WELLMAN/KALONA

Odds are good that you’ve seen it around, that gorgeous magenta-pink Jeep cruising across Highway 22 or up Highway 1. You might be wondering who owns it, or perhaps where you can get yourself one.

This is no off-the-rack, ready-to-ride vehicle. If you want one of these, it’s going to take a significant investment. But for Wellman resident Mandie Kron, it’s a dream come true.

“I knew when I was a child that I was going to own a pink Jeep,” Kron says. “For our 10-year anniversary, my husband said I could get a Jeep, and then I talked him into letting me paint it pink.”

“I wanted a Jeep because my grandpa had one,” she explains. So in August 2022, she purchased a new Jeep Wrangler, but as pink is not a stock color, it was Sergeant Green, “a dark, army-ish green,” she says.

That green would have to go, and glossing it over would be no mean feat as the color was also visible from within the vehicle. The Jeep would have to be disassembled and sanded down before being repainted. The exact right shade and finish would have to be found. It was going to take a bit of work.

Fortunately, the Krons knew exactly who to go to for the job: Chris Swartzendruber at CS Auto Body in Kalona.

“We knew that we wanted to stay local and support local. We went to Chris, and he and his team did a great job of getting it all done and cleaned up and ready for me to take home,” Kron says.

For Swartzendruber, applying pink paint wasn’t the most unusual part of the job.

“There’s a few Mary Kay cars out and about that got damaged in fender-benders or whatever,” he says, and those jobs required pink.

What was more usual was the full-body application.

“We don’t normally do jobs like that,” he says. “That was the only complete paint job we’ve done for quite some time that I can remember.”

Generally customers come to CS Auto Body with auto damage from accidents, but the techs were happy to transform the brand new Jeep. Kron picked out a paint shade she liked, and the body shop sprayed test cards, testing out various sparkly finishes, until Kron saw results she liked.

“We recorded and saved all that in our files, so if we ever need to repair it, we can duplicate it,” Swartzendruber says.

The process took time, as work happened in stages and around other jobs in the busy shop, but by November 2022, Kron had her dream Jeep parked in her garage.

“I love her. She’s so pretty,” she says, admitting that “We call her Alice from time to time because Chris was able to get a pearl coat on it, so in the sunlight she sparkles, kind of like the vampire from Twilight.”

Driving a pink Jeep means Kron has a harder time going out incognito. People recognize that vehicle, although “they don’t necessarily know it’s mine,” she says. People who do know, and who also know her husband, “like to tell on me, on where I’m at and why I’m there. I can’t slide under the radar,” she laughs.

People often ask her when she’s going to take it off-road.

“We’re not,” she says decisively.

The time and expense of creating her dream Jeep were “totally worth it,” Kron says. And in case you were wondering if she might one day sell it to you, you’re out of luck there.

“We’ll keep it for its entire lifetime,” she says. “We’ll never get rid of it.”