Someone Spent Lots Of Money Turning A Worthless Postal Jeep Into A Hotrod With An Amazing Name

I was once the proud owner of a 1970s Postal Jeep. I bought the thing for $500, spent hundreds of hours and a few thousand dollars fixing it, and then sold it for $2000. Postal Jeeps are worthless, but that didn’t stop this person from turning one into a hotrod with the greatest name I’ve ever seen.

It’s called “Low Priority,” a play on the United States Postal Service’s “Priority Mail” and the vehicle’s suspension, which has the body sitting down low — it’s genius, really.

Not so genius, at least financially, is dropping heavy coin on a Postal Jeep. The average person used to be able to buy one at the post office for $300, and the machine’s value hasn’t exactly climbed since then. The Postal Jeep’s problem is that it’s only two-wheel drive, so it’s not exactly attractive to off-road folks. It’s also extremely tall and narrow, making daily-driving it a bit scary for some folks, plus they offer pretty much zero crashworthiness, they’re loud, and I could go on and on.

I daily-drove mine for a while after taking it on a 4,000-mile road trip from Michigan to Utah and back. I found the ride rather comfortable, and had no issue with the handling or any of that (but I have low, low standards). What’s more, the AMC straight-six motor was a tank, and the Chrysler 727 never gave me any guff (at least, not on-road). I loved that Jeep.

But my machine doesn’t hold a candle to the 1974 Jeep DJ5 Mail Jeep, named “Low Priority,” for sale in Florida right now for $25,990 or best offer. The amount of effort that went into this machine — the attention to detail — is mind-blowing. For one, under the hood remains the standard inline-six you’d expect in a 1974 Jeep DJ-5D Dispatcher, except it has been thoroughly modified:

Look at that turbocharger! This turbo required the relocation of the air cleaner from atop the intake manifold to the front left corner of the engine bay (as viewed from the driver’s seat). You can see the air cleaner sticking out of the hood:

Also worth noting is the round fenders, which replaced the more squared-off ones that the vehicle would have left the Studebaker factory in South Bend, Indiana with. (Fenders shared with the Jeep CJ-5 and military M38a1). I’m assuming these fenders were formed to fit the front wheels, which sit much higher relative to the body due to the slammed suspension.

speaking of, also shown in that engine-bay photo is an independent front suspension. Typically, a postal Jeep has a leaf-sprung dead-axle up front — just a giant cast iron tube with C’s welded to each end to receive the steering knuckles. It’s literally the simplest suspension of all time.

This Postal Jeep, though, has an independent front suspension from a Ford Mustang II, and it’s got a rack-and-pinion steering setup over the old-school, wander-y steering box that made my cross-country drive across America so “exciting.” What’s more, Low Priority has an “Airmaxxx” air-ride system that lets you raise and lower the vehicle.

Out back, there appears to still be a solid rear axle, and, like the front, it’s bagged instead of leaf-sprung. You can see under the rear floor just how high the modified frame rails come up into the Jeep to allow the vehicle to sit so low, plus you can see air tank and some of the links in the triangulated four-link rear suspension:

Here’s a look underneath:

Because the frame has to sit so high in the body, and because that big air tank has to sit somewhere, the rear of the Postal Jeep loses quite a bit of storage space, and that’s all been closed out with a big red box:

While we’re looking inside, check out the front of the cabin, which has been painted red and tan, decorated with some elegant but simple red seats, and adorned with a chrome steering wheel:

The whole thing is just bonkers, and I love the fact that the builder kept lots of Postal Jeep features, like the inline-six engine, the “LOOK BEFORE BACKING” dash sticker, the ridiculous side mirror, and even the cabin-cooling fan:

But above all, I just love that name:

All images: eBay/sofloclassics