Malibu SAR.
2022 Jeep Gladiator + MITS Canopy.

The Malibu Search and Rescue Team has been responding to lost hikers, injured climbers, cliff-jump rescues, and heat emergencies across the Santa Monica Mountains since 1977. They're an all-volunteer LASD unit — every member is a sworn Reserve Deputy Sheriff — and they don't charge for rescues. LASD supplies the vehicles, but the team raises its own money to outfit and equip them for actual fieldwork. They came to us with a 2022 Jeep Gladiator Mojave and a clear ask: turn it into a fast, organized, weatherproof response rig for fire-road and trailhead access across their 187 square miles of jurisdiction. The Mojave is the desert-tuned trim — factory FOX 2.5 shocks, hood scoop, reinforced front frame — so the platform was already half-set for the kind of high-speed fire-road response work they actually do. We didn't need to rebuild the suspension. We needed to give them a way to carry, organize, and deploy gear.

The big move was a MITS Alloy tray-and-canopy package — a 1765 mm tray (about 5.8 feet) with a 1500 mm canopy (about 4.9 feet) sitting behind it, both finished in black powder coat to match the truck. The canopy got the deep-style rear ladder, a roof rack on top, a left-side spare tire mount sized for 35-inch tires, and the rewire-and-camera package so the factory backup camera and rear lighting all relocate cleanly to the new tray. Inside the canopy, we fabricated custom interior dividers spec'd to organize SAR gear — medical kits, ropes, hardware, comms, the kind of stuff that needs to come out fast and go back exactly where it was. Each canopy door got a Hard Korr 2-bar tri-color LED light — white for setup, amber for low-impact work, red to preserve night vision. An ARB Twin on-board air compressor lives in the passenger-side rear tray box, hard-wired to the truck so the team can air down at a fire-road gate or air a flat back up roadside.

Up front, an ARB Deluxe Classic bumper replaces the factory unit, with a Warn Zeon 10 winch tucked behind the bull bar and an AEV trail camera relocation kit moving the Mojave's factory front-trail camera to the new bumper so the off-road visibility tool isn't lost. A Rhino-Rack Pioneer Platform sits on top of the cab on a backbone-and-leg system that intentionally preserves the Gladiator's freedom-panel removability — passengers can still drop the roof panels for an open-top ride to the call. The only suspension changes were targeted at the new load: a heavier rear sway bar to control body roll with the canopy weight up high, and Dobinsons 3-inch heavy-duty rear coils to support the canopy + gear and keep the rear sitting level. Inside the tray, a Power Cube II 50 Ah lithium power system handles charging gear, running canopy lighting, and feeding accessories during ops without ever touching the start battery. Built to respond, built to last, and built to free up donor money for the gear that actually goes on patients.