His name is Trevor Webb, and he’s either a madman or a genius, depending upon whether you see his ridiculous creation as the most abominable Jeep Wrangler of all time or the most fuel-efficient one. Here’s how — and more importantly, why — this Minnesota-based precious metal dealer built a Jeep Wrangler TJ on a Toyota Prius unibody.
Before I get into my interview with Webb, let’s just look at this thing for a moment, because it’s a bit hard to fathom what the heck is going on. Listed on Facebook Marketplace as a “1997 Jeep wrangler S Sport Utility” with 254,000 miles on the clock, the listing’s description reads:
Started life as a 05 Prius and we cut the body off the chassis, started adding a 97 wrangler tub into it, it’s a full out Prius with the outer sheet metal of a jeep. I’d recommend shorter diameter tires, there’s a lot of lights on the dash because of so many sensors disconnected. Will trade for a 540 PTO cat 1 3 point sickle mower, hay wagon, other farm equipment.
Upon reading this, my mind melted into a pink foamy goo — not unlike a McDonald’s chicken nugget.
What do you mean you “started adding a 97 Wrangler tub into [an 05 Prius]”? That does not compute. The Prius has a unibody, and the Jeep is body-on-frame. To learn more, I reached out to Webb.
“Started with a free car and a cheap Jeep tub,” the off-road Jeep tinkerer told me. “Never got [a] title for the car after two years, so we began to process ways to use it, ran too good to part it out.”
So there was a Jeep tub and a nice-running Prius with no title. Honestly, I get it now; Webb had pretty much no choice but to build this contraption!
“I had moved some vehicles around at my place and they were side x side, then the idea came to me, I have a titled Jeep tub, a good running car with no title, here I sit watching everyone unibody swapping all kinds of stuff, so I thought hey, what a fun day, get some buddies together and build something out of our normal jeeps for rock crawling.”
That’s a heck of an undertaking, but Webb has a pole barn with a hoist, fabricating skills, and some buddies — so he figured he could pull it off.
“So I set the date, bought some meat for the smoker, a few beers, and started cutting it apart. We spent a full day cutting it apart, mocking up pieces, and spent the next two weeks making it what it is an hour or two every night after work putting around welding, removing, re-welding,” he told me over Facebook Messenger. “The tub was cut into 5 pieces basically and started hanging the parts around the car to retrofit it. I’d still say nothing is 100% done, but it’s fun to drive, gets lotsa laughs and looks.”
What’s great is that this whole project basically cost Webb nothing but time. “By the time I sold parts of value, it paid for the tub of Jeep, plus a few hundred bucks even after title transfer, so I haven’t really got. Much into it so to speak.”
As for fuel economy, Webb told me the Jeeprius gets “27-30 cruising highway,” and that if one were to put smaller tires on, he bets it “would be back to 40’s.”
Webb admits that he doesn’t have the “proper tools” to do a “quality build,” but it was all in good fun. “This started as a joke,” he told me, “then went into silly mode once the boys got involved, it took the whole day before anyone really saw my vision.”
“We are LS swapping into another Prius I’ve got soon here. Happen to have a spare 6.0, 4l80e & a narrowed 9” just sitting here.” Oh boy. I’m not sure if I’m more worried about the structural integrity of an LS-powered Prius or that of this hacked-up, roofless Jeeprius. All I know is, this is some of the finest Sawzall-engineering I’ve ever seen.
There is a whole FB group dedicated to unibody swaps. It is both impossible to unsee and to look away. The visions haunt me.
-laughs in Prangler-
Toyota engineers hate it when you do this one simple thing…
This is going to annoy so many people.
I love it.
Remember the guy that tracked down a lift kit from an Eastern European country that sorta fit a Prius, then took his over the Rubicon?
I’d love to see this one so equipped.
-I don’t have anything against Jeep people—but I do get twisted pleasure from seeing certain ‘Stan’s triggered. Not faith or politics—but car, tool, and bike Stans are funny—oh, and definitely cooler Stans. 😉
I get it, I personally love when Toyota-stans are triggered. Every once in a while, I mention wanting to LS swap my 4Runner, it really gets them going haha.
Old Landcruiser guys get it though – the LS swap is really popular for the 80 series.
I like to take crappy little cars inappropriate places. A few years back I was exploring the limits of my recently acquired Bugeye wrx, fighting my way uphill around rocks dotting the greasy mud, when I looked up to see a Serious Off-road Toyota waiting for me at the top. He had the massive angled-plane bumper & winch, bed-topper with Trax boards & shovels—then whole 9.
it wasn’t quite as steep up near them, so I found a little space to slide into, then flashed my lights for them to come on. They stared at me the whole time like I was a Martian or something. I’m thinkin, ‘What, you never seen a beater Subaru out for a Sunday drive?’, and got on the boost, throwing mud and sliding around more than strictly necessary.
Don’t know if it was my white beard & rescue Chihuahua in juxtaposition to the WRX scoop & wing—or if they just hadn’t seen someone really getting muddy in a street car, but I sure wish I had a pic of their expressions.
Jeep Wrongued or Toyota Prayers, whichever work for you, because the car won’t.
Kinda reminds me of the corvairius, a 3rd gen Prius hybrid in a corvair shell. https://www.instagram.com/corvairius?igsh=MXB6Y2VwZnd0YWp4YQ==
This looks like something Detroit David, The Most Single Man In The World would attempt. Or at least try to buy.
Tub of Jeep sounds like something you get at Costco like 20 pounds of Froot by the Foot, or the five gallon size of Armorall.
The guiding principles for the build team:
1. Hammer to fit, paint to match. Or, just skip the paint.
2. If at first you don’t succeed, get a bigger hammer.
3. A grinder and paint make the welder I ain’t.
COTD!
I should be so lucky!
I’m good with the curated COTD, but we need another one for the most up voted comment. Did my part and gave you a smiley!
That feels like it could be a very easy thing for the team to implement. If they don’t have the ability to sort by upvotes, it would probably be trivial to implement.
Cut once, measure never, grind hammer, and weld until it fits.
If it don’t fit, it will.
Brute force and ignorance works every time, two thirds of the time.
And when it doesn’t work, it wasn’t worth saving anyway!