Back when men were men, antibiotics were still effective against tuberculosis, and trucks were bouncy, uncomfortable steel boxes, your typical American four-wheel-drive vehicle had military-grade locking front hubs, and you had to get out of the toasty cab and into hip-deep frozen mud in order to switch between rear- and four-wheel-drive (while fighting off rabid wolverines, no doubt). Jeep's original Quadra-Trac full-time four-wheel-drive system changed all that, with modern Borg-Warner hardware incorporating a locking center differential into the transfer case, delivering what the text of this 1974 magazine ad calls "4-wheel drive super-traction" to the wheels.

Available on the Wagoneer, Cherokee, and Gladiator in 1974. American Motors Corporation

The artwork in this advertisement looks great, painted by hand and depicting a Gladiator-driving man encountering a strangely disembodied Quadra-Trac system just sitting in the desert. Did he load it up into his Jeep and take it home for spare parts? The story being told here seems so incomplete.

1974 Jeep Quadra-Trac magazine advertisement

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