifted Patrol. So, what’s a man to do when he wants it all? If you’re anything like Bill, you buy a Jeep.

If you’ve had your head in the sand, you might not have noticed how incredibly popular Jeep’s four-door JK is. Put simply, they’re one of the most popular 4x4s on the tracks right now, and it’s down to their sheer versatility.

“I’ve had a few different 4x4s, from stock to highly modified,” Bill told us. “But I wanted something that could do all of it. The only option was a Rubicon.”

Off the showroom floor, the Rubicon picks up a beefier front axle than the Sport model, as well as lower case gearing and a heap of trick off-road gear like rock sliders and an electronically disconnecting front swaybar. While some might be happy with a spec sheet like that, Bill figured he could do better and had the guys from Double Black Offroad (DBOR) go right through the Jeep from front to back before the dealer had even screwed the plates on.