Customer Spotlight: Damion Santiago

In today's customer spotlight, we are talking to Navy veteran Damion Santiago. He is the proud owner of a 2020 Jeep Gladiator named Jeep Salute that was built to show at SEMA 2021.

This is a lot more than just a show vehicle though. Jeep Salute is doing great work all around the community. Let's start there.

COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT

Damion's strong sense of community is more than apparent with all of the events that Jeep Salute attends and how Damion and his family give back.

He told us, “All of our builds are created to give back to others and this build specifically is intended to honor and benefit military and veterans. But we also use it to give back to special needs children, children battling serious illness, and displaced/foster youth."

Jeep Salute also participated in its first Veterans Day Parade with veteran and active duty military as ride-along guests. They also used Jeep Salute to place wreaths on graves at the Riverside National Cemetery for Wreaths Across America 2021.

"We are so grateful to all of our sponsors for their belief and involvement in our build that we like to routinely provide them with updates on our philanthropic work as well as marketing material for them to use on their own social media.”

We especially loved seeing the “Grinchings” they did during the holiday season. However, you're not really a Grinch when you collect toys and donate them to special needs and foster children! What an incredible initiative.

We look forward to continue following Damion's community involvement in the future.

WHAT GOT YOU STARTED?

"We have always helped out in the community to try and make a small change in the world. Since our son was born, we wanted to teach him the same.

Our love for cars is a great vehicle to do it through."

We think this is an incredible lesson to teach someone at a young age. Not everyone is fortunate enough to have the basics that we sometimes take for granted.

We seriously applaud and respect Damion's efforts.

JEEP SPECS AND MODIFICATIONS

The details of Damion's build are quite extensive since it's loaded with a lot of awesome mods. Oh and did we mention this is his first Jeep?

Without further ado, here's the full build list:

• Winjet LED headlights
• Winjet LED taillights
• Stinger Off-Road Heigh10
• Custom Roadwire Leather Interior
• Custom green color-matched Bullet Liner body with black Bullet Liner sprayed bumpers, fenders, fender liners, interior and exterior hard top and freedom panels, roll bar, rock sliders and bed
• Custom powder coated Skyjacker 4.5 inch lift
• Custom powder coated Fitipaldi Off-Road 17 inch wheels
• Custom powder coated Locked Off-Road front bump-stops
• Atturo Tires Trail Blade Boss 37 inch
• AWE Tread Edition Dual Cat-Back Exhaust
• Bullet Lined Black Horse Vigor Roll Bar with custom powder coated accent pieces
• Rough Country 50 inch Black Series LED Light Bar
• Status Grilles custom grille
• Bullet Lined Interior and Exterior Hard Top and Freedom Panels
• Bullet Lined Barricade Rock Sliders
• Adam’s Driveshaft Front and 2 Piece Rear Driveshafts
• Bullet Lined Road Armor bumpers & fenders
• Bullet Lined Rear Fender Liners
• Bullet Lined Combat 4x4 Front fender liners with custom painted insert
• Rhino USA recover gear, D rings and hitch
• Warn EVO 8 Synthetic Rope winch
• Revolution Gear and Axel front and rear gears with color-matched powder coated differential covers
• Steer Smarts tie rod, steering stabilizer, drag link, adjustable front track bar, adjustable rear track bar and sector shaft brace
• Off-Road Only Sway LOC
• XK rock lights and front and rear bumper pod lights
• DV8 Adjustable 5th tire carrier
• 35 inch Navatlas sound bar in bed attached to tire carrier
• American Sound bar loaded with 2- 8 inch and 2-6.5 inch Infinity by Harman RGB marine speakers with 4 JBL Tweeters
• Rockford Fosgate 4-Channel Amp
• Switch Pro Panel
• USA Suspension right and left bed mount flag poles
• APB Power Brakes
• AFE Power Cold Air Intake
• Odyssey Battery under hood
• H3R Fire extinguisher
• Threedom key lock caps
• 3WLiners Mats
• Bulletpoint Mounting Solutions Driver Side Dual Ball Universal Phone Holder and GoPro holder
• Z Automotive Tazer Mini

And of course, Jeep Salute would not be complete without a Jeep dog! Introducing Lucahdor the English Bull Terrier.

WHY JEEP?

Damion said he always wanted a Jeep, so when the Gladiator was released, he instantly knew that would be his next project vehicle.

"Our last build was more mall crawl so we wanted something we can take veterans off-road for adrenaline therapy."

In case you're unfamiliar with this initiative, in short, adrenaline therapy is all about putting veterans behind the wheel of high-performance off-road vehicles.

He also told us about the sense of community from the "Jeep Wave" when driving around, to the down-to-earth people at all of the Jeep events he attends.

BULLETPOINT MOUNTING SOLUTIONS SETUP AND WHY DID YOU CHOOSE US?

He chose our phone mount for the SEMA build because he loved that we are leaders in the industry and had a strong connection with veterans. A perfect match.

Jeep Salute is equipped with our dual ball driver side phone holder and action camera mount.

PREVIOUS SEMA BUILDS

Like we mentioned before, this isn't Damion's first SEMA build. All of his builds are always in honor of a cause.

Here was his previous build of a Chevrolet Silverado. To say this truck was heavily modified would be an understatement.

It even managed to snag a magazine feature: the ultimate recognition for any vehicle builder!

FOLLOW DAMION ON SOCIAL MEDIA

You can stay up-to-date with Damion and his latest events with Jeep Salute on TikTok (@JeepSalute) and Instagram (@jeepsalute).

Damion also owns Vrrrm Media which offers videography, photography and social media marketing for the automotive industry.

We want to thank Damion for this customer feature but more importantly, we wanted to thank him for his incredible involvement and the impact he has on children, families and veterans.