I still don't know why I would want to leave sunny and warm California to visit Michigan in January. But that's exactly what I did. I flew in Friday night, picked up a loaner Rubicon JK four-door at the airport from the Jeep press fleet, and met up with old staffer Verne Simons at my brother's house in the Lake Orion area. Verne took a break from dissecting frogs in school and drove up from Ohio. We drank a bunch of beer and ate pizza to prepare for wheeling the next day. Oh, almost forgot to mention, I was going to be driving a diesel JK on- and off-road for nearly a week.

So we woke up Saturday morning and I hopped into the diesel JK for a short trip to the Mounds off-road park. It's a pretty sweet place when it's wet. Let's just say there was plenty of water. Several hoods were submerged. What I will tell you is that I beat on the four-door diesel JK pretty good without failure. It's a fun engine, but for now will only be available outside of the U.S. I spent most of my time in a manual transmission version. I also got behind the wheel of an automatic. For any more info you'll have to wait for the full road test write up in an upcoming issue of Jp.