As a diehard Jeep nut, I tend to get random texts from friends when they see a cool Jeep. Recently, I received a message recently from Autopian contributor and design-genius Carlos Ferreira showing a new Jeep Wrangler 4-door with its steering wheel on the right side. “Was just chatting with a gentleman parked next to me in a RHD Jeep Wrangler he bought new from a dealer. He said he had no idea why they had RHD jeeps but he got a decent discount,” Carlos wrote. “What the heck? He went into the dealership and decided to just drive on the other side of the car to save a few grand?” I thought.
This, I will admit, is a bit of a basic post, but hey, they can’t all be deep-dives. Did you know that Jeep still offers right-hand drive Wranglers for the U.S. Market? In fact, Jeep has been selling right-hand-drive Wranglers since the 2003 market launch of the Jeep Wrangler “Postal Unit” based on the Jeep Wrangler TJ.
Here’s a look at one for sale on Facebook Marketplace:
The JK followed, with right-hand drive offered only for two-door. Here’s a dirt-cheap, 300,000-mile one for sale on Cargurus — under $6000!:
By 2009, Jeep stopped offering the RHD two-door Wrangler, instead only offering four-doors. This, I would argue, is the first truly decent Jeep Wrangler postal vehicle, because let’s be honest: The tiny two-door rural mail carriers before were lacking in interior volume, as should be obvious by the huge box on the back of the white TJ shown above. Here’s a four-door 2009 Wrangler for sale on Facebook:
Still to this day, you can buy a Wrangler RHD like the one Carlos saw in that parking lot:
Here’s one for sale at Lake Elsinore Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram:
Of course, the TJ wasn’t the first postal Jeep ever, it was just the first Wrangler. The distinction of “first Postal Jeep” belongs to the CJ-3A-based DJ-3A “Dispatcher,” a two-wheel drive vehicle that hit the scene in 1955, and by the time it left the market in 1965, was the very last vehicle in the U.S. to use the Go-Devil that had become so legendary during WWII after being developed in the late 1930s.
After the DJ-3A came the DJ-5, and you know I have a special place in my heart for that vehicle:
One Jeep I think doesn’t get enough love is the one I like to consider the first truly useful Postal Jeep in that it wasn’t so dang short like the early DJs — the Alaskan CJ-8 USPS Jeep:
They’re fascinating machines, and I think it’s great that Jeep still sells the modern Wrangler in a right-hand drive configuration. Though I used to love my old DJ, that was just my fun car; would I want a right-hand drive vehicle as my daily driver? Probably not, if only because of drive-through annoyances. But I’m a cheap bastard, so enough of a discount could get me to change my mind. But how much of a discount… hmm.
Off topic, but I’m kinda surprised by the strong anti-drive through sentiment among this group.
Autopian marketing deptarment take note, you can add “strongly adverse to drive through food” to the long list of idiosyncratic traits and interests your readership can offer to potential advertising clients…
The Peterbilt garbage truck chassis that Waste Management puts whatever garbage and recycling tote-lifters and compactors on top of have steering wheels (and I assume pedals) on both sides of the cab. Problem solved. Although they are too tall to go through drive-thrus.
Besides the drive-thru issue noted in the article (I don’t trust drive-thrus, and I’m grateful that my legs still work, so I walk in to order anyway most of the time), what are the disadvantages to driving a RHD vehicle in a mainly LHD, drive on the right side of the road, country? Besides it being tougher to see if it’s safe to pass a slow vehicle on a 2-lane road, I’m trying to think of other situations where it would be disadvantageous.
Thoughts?
I think it’s more of an issue in Europe where there are more narrow city streets and winding two-lane roads on which you have to pass trucks. In the land of multi-lane freeways and wide open spaces, I don’t see much of problem other than getting tickets at a parking station
for a short while I had a JDM RHD Civic Type R and the hardest part of owning a rhd car for me was the natural inclination of your brain to stay on the left side of the road, but since you’re in an RHD vehicle your car tends to be on or over the median
About 4 years ago a RHD Corolla wagon popped up for sale with about 55k miles. I watched the price slowly drop to about $3800, if I remember correctly. Somehow I talked myself out of buying it because I was about to be out of country for a year and didn’t want to saddle my wife with a car she didnt want. I’m still both very proud of myself for somehow finding the restraint and sad that I didnt buy it.
the most jdm jeep
Considering I live in Japan… and own a built for export RHD ’98 Wrangler… yeah haha
Are these RHD Jeeps also sold in the USVI or do they still get them in LHD unless these are specifically requested?
Not only Jeep offering the RHD version for the postal delivery service, but Subaru and Saturn did.
Subaru offered the RHD Legacy from 1992 to 1999. When Saturn failed in Japan, GM started selling SWP, the RHD version of SW for postal service, from 1999 to 2001 as to “recoup” the cost of engineering the RHD version.
The best initials to go along with RHD are JDM.
You know there are many other countries that drive on the left though, right?
I recently drove a RHD Volvo several hundred miles around California and it was no big deal IMO.
I mostly work from home, but the office is in the center of town with pricey parking, so I never drive in even on days I need to be there. I have IBS, so, if I’m stopping for food on a trip, I’m also stopping to use the facilities. I do own a RHD vehicle here in the states and aside from the two times that my partner really wanted to go to the Starbucks drivethru (and once in Utah getting burritos), drivethrus don’t factor into my life. But, it’s a Jeep thing and I don’t understand when I can get a much more interesting RHD car from Japan that gets fuel mileage in the ‘yes’ category and hasn’t suffered from bean counting down to the 1/32 of a bean. AMC inline 6 and a 5-speed, though? I might pay extra.
I never use drivethrus. Park, go in, leave faster than the line.
There’s a RHD postal Jeep (a JK) in one of the small towns I commute through on my way home. I wouldn’t mind driving a RHD vehicle; I can’t remember the last time I went to a drive-through without someone in the passenger seat.
Our rural carrier never had a RHD vehicle. He was a big guy, with a long reach. He had a Ford Festiva, which he drove from the left. Just reached across, out the window to open the mailbox.
In my youth, the mail carrier drove a 1965 Fairlane from the middle of the seat.
We lived in a rural area when I was a kid and one other mail carriers just drove from the passengers seat using her left hand and foot. Now this was on mostly deserted and straight country roads, but I remember being impressed by her skill. We lived on a dead and and she would back into our driveway to turn around. She drove an early 70s GM 2 door, maybe a Chevelle of some sort?. I’m sure she must have had power steering.
I’m surprised they are getting sent over here in actual colors and not just grays and blacks.
They make them here. They are sold primarily to mail carriers.
I keep flirting with the idea of getting an MGTC, and the only made them in RHD, or wrong side drive an my MGTD driving mom would say.
Then you get a big dog to sit in the left hand seat. Or maybe one of these tiny horses? https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8o44px6/
It must be a Jeep thing because I don’t understand.
it would not really be a thing requiring a discount to purchase, though I think the options and drivetrain under it would affect a need for a Discount. Also Engine hours. Postal Jeeps spend a lot of time going slow and idling.
it’s more them being new RHD jeeps, not old postal jeeps.
outside of getting used to shifting with the left hand, I guess I would be fine with it then.
Having done a couple of vacations in Scotland driving manuals it’s actually weirdly natural, at least for me. I sit down, left hand goes on the shifter, right on the steering wheel and my brain seems to immediately understand what’s going on.
I got myself in trouble the first time because I sat down and right as my wife opened the door said “This is weird” meaning “this is weirdly natural” but she heard “I have no idea how I’m going to do this, we’re going to wreck and die”.
It’s feels natural for me, too. That’s despite living in California my entire life and being naturally right-handed. I’ve started flipping my sim rig to RHD and I love it. It’s a combination of better steering control with my right hand, and better technical control with my left. I’m a weirdo ambidextrous that uses my phone with my left hand, so maybe that has something to do with it?
I don’t know, but it makes the experience more enjoyable for me, particularly when drifting.
Agree, seemed natural, except, for some reason, finding reverse always felt weird and confusing.
My family delivered newspapers for 30 years. A handful of other carriers drove RHD vehicles but most of us just drove a LHD vehicle. We just drove down the wrong side of the road box to box for decades with no issue. It is an interesting business as AWD or 4WD is basically required to deal with the snow and snow banks from the plow trucks but vehicle costs the vast majority of the business cost. The lower cost per mile on the vehicle the more you make. My parents got out of it before hybrid SUVs were really available but that would be ideal today.
(The family paper route business started when my brother was 12. He got a single route with about 100 papers. He also got the free “weekly” paper route but that was handed off to me at the age of 10. I got my route with 100 papers at 12. Then my brother turned 16 and wanted a “REAL” job at KFC and handed off his route to me. 200 papers was about the max to do after school on a bicycle or walking pulling a sled when it snows. Then my mother picked up 3 more routes and she and I packaged them into motor route with most of the deliveries to boxes and were delivering 500 papers per day. As a 16 year old kid I was bringing in $600 a month working 2 1/2 hours per day. My parents keep the route after I went to college, my mom did it after her job as a teacher but it steadily declined and they quit when the newspaper went from daily to 3 days a week. They were in their early 60’s by then.)
Now after a trip down memory lane – an answer to the question. I can’t ever see buying a RHD car.
Man, I could go on for hours about how cool the CJ-8 World Cab top is.
ME TOO
I would absolutely buy a RHD one for the fun of it as long as it had all the seats. I don’t go through drive-thrus enough to be inconvenienced.
I don’t recall the last time I went through a drive-through for anything.
The biggest hassles would be constantly walking up the wrong door, and always trying to grab a nonexistent seatbelt from behind my left shoulder.
Pretty much the only drive through I ever go to is In-n-Out and they usually have 2 lanes. The one with the window on the driver’s right hand side usually has the shorter line so that would be a plus for me.
The bigger issue is passing cars. You can’t see if it’s safe to pass without going into the other lane. I suppose you could pass on the shoulder though
Thinking outside the box. I like it.
I love all the interesting vehicles you see delivering mail in the country. Someone out here has a JDM Honda van, there’s an obligatory old Subaru, and a Kia Soul running around as well. I think I’ve even seen a RHD Saturn delivering mail once or twice within the past few years.
I live in a small town in a rural area. Up until ~10 years ago, you still saw carriers using a lot of random vehicles, even in town, as the they had started to acquire LLVs, but only had a few at first. For years, our carrier had a RHD Saturn wagon. You’d see the RHD Jeeps occasionally, too.
Prior to this, and living outside of town growing up, my parents’ carrier always had some pile of junk car, never RHD, and probably the cheapest thing he could find (don’t blame him one bit). He’d just sit in the passenger seat/middle bench and drive from there with his left hand and foot. My favorite was a completely totaled 2000s Buick LeSabre. It had been rear-ended so hard, it was completely unrecognizable from the rear. He tacked on some working lights and ran it. IIRC, it didn’t happen on the route, he bought it that way. He used it looking like that for many years.
My good friend Justin has an almost brand new one, but he’s a mailman so it makes sense. He normally drives the MB van, but occasionally takes his Jeep for when he does the rural route through our county.
Growing up on Saturns, I heard that at one point the S-series wagon was available in RHD, again marketed to rural postal drivers. Ignites a little bit of perverse want in my heart. Though checking, they were all SW1s, not SW2s, so probably with a, what, 98hp powerplant. Not the worst for a tub of tupperware but not that 124 that my first car had.
When I was looking for my last car, I knew I wanted a Miata, and it was at least $10k for a well sorted example stateside in LHD, so I looked elsewhere, and ended up with a gorgeous NA BRG Eunos Roadster with under 100k miles, and a hardtop for $9500. Sold the hardtop for $2100, so $7400 for it seemed more than fair! I do also enjoy the RHD, and never go through drive throughs so no issue there.