For the first time, the New York Auto Show has dueling off-road courses outside, standing side by side. In the more visible place, where you can rise up well above street level, is the Camp Jeep setup. When it’s not raining, the massive hill provides a good view of the surrounding city—not as good as it used to before the old taxi garages and open-air parking lots were replaced by skyscrapers, admittedly.
Ford is tucked away into the corner, with part of their setup underground. They appear to only be running Broncos, while Jeep had a variety of vehicles. Their tall artificial hill barely rose above street level, and was largely hidden by bushes from the main drag outside.
During our time at the New York AutoShow, both courses were running despite the rain, but neither company was using their tall roller-coaster-like devices. Jeep’s has apparently grown since prior years, but a Grand Cherokee parked in its path made it clear nobody was using it in the rain. There are good reasons for this—both ramps are made of steel, and while you can get up to the top in a Jeep, coming back down might be a little less controlled than desired. So for safety reasons, they shut down in the rain.
The Bronco exhibit did make up for somewhat lesser size and fewer thrills by having one part where the driver slammed down on the throttle, making a fine roar (without much visible acceleration) before hitting a mildly loose obstacle. They were clever enough to have the metal barriers make a good deal of noise, and the people demonstration weren’t in a big hurry to make each trip fast—they showed off features (like disconnecting sway bars) the Jeep folk just mentioned. The various obstacles for the Bronco didn’t seem as impressive as the Jeep ones, save for the smaller one shown to the right of the blue Bronco—see the video for more—but they made more of what they had. (Don’t take our word for it—got to the show and find out for yourself.)
Jeep was not actually inside the building despite Ford’s huge presence, but at least they still have Camp Jeep outside it.
