Apocalypse 6x6 Review: Driving The Insane Hellcat-Swapped Jeep Gladiator Conversion

[Music] michael van gaal here for hotcars.com here in fort lauderdale florida with this insane jeep-faced apocalypse 6x6 now you might have seen one of these recently on jay leno's garage but jay only got to drive the corvette ls three swapped one this one has a 750 horsepower hellcat hemi it'll run you 150 to 200 grand from a company called apocalypse 6x6 sort of in partnership with soflow jeeps here in fort lauderdale it's got the 6x6 conversion the hemi hellcat it's got an infrared camera on top that allows for thermal imaging on a center mounted custom console and automatic running boards so let's hop behind the wheel i'll walk you through all the mechanical and custom modifications that make this thing drive almost like a brand new truck for now please like this video and subscribe to our channel it really helps us out [Music] now joe when he started soflow jeeps he really thought that he was just going to be doing like 20 to 25 000 jeep builds but the customer base wanted more and that led to the apocalypse 6x6 eventually he's also done a 6x6 mercedes g-wagon he's done the 6x6 t-rex now he's actually on his third one of those these things are aggressive to the point of being cartoonish but the build quality speaks for itself and they're shipping them all over the world this is the first apocalypse 6x6 to be finished in this shade of white that exterior paint is a kevlar linex liner that they add a little bit of extra uv protection to and it gives it great texture and they told me it's super durable they actually showed me in the shop a tailgate that someone had totally dinged up and though the tailgate itself was dented you literally could not see any damage to the line-x paint so that means that the exterior is pretty durable if you do take it off-roading and you happen to hit any branches or bushes and get some of the desert pinstripes that probably won't happen because this stuff is tough you've got the custom hood design that's fiberglass you've got the custom fender flares the windshield cowl the massive trunk extension that's really a truck bed with the angular sort of cabin cover which is actually pretty cool it rolls up it's metal covered in leather and they keep a little strap so you can pull it down for yourself when you want to close it the truck bed is now almost eight feet long which is really what jeep should have done with the gladiator from the factory it's kind of surprising that they haven't done a two-door gladiator with a long bed because that would be crazy popular with the overland community the problem with the five-foot bed that's currently on the gladiator is even with the tailgate down it's really not long enough for comfortable sleeping so this thing's got an eight-foot bed and joe plans to crank out an apocalypse 6x6 over landing build soon with a toilet with ac with solar panels a big box and it's got a full sleeping compartment as well for a full-size adult the infrared camera is pretty crazy it's actually developed for marine use for fishing but what they've done is mounted it on the roof turned it over it's still got titanium screws it's got salt waterproof casing and all that so it's gonna be durable it's got multiple different settings to display the infrared thermal imaging it can see up to three miles it works a lot better at night during the day but you can turn it around 360 degrees with this little control viewfinder so you might be able to see maybe like the roof it tells you what degree angle you can go up down and side to side and you can choose the different colors that you want to see by sort of toggling between them here it's a pretty cool feature in this aftermarket 12.1 inch touchscreen that they also add and allows you to do the climate control this screen video music bluetooth all your usual setups unfortunately you lose some of the jeep aftermarket trail systems but you can download apps to this screen to sort of make up for that the interior however still feels very gladiator even though it's been totally upgraded with this quilted leather all over the place white stitching even the removable hard tops have gotten some quilted leather this is marine grade leather which should hopefully help it stand up to the thrashing that some apocalypse 6x6 owners might give their trucks soflow jeep started off modifying cheap wranglers but now bases the 6x6 on the gladiator and the owner joe explained to me that part of the reason that that's great other than the stretch chassis is that the gladiator comes from the factory with dana 44's front and rear whereas the wrangler base wrangler comes with dana 30s and 40s which aren't as beefy now apocalypse 6x6 then heavily modifies the drivetrain it's got a ram 3500 8-speed automatic a gladiator rubicon transfer case that allows you to choose between sending all those 750 horsepower to the rear four wheels or all six you can't just choose two of the rear four wheels now the transfer case then sends power to a trix center axle that soflo jeeps and apocalypse 6x6 designed and engineer themselves that basically takes a four to nine inch rear end and puts another prop shaft leading to the trailing third axle so that you can send power to all six wheels the total extension is four inches of stretch from the front axle to the second axle and then another 41 inches to the third axle which allows for 40 inch tires which if you do the math one inch of space but they can still articulate really well because they've got a hardcore suspension set up and they're basically solid axles working in tandem there's someone filming me right now as i'm filming myself very inception those 40 inch tires are the maxed out they're 15 and a half inches wide it's got 5.55 gearing in the differentials which really helps route all that power to the ground because you don't want taller gears with such massive 40 inch tires let's give it one serious punch here [Music] now you can feel it searching for a little bit of traction but what do you expect this thing is massive i wonder if putting it into six wheel drive and just burning out with all six tires would be better but i don't really want to thrash this thing as hard as i can this is a about a two hundred thousand dollar build the base rubicon with everything done here starts at 195. add on another five grand for the hemi hellcat as opposed to the ls3 corvette v8 the rear view mirror does take some getting used to because it's a camera that's fixed and you can't sort of move like this to change the angle it's just going to show you the same thing but otherwise yeah it's got a three inch lift the suspension is actually stock gladiator springs at the rear there's just four of them and it's an evo spring at the front despite how ginormous this thing looks it's really only got a three inch lift over the factory ride height and that's only one inch more than if you had the mopar factory installed two inch lift which makes a huge difference on the normal gladiator it's got custom fab control arms and brackets that allow it to maintain optimal steering geometry and camber and caster and honestly it drives like it's pretty much new part of that is because when they dropped in the hellcat engine they had to move around some of the accessories in the engine bay including deleting the electric power steering so this is real hydraulic based pump based power steering and it feels pretty good it's amazingly light for such huge wide tires and it really contributes to the feeling that this truck may have been factory original like this so here we are in some dirt you can hear some of my camera gear rattling around but really it feels pretty steady these are actually big bumps even though they don't look that big from this camera angle i imagine but this thing just eats it up yeah you can feel a little bit you can definitely tell that there's a little bit more weight at the rear but then again a normal gladiator almost feels too light at the rear sometimes unless you're going up a steep hill and that's helping to push the bed downward now let's check out the turning radius they've extended this truck by a fair amount but you'll notice that at the tailgate it's really not extended that much because they chop the bed twice so the turning radius here is actually pretty good and it's actually shorter hanging off the rear tires than it would be if it was still a factory bed and that allows for an even better departure angle here we are going through a couple more bumps you can see it's moving around a little bit but if i punch it it just sort of glides over it all those falcon mono tube shocks do a pretty good job though i would prefer probably the fox remote reservoir setup just because i know that that would make this a little bit smoother and give it a little bit more ability to sort of soften it up it's definitely got plenty of power that hellcat has been tuned it's crate engine from mopar but it has been tuned they say it's putting out 750 horsepower at least they don't have a torque figure because they can't put this thing on a dyno because no one has a six-wheel dino but without a doubt when you step on it [Music] it's got plenty of get up and go the transmission is an eight speed source from a ram 3500 so that's beefed up much more than what would be in a gladiator stock which was an eight speed also made it to the rubicon's transfer case four wheel drive which is why this one is sort of a special build for the middle eastern clientele it still has front and rear lockers the rear lockers do lock both rear differentials so all four of those wheels are going to be spinning now you'll see i'm in here looking around because it's very hard to see stop lights when you've got this windshield cowl a jeep gladiator's visibility is already pretty bad and with the back window completely blocked and this windshield cowl it's only worse especially for stops stop signs and stop lights and i end up hunching over quite a little bit that's not great but the whole point is for it to look sick from the outside and they've already designed a new windshield cowl that's going to be made out of fiberglass and hopefully save about 200 pounds of weight up high and it's gonna have better visibility so next up let's see how this thing drives on the freeway i'm gonna merge onto a freeway here in fort lauderdale hopefully there's not too much traffic and i can open it up a little bit more [Music] just listen to that supercharger one i don't think i've ever driven a supercharged car before and i have to say i enjoy it i had a turbo tt for a while and i love the turbo spooling up on that this is just so much more linear the power is direct and immediate but really what's impressive here we are we're going 65 it's not the quietest car in the world yeah there's some wind noise what do you expect and it does drive like a truck but it doesn't drive like a crappy truck or one that's been messed with extensively and had its steering geometry totally ruined you can let go of the steering wheel it tracks perfectly straight it has good feedback even if it's a little light from the hydraulic power steering which i obviously prefer to electric power steering but it's really it's perfectly civilized it's not as aggressive as it looks and that's a huge selling point for soflo jeeps and apocalypse 6x6 even though the whole point is to look super aggressive the customer base is going to be wider if it's a comfortable luxury vehicle to drive in town which of course is where most of these are going to be driven i'm really glad i got a chance to drive one of these things it's really a very unique experience i would like to take one out in the desert and see how it does it's awesome to see a custom build with this kind of build quality and to see how well it drives i hope you learned something i hope you enjoyed watching it as much as i enjoyed driving this thing thank you and once again as always please like this video and subscribe to our channel it really helps us out [Music] you

Channel: HotCars

Views: 45,652

Keywords: Jeep, Gladiator, Pickups, Apocalypse6x6

Id: TE0GV6ufejI

Length: 13min 51sec (831 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 19 2021