VIDEO: Custom Production Jeeps Made Possible By Starwood Motors

We recently had the opportunity to visit Starwood Motors based in Dallas, Texas. They are responsible for a number of wild and outrageous custom Jeeps. They are also the largest custom Jeep dealer in the world.

“We are really a grown man’s toy store,” is how Chris Wortham, Marketing Director at Starwood describes the company. Starwood Motors has been in business for roughly three years, with its showroom, service and offices located in a 121,000 square-foot building and the manufacturing and parts warehouse located in a separate 60,000 square-foot building.

Originally, Starwood Motors got into the custom Jeep business because of a Jeep it had on consignment. As luck would have it, two buyers showed up within minutes of each other interested in it. Not wanting to miss a sale, the sales manager told the second buyer, it would build another identical Jeep, if he really wanted one.

Today, Starwood orders truckloads of Jeeps at a time directly from Chrysler. Unfortunately, they do take ownership, so all of its Jeeps are considered used, (with approximately 10 miles on the odometer). “We add an additional 5 year – 60,000 mile warranty to every new Jeep we build,” explains Wortham.

Shortly after receiving a shipment of new Jeeps, they create a work order for each vehicle and production starts. Initially, they strip the Jeeps all the way down and get them prepped for paint or the Starwood signature Kevlar coating.

The Kevlar coatings are “Not bulletproof; but life-proof,” said Wortham. Life-proof means the Kevlar coating will protect against, dents, dings, chips, shopping carts, branches, and the typical everyday life hazards.

At any given time, Starwood has about 30 custom Jeeps on the showroom floor with roughly 60 in various stages of build. Its most popular vehicles are what it calls “theme” builds. These feature wild options like night and/or infrared vision.

Because Starwood handles everything like a production line, it has key partnerships with Alpine, Lifted Off Road Products, and Nitto to provide packages. These packages can be added or upgraded to most offerings. These range from wheel and tire packages to audio packages to engine swaps.

In addition to building Jeeps, it also up-fits and builds customer vehicles. When we were there, Starwood was just wrapping up one it had completed for Cedar Mountain Ranch. We also happened across this very cool original 1982 Jeep CJ7 (seen above) it had on consignment. Below are just a few of Starwood’s recent hot builds.

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