Of course, there are plenty of car enthusiasts out there who were aware of Jeep Easter eggs, but we’re glad that more people are finding out about this fun bit of auto-lore.
Joel Feder explains in a piece on Motor Authority when Jeep started putting various awesome Easter eggs into their cars. The person behind the first hidden secrets is Michael Santoro who worked on the 1997 Jeep Wrangler TJ.
Here’s a video that goes into detail about Jeep Easter eggs
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He had a limited budget of 150 million dollars to redesign the new Jeep and according to him, back in the ‘90s that sort of budget was “like coffee money.” So he wanted to make something iconic and leave his mark with the limited funds that he had.
“Jeep owns that seven grille bar theme. And if you look at the cowl of the Wrangler, I repeated that pattern in the cowl to let air into the interior of the car,” Santoro said. That was the very first Jeep Easter egg and others, including the animal and symbol imprints, have popped up ever since!