Behind the Design: Jeep’s Taylor Langhals

Jeep Gladiator designer Taylor Langhals spent at least two weeks in Queenstown (above) and Wanaka. Photo: Jeep

Jeep held a global launch for the Gladiator ute around Queenstown and Wanaka in early December last year, and its exterior designer, Taylor Langhals, spent at least two weeks in New Zealand’s most picturesque area.

During his time, he got to see parts of the South Island not even Kiwis can access, and slept under a glacier in the Gladiator model Wayout that had a pop up tent on a special railing.

During his time he was inspired by the beauty of the landscape, and as Jeep employees are only now heading back to work in Detroit after lockdown, I’d suggest that he probably would have preferred to stay in New Zealand!

But Langhals is truly a Jeep man. His father, grandfather and great-grandfather – plus an uncle – spent their entire careers working at various Fiat Chrysler Association (FCA) Toledo plants, in Ohio, where Jeeps are built.

The Gladiator ute isn’t just a Wrangler with a tray on the back. Photo: Jeep

“I always loved to draw. Obviously, I grew up around Jeep. Ever since I was a little kid we’d go to the father-son car shows at the plant. When my mom was on maternity leave with my sister she’d take me every day to the plant. I’d go sit inside and wait for my dad to come out almost every single day,” Langhals told the Toledo Blade newspaper.

Somewhere along the way, he said, ... “someone told me, ‘hey, if you really love to draw you can make a career out of it.’”

After high school he went to the College for Creative Studies in Detroit and studied auto design. He interned at Jeep and afterward went to work for FCA North America.

Langhals has been with FCA for six years, the last four spent designing the Gladiator’s exterior — a plum assignment.

“Everybody’s been wanting this thing since the Comanche quit running in ’92. Everyone’s been begging for a Jeep [ute],” he told the Toledo Blade.

The Jeep Gladiator, like the Wrangler, comes with a fold-down canvas roof. Photo: Jeep

Designing the Gladiator wasn’t a matter of taking the existing Wrangler and sticking a [ute] bed on it.

“For me, I like to take my inspiration from the lifestyle that we're designing for,” Langhals said.

“I'm a big dirt bike guy. I needed something to support my lifestyle and I think a lot of people's lifestyles. So we wanted to create a lifestyle vehicle and I think this is it.”

The Gladiator is for transporting dirt bikes to the trails, towing a boat and caravan or heading to the ski slopes, the designer said.

Langhals drew inspiration from a variety of sources.

“We studied hinges on ski boots and that helped us design the hinges you see on the hood,” Langhals told the Toledo Blade.

The Jeep Gladiator ute is designer to go off-road, like around the wilds of Wanaka (above). Photo: Jeep

“We have a whole collection of ski boots in the studio and I would just kind of sketch around those things.”

Dirt bikes gave him the idea to put imprints in the front wall of the truck bed to indicate where bike wheels should go.

As for the whole vehicle's profile: “It was creating an unmistakable and iconic silhouette that's instantly identifiable not only as a Jeep, but also a truck so at a glance, when people see it driving by, they're going to recognise it right away,” Langhals said.

“That’s the big thing we wanted to accomplish here and I think we did. There’s no other truck in this building that looks like this,” he told the Toledo Blade.

Like the Wrangler, the Gladiator’s top and doors are removable, and the windshield folds down.

The tailgate-opening hatch measures 1270mm across because that will accommodate the widest snowmobile you can buy. “And that’s the one I have,” Langhals told Autocar UK.

Snowmobiles, dirt bikes, mountain bikes, fishing gear, camping gear, outdoor stuff, pulling boats: that’s the point of the Gladiator. 

Jeep’s Taylor Langhals got to experience amazing parts of the South Island. Photo: Jeep

“It’s not only just a rugged Jeep, it’s fully functional. It’ll tow your house down,” Langhals said.

And it also has something else, a unique Toledo signature that Langhals was inspired to incorporate into the [ute] bed — a small imprint that has a heart followed by the numbers “419” for the Toledo area code.

“It's on every single bed. That's a tribute to Toledo and to each of the employees who worked there over the years, like my father,” Langhals told the Toledo Blade.

The Jeep Gladiator goes on sale in New Zealand in August with prices to be announced closer to the date.