Bruce Wayne Would Never Drive a Jeep Renegade, Goddamn It

ALL-CAPS FANBOY RAGE!!!

byWill Sabel Courtney|
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In celebration of their enormous product placement deal with Warner Brothers for the upcoming superhero slugfest / future legal precedent Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Fiat Chrysler America is releasing a special-edition Jeep Renegade called...wait for it...the Dawn of Justice Special Edition. (Italics theirs, not mine.)

It’s not bad-looking for a movie tie-in special edition; the Dawn of Justice Renegade is basically a murdered-out Renegade Latitude, with exclusive black paint, black wheels, and a ton of black trim scattered across the interior. But, as a die-hard DC Comics fanboy, it pisses me off. Not because of the car itself—whatever, really—but because of the advertising campaign.

See, Jeep’s new ad for the Renegade Dawn of Justice features a lot of dramatic shots, culled straight from Batman v Superman, of Ben Affleck’s Bruce Wayne dodging flaming rubble in a Renegade. Which means that, in the film, Batman will be rushing off to save the day...in a $26,250 Jeep cute-ute.

No. No no no no no no no no.

No.

This isn’t a slight against the Renegade. I like the Renegade. It’s got good looks and an eager turbo four. But Bruce Wayne—the goddamn Batman himself—would not drive one. Look, the man goes through the world in two ways: either he’s Batman, who drives the goddamn Batmobile, or he’s a playing at his cover of billionaire playboy philanthropist. Billionaire playboy philanthropists don’t drive Jeep Renegades, they feed them to their six-wheeled Mercedes-AMG G63 wagons.

“But Will,” some of my fellow superhero fans would argue, “Batman does whatever it takes to save lives and fight crime! He’ll use whatever tools he has to in order to get the job done. If that means driving a Jeep, he’d do it!”

True, Bruce Wayne’s iron will and determination to fight evil makes him an amazing character. But part of the mystique that makes Batman more than just a ninja-trained WASP in a million-dollar Halloween costume is that he’s always prepared. Batman has contingencies for his contingencies. That’s how he’s able to hold his own against metahumans on Superman or Wonder Woman’s level. He out-thinks and out-prepares everyone. He is the Bobby Fischer of superheroes, and crime-fighting is his chess.

Bruce Wayne would never let himself be placed in a situation where his only way to get where he needs to go would be a Jeep that he seemingly commandeered from a security guard (there’s an amber security light on top). He’d have one of his personal civilian cars—his Lamborghini Aventador, his Bentley Arnage, his Aston Martin DB2/4 Mk. 3—close at hand, probably summonable via remote control. Or he’d have the Batmobile hidden nearby in a shipping container, or the Batpod in the belly of his corporate jet, or the Batwing awaiting remote commands in a clearing in the forest nearby. At the very least, he’d have his dope MV Agusta F4 1078 nearby, which, let’s face it, is a lot better for maneuvering through falling debris than a Fiat-based four-by-four.

But he would not drive a Renegade.

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