Jeep trademarks ‘Xtreme Performance’ label—but why?

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The glue-sniffers performance fanatics at Stellantis have a knack for stuffing their vehicles with outrageous amounts of horsepower. Witness the Hellcat line and its variants, the Wrangler 392, and the Grand Cherokee Trackhawk. Now it appears we should gird our loins for the introduction of Jeep Xtreme Performance.

First spotted by outlets in America, the term (and its “JXP” acronym) was the subject of a trademark application a couple of weeks ago with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. It is reasonable to suggest this name could be intended for hi-po variants of various Jeep models, particularly the Grand Cherokee, since it was a past target for being hopped up by engineers at Auburn Hills.

The company has been open about the reality of eventually sunsetting the Hellcat project, especially in the face of upcoming electrification mandates. Anyone who has ever ridden in an EV – even a small hatchback like the Chevy Bolt – knows that electricity can easily deliver a wave of acceleration, so there’s every chance in the world that ‘Xtreme Performance’ could become part of Jeep’s 4xe repertoire. We’ll also note Jeep already uses the spellcheck-vexing ‘Xtreme’ prefix as part of its Xtreme Recon package on the Wrangler.

All the same, it’s worth remembering that car companies trademark words and phrases all the time — and not all of them see the light of day. There are occasions in which a brand will simply reserve a trademark for a project on which it is working, only to have the development scuttled thanks to budget cuts or personnel changes or because Joe ate all the cake in the boardroom again. Shrewd automakers have also been known to secure trademarks simply to flummox the efforts of a competitor, or to confuse and redirect journalists (to be fair, the latter task is pretty easy to accomplish).

In the past, Stellantis has trademarked the likes of ‘Cuda and Big Bear, monikers which would have worked a treat on the Challenger and Ram 1500 but never became part of the catalog.

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