What the duck is Jeep doing in Detroit? Earlier this week, the city’s waterfront was taken over by a great big fella who’s cute and yellow and chubby. The world’s largest rub-a-dub ducky was floating down the Detroit River, oblivious to tariffs and immigration or all the strife currently affecting global relations. This time, it’s all about marking a special anniversary: 85 years in Canada.
Jeep’s 40-foot-tall (12.2 meters for our friends to the north) rubber duck was actually on the Canadian side of the river. The gigantic rubber duck was moored next to the city of Windsor’s massive Canadian flag, right in front of the car company’s Canadian headquarters.
It’s A Jeep Thing, And We Don’t Understand
Jeep Giant Floating DuckJeep
The company isn’t trying to duck a whole country, even though it decided to build the new Compass at a plant in Illinois instead of in Ontario, Canada, as originally planned. The big duck is there because 2026 marks 85 years of Jeep on both sides of the border, and Jeep Canada wants to celebrate a trend that was started there.
Taking the giant duck to Canada is fitting because the Jeep Duck trend first started there during the pandemic. A Canadian citizen who lived in the US was home for a visit and had an unpleasant run-in with a local. In an inspired bit of cheerfulness, she bought a rubber duck and left it on a nearby Jeep Wrangler. That Jeeper thought it was funny, the image made it to Facebook, and now putting ducks on Jeeps has gone worldwide.
It’s like the Jeep Wave, but with merch and arguably more fun, though there are some Jeep owners who absolutely don’t want to be ducked. In any case, Jeep jumped on the trend quickly, bringing a six-story inflatable duck to the Detroit auto show in 2022. It hasn’t stopped since. That duck, which was 61 feet tall and 69 feet wide, was the largest duck in the world. Of course, Jeep gave out smaller ones to people at the show.
Jeep Has A Long History In The North
Jeep Giant Floating DuckJeep
Jeep Canada didn’t bring a massive Wrangler to go along with the duck, but it did bring some classic models for anyone in downtown Windsor to check out. The display included a World War II-era Willys MB as well as a 1968 M38A1 model that was built at a plant in Windsor that is now an automotive metal stamping site. Before that plant, Jeeps were also built in Canada by Ford, because wartime production was a very strange thing.
The very first model from the company was the 1941 Willys, the utility vehicle that played a big part in the Allied victory in WWII. The multiple iterations of Jeep over the years have played a massive role in the victory of man over rock and trail (and mall parking lot) ever since.
Base Trim Engine
3.6L Pentastar V6 ICE
Base Trim Transmission
6-speed manual
Base Trim Drivetrain
Four-Wheel Drive
Base Trim Horsepower
285 HP @6400 RPM
Base Trim Torque
260 lb.-ft. @ 4800 RPM
Infotainment & Features
9 /10
If Jeep really wants to go all-out, it needs to take that big duck to a big Jeep. It could either build its own World’s Largest Jeep or take it to the current record holder. That belongs to a 21-foot-tall replica of an original Willys that lives at the Emirates National Auto Museum.
