You know what bugs me? When companies don’t preserve simple websites that they really should do something with over the years.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at a pair of Jeep ads that very cleverly make the popular Wrangler look like bugs on display in entomology cases.

The first ad today promotes the Wrangler two-door. Clever, yes? They even have a semi-dissected version of the Jeep in the upper right. How cute!

The bottom right includes a picture of the Jeep “in the wild” with a handwritten note to visit jeep.com/07wrangler.

Note, of course, that the section references the 2007 Wrangler, specifically. That makes this kind of section tough to preserve long-term. Until the year 3007, this section won’t really be all that relevant again.

And, indeed, checking jeep.com/07wrangler today shows that Jeep has abandoned the section:

As far a page-not-found pages go, the Jeep one is pretty good. In case the small print is too tiny to read, it says:

The path ends here, but your journey doesn’t. Choose a vehicle below to get back on course.

That’s a nice page and certainly better than giving the viewer nothing to do. But it doesn’t hide the fact that /07wrangler does not redirect to the current Wrangler page, which would be very simple to do.

Okay, so let’s move on to the next ad that appeared in a magazine the next month:

Once again, that’s some really clever work, making the four-door Jeep Wrangler Unlimited look exceptionally insect-like. What great visuals!

And we are once again treated to a photograph in the bottom right-hand corner showing the handwritten request to visit jeep.com/07wranglerunlimited (slightly different, of course, than the URL above):

I’m not a Jeep person, so I guess I never really realized that the 4-door Wrangler was referred to as the Wrangler Unlimited. Even today, the only obscure mention I find about the Wrangler Unlimited is when you try to use the Build-And-Price tools on Jeep.com.

That doesn’t matter, because something else is QUITE clear:

Once again, Jeep has let the old advertised subsection disappear. That’s unfortunate because they still make 4-door Wranglers, regardless of whatever they call them.

Again, as far as page-not-found pages go, this one isn’t bad. But Jeep’s web policies could be better.

Some days, you’re the windshield.

Some days, you’re the bug.