One Spokane driver received a surprise 65 million years in the making after taking a closer look at their newly purchased vehicle’s history report. Doug Rogers was initially satisfied with the certified pre-owned Jeep he purchased at Goldblum Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram, but soon started noticing some unusual mechanical and cosmetic issues with the 1992 Wrangler YJ Sahara model.
Up until this point, the Wrangler had been the ideal companion for Roger’s weekend excursions, with its open-air design giving him the perfect opportunity to display what he calls his hard-earned “gains” to every woman he passed. It was on his way back from shopping for the perfect spare tire cover (“I wanted Calvin peeing on a Land Rover, which itself is peeing on a Yankees logo. It’s really the thinking man’s Calvin-peeing-on-stuff sticker.”) when he first noticed a persistent squeak coming from the undercarriage. Upon returning home, Roger got underneath the Jeep and soon found the culprit: a very large, very… dinosaur-ish tooth wedged in the suspension.
This led Roger to dig through his glove box for the complimentary CarFax vehicle history report that was included with his purchase. Having only given the document a cursory glance at the time of sale, Rogers noticed one line item that the dealer had failed to mention during the test drive: Used As Amusement Park Transportation, 1991-1993. The description made sense to Rogers, who assumed the Jeep was used at some sort of zoo or safari park, but after a lengthy Google search, he still couldn’t find any large mammals with such monstrous teeth. It was then that things started to come together: Jeep, amusement park, and the tooth of an apex predator? The Jeep had been used at the opening of that short-lived, prehistoric –– some say fictional –– playground for the ultra-rich: Jurassic Park.
“I’m not even that much of a fan. In fact, I hardly remember the first one coming out, which is kind of weird,” says Rogers. “I haven’t seen any of the new ones because I’m not a fan of Chris Pratt, which is tough because these days that means I can’t watch 73 percent of the movies in theaters.”
The Lemon has confirmed the Jeep history with Jurassic Park creator John Hammond, who is currently serving 380 consecutive life sentences at a supermax prison in the Nevada desert. Hammond sold much of the park’s salvageable inventory, including the Jeep, to cover his considerable legal costs. The sale netted the already-wealthy Hammond a pretty penny, much of which was spent on a PR campaign to convince society that the tragic amusement park slaughter was actually nothing more than another Hollywood blockbuster, going as far as inventing a scapegoat named “Steven Speilberg” to take the heat for the entire concept. This so-called “greenwashing” of history doesn’t sit well with some of the survivors of the ill-fated parks, who make a pretty compelling argument about history repeating itself and point to no less than 4 sequels as evidence.
The discovery has made Rogers into something of a local celebrity, with teens already lining up at his door to take selfies with the famous 4×4 at $5 a pop. But not everyone finds the discovery so humorous. Local archaeologist Sarah Topson says the find needs to be adequately studied, preserved, and then sold to the highest bidder to replenish the Jurassic Park Survivors Settlement Fund. “At current count, this monument to humanity’s hubris has already cost the lives of 43 people, 188 dinosaurs, and worst of all: it tried to sell us on William H. Macy as an action star. Now it’s time to say enough is enough,” says Topson.
For his part, Rogers isn’t “saur” at the dealership and plans to leverage the Jeep’s cultural cache into a new business opportunity. Jurassic times call for Jurassic measures, and Rogers is already hard at work figuring out how to give guided tours of local archaeological dig sites, or at the very least, run an Uber with a backstory that’s sure to be a hit amongst drunk passengers nostalgic for 90s pop culture.
