30 Minutes With: The 2019 Jeep Gladiator Rubicon

The 2019 Jeep Gladiator Rubicon.

Publisher's note: Normally, the cars you read about here at TireKicker are loaned to us by the press fleets of the various manufacturers for several days. Seven is typical.  Occasionally, we'll get a longer period of time, and sometimes it'll only be three or four days.  Our "30 Minutes With" series features cars we spent half an hour driving during the just-concluded Western Automotive Journalists Media Day in Monterey, California.

Needless to say, these are quick drives and brief impressions that we hope to be able to flesh out with a full review of the vehicle at some point in the near future.

Media Days is a driving program, with journalists taking cars from the staging area at Quail Lodge in Carmel Valley over Laureles Grade and back or off-road on the acclaimed Land Rover Experience on the grounds of Quail Lodge.

Round Five of the day for me was a ride in a 2019 Jeep Gladiator Rubicon on the Land Rover Experience off-road course.

Heroism and Heritage: Jeep at the USS Hornet Sea, Air and Space Museum

2020 Jeep Gladiator at USS Hornet Sea, Air and Space Museum, Alameda, California.

Automobile ride-and-drives are a fairly common thing.  Between your local dealer's tent event, the area auto show, and manufacturers pitching a key group of potential buyers, to say nothing of press events, there's probably a ride-and-drive somewhere in America every single week, if not most days of the year.

But Jeep went all-out last week for a general public event to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the moon landing by staging an event on the very aircraft carrier that plucked the Apollo 11 astronauts out of the sea after splashdown and ferried them to dry land with a United States president on board.