The Jeep CJ-8 is most famous for being the first “Wrangler pickup,” even though there are two significant flaws in that designation. First, the CJ-8 was built long before the Wrangler name debuted (in 1987), and second, it was not a de jure pickup but primarily an extension of the existing CJ-7 into something similar to International Harvester‘s Scout pickup: an SUV with a mutated open bed at the back.

That’s because AMC, who owned Jeep in the 1970s, didn’t quite have the resources to create a full pickup out of the CJ-7, and also didn’t want to risk cannibalizing sales of the larger J-series trucks. Still, they recognized that small imported pickups were popular, that those Japanese trucks were already making inroads with off-road fans, and that the brand, like parent company AMC, was in desperate need of new and popular models.

Jeep management were already aware of modified Japanese trucks taking to the dunes, but AMC immetiately took notice when Toyota launched a 4WD pickup in 1979. That truck ended up being popular with exactly the kinds of buyers who bought CJs.

Still, AMC was skeptical about trying to build larger CJs because it had been burned by such a vehicle in the past. In nearly 20 years of offering the long-wheelbased CJ-6, introduced in 1955, that Jeep had only sold about about 50,000 units in the U.S. market before AMC decided to make it export-only in 1975. The old CJ-6 wasn’t a pickup, but did offer a hugely useful load area on the basic CJ platform — it just didn’t click with U.S. buyers. It did better overseas, hence its transition to an export model, but the pattern suggested Americans just weren’t interested in bigger CJs.

El Gaucho

When a California dealer, Brian Chuchua Jeep in Placentia, began customizing CJs into a pickup called the Gaucho in the 70s, it proved that there was a market for such a vehicle. The Gaucho chopped a CJ into a short cab and added a fiberglass stepside bed that looked a little like a very similar bed offered on the then-current Chevrolet C/K “Square body” trucks. The bed may even have been partly copied from the GM pickups.

That full conversion was too expensive for cash-strapped AMC to justify in volume production, but until a proper small pickup could be developed (and they were working on one), AMC could use the parts bin to make a factory equivalent to the Gaucho that went most of the way to replicating it but kept production costs low.

To do this, AMC stretched a CJ-7 — adding ten inches in wheelbase and two feet additional overall length and created a shortened version of the CJ-7 hardtop to create the CJ-8 for 1981.

The added rear overhang and close-cropped hardtop made it look and feel like a small pickup with all of the regular attributes of the very popular CJ series, then sold as the CJ-5 and CJ-7, even if it did not have a conventional separate bed.

The CJ-8 also borrowed all of its mechanical pieces (four and six cylinder engines, transmissions, transfer cases, running gear) from the other CJs, though curiously it was not offered with the 304 V8 from the CJ-7 though it would have been a natural fit.

The CJ-8 Scrambler

Almost immediately an appearance package was added — the Scrambler — with stripes and accents on the more well-optioned Scramblers.

The package was so popular that most CJ-8s are referred to as Scramblers, even though not all of them were so equipped, and some of have been modified and repainted since. Many Scramblers were a canvas for personal tastes, just like many Wranglers are today.

In time, you could also get a full-length hardtop for the CJ-8 making it a very capacious SUV with the top on. There was also a full-bodied, all-steel CJ-8 SUV built for the US Postal Service for use in Alaska (and for export), which is one of the very rarest CJ-series Jeeps.

But the CJ-8, as cool as it is today, was largely unappreciated in its day, selling 8,355 units in its first year and steadily declining after that. It was offered into early 1986, with 27,792 sold overall, before being replaced by the Cherokee-based Comanche, which was the proper smaller pickup Jeep had been working on for much of the CJ-8’s lifespan.

Later on, Jeep fans came to love what they’d largely passed over, and the CJ-8 is a highly collectible machine today. Jeep has also repeatedly capitalized on the same concept, with the modern Gladiator and a steady series of concept cars that resemble the two-door Scrambler.