A guide to Jeep’s Easter Safari concepts

Easter brings with it several things. Chocolate eggs and a few welcome days off work should be familiar to many of us. But for off-roading enthusiasts near Utah, it means the Easter Jeep Safari.

The clue's in the name, really: it's a shedload of Jeeps scrambling across Moab scenery, while the company brings along some official concepts to titillate those present.

This Easter sees the 49th safari take place, and some of the most titillating concepts of the lot, our highlights all Wrangler-based.

First up, our favourite, the blue and white Jeep Chief, a homage to the original, 1970s Jeep Cherokee. There's chrome and knobbly tyres in abundance, while a 3.6-litre V6 engine provides drive through a manual gearbox.

Its interior daubings are best described as ‘eye-catching', but it certainly ain't dull inside, and its retro stylings are brought up to date with an 8.4in touchscreen media system.

Coming a close second is the Red Rock Responder. It lives up to its quite brilliant name with a hugely eye-grabbing body. And it's all with practicality in mind, its hindquarters full to the brim with tools, spares and emergency equipment, making it primed and ready for wildly off-piste car maintenance. A nice big V6 puts in service here, too.

Other highlights include the fairly open-plan Jeep Staff Car, based on a modern-day Wrangler and giving a very unsubtle nod to the company's military service vehicles of old, and the Wrangler Africa, which has heavily bulked-up mechanicals and a diesel automatic drivetrain to yield stress-free off-road expeditions.

As Jeep's production models sway closer towards big-selling road-biased crossovers (*cough*, Renegade), it's good to know it still has a command of the heritage that built its name up in the first place. Now for some production versions, please...