If a tree crushed the top of your Jeep Liberty, what would you do? Chuck it and move on with your life, or lop off what remains of the roof and create the backyard equivalent of a modern Jeepster?
It’s fair to assume many would take the easy way out, but a dude by the name of Total_Offroad_Steve on Reddit is braver than most. He’s already sliced the roof off his Liberty, leaving the unibody SUV with a free-standing windshield and nothing else.
Steve’s creation was discovered out in the wild about a week ago, prompting the full explanation you can see and hear below. His aim is to install a rollcage to plug into where the pillars normally would begin and run all the way back to the tailgate. (Good idea.—ED) It should look pretty damn cool when all is said and done.
For now though, the Liberty is completely topless, which has reasonably produced a degree of concern in the responses to Steve’s work over at the r/shitty_car_mods subreddit. Given that the Liberty isn’t a body-on-frame SUV, the roof happens to be kinda important to the vehicle’s overall structural integrity. Without it, it stands the risk of collapsing on itself. Oh, and the lack of any occupant protection at all makes it a deathtrap in another way.
Many eagle-eyed readers also noticed the presence of a child seat base in the second-row, inciting yet more alarm that a kid was potentially being driven around in this thing in its current state. Steve thankfully confirmed that wasn’t the case — the base just happened to be in there at the time he cut the roof off.
If all goes according to plan, this Liberty will be roadworthy again. “I’m not trying to finish this thing to be anything nice,” he cautions in the video. But whatever Steve does make of it will probably end up looking far cooler than your standard Liberty. Hell, the combination of chunky tires, no roof and that front fascia is vaguely reminiscent of that 1998 Jeepster concept that regrettably never got produced. Good luck, Steve — just, maybe don’t take it out on the road too often before the work is done.