Just read a great article about the 1963-1987 Jeep Gladiator and J-Series Pickups and for those of you who love these things as much as I do, I think you'll appreciate the history lesson...
1963-1987 Jeep Gladiator and J-Series Pickups
The Gladiator, later renamed to J-series, was Jeep’s base pickup truck for many years; starting with the 1963 model year, replaced the practically un-named “Jeep Pickup Truck” (model FA-134). Kaiser Jeep created the Gladiator alongside the new Wagoneer luxury off-road wagon starting in 1959, sharing some common engineering; former Jeep engineer Bob Sheaves wrote that the first Gladiator mule came alive around May 1960, three months after the first Wagoneer, and used a live axle/Hotchkiss suspension. Some early Gladiators appear to have had an independent front suspension with the 4x4 setup, similar to Wagoneer, but Mr. Sheaves believes that few, if any, were made this way.
Read the whole article here:
http://www.allpar.com/trucks/jeep/gladiator.html
