Watch out Ford.
The battle for off-road supremacy between Ford and Jeep has been raging for years, but has become especially heated since the launch of the highly anticipated Ford Bronco. The Bronco takes the fight to one of America’s most loved 4x4s, the Jeep Wrangler, and since the launch of the tough new Ford, both brands have been trying to outdo each other. The latest battle has to do with doors, and it’s more complicated than it sounds.
Both the Bronco and the Wrangler are offered with half doors, and Ford is currently leading the way with its intuitive designs, but a recent Jeep patent uncovered by The Drive has revealed that Wrangler owners might be in for a treat once denied to Bronco driver’s: the donut door.
When the Ford Bronco was first revealed, fans went wild for the cool-looking donut doors, but to our disgust, they never made their way into production. What’s Ford’s loss, could now become a major win for Jeep, as it has just published a patent for its own set of donut doors for the Wrangler. It turns out that the FCA (now Stellantis) has had the concept in mind for over three years now. The patent, simply labeled “Automobile”, shows a few aesthetic drawings of the donut doors without even mentioning the word “door”. The only real description we get is “the ornamental design for an automobile, as shown and described.”
The last time we got a taste of donut doors on a Jeep product was when the company presented the JL-body truck in 2018 with the eye-catching feature, but, as with the Bronco, they never made it into production. The doors spotted in the patent documents look different to the ones featured on the JL-body, but as it is a design patent, we can expect future Wranglers with these doors to share a very similar look.
The fact that Jeep has been toying with the idea of donut doors for so long is a promising sign, especially now that the rivalry between the Wrangler and Bronco is so heated. The first one to deliver these cool-looking door designs will surely win over a lot of fans.
