Yahoo Autos Super 8, The Hotel Chain, Unveils a Concept Jeep
If, like us, you spend weeks-if not months-out of the year on American highways and byways, you’ve no doubt faced the Super 8 conundrum, which shakes out about like this: “The Motel 6 is booked. Do I spend 20 bucks more for a Super 8 that will be the same or worse, or do I drop the extra 40 for a Fairfield Inn, which at least feels like something akin to a real hotel?” The sole exception to this, in our experience, is the Super 8 in Ozona, Texas, which is bizarrely nice. The weirdness doubles, given its location in a nowhere town between El Paso and San Antonio. The Ozonan outlier aside, Super 8 management, apparently, has seen fit to do something about this long-standing issue and is launching a companywide remodeling of its motels. The company revealed a concept Jeep Wrangler to commemorate the initiative (and, no, it’s not an April Fools’ joke). There’s just one issue. It’s perhaps a tad overly exuberant.
In the quest to highlight the brand’s new image, Super 8 threw the entire economy enchilada at what it’s calling the RoadM8, a JK-spec Jeep Wrangler Unlimited slathered in yellow and red. The color scheme brings to mind not the motel chain, but rather a child’s attempt at drawing Ronald McDonald’s automobile. The Wrangler isn’t lifted-after all, it’s not the Off-RoadM8-but it does carry a burly suite of eight auxiliary lights mounted above the windshield.
Inside, the seats are upholstered with Super 8’s new bedspread material, which is certainly an improvement over the familiar ’90s-palette spreads that have populated the joints since what seems like time immemorial. The Wrangler’s interior also gets wood accents that match the rooms’ new interior furnishings. Tablets mounted on the headrests presumably stand in for flat-screen televisions. Perhaps most important, the RoadM8’s interior includes both a fridge and a coffeemaker. The Bentley Bentayga Fly Fishing by Mulliner may come with fine china, but the chaps in Crewe neglected to include a Mr. Coffee.
Under the hood, the Jeep’s engine cover gets a Super 8 paint job, while the underside of the hood wears an example of the chain’s new-look wall art. The RoadM8, resplendent in its questionable garb, recently bowed at the New York auto show. Curiously, there are no Super 8s on the island of Manhattan. The chain’s closest motel to the Javits Center lies nearly four miles away, across the Hudson in North Bergen, New Jersey. Which, admittedly, is within handy Jeeping distance.
Ungainly as it is, there’s a friendly mien to the RoadM8. It doesn’t take itself too seriously, and we oddly appreciate its slapdash wonkiness. How could one be mad at it? It’s a goofy Jeep, and goofy Jeeps are inherently friendly. Maybe it’s not imbued with the level of refinement a custom-automobile connoisseur might hope for, but like a room with a bed and a coffeemaker somewhere on the Great Plains, it exists.
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