On a recent secret mission to southeastern Colorado, the rental car agency at Denver International Airport was down to Nissans. I hate Nissans, and I asked the rental car dude if anything else was available. “Just a couple of Jeep Wranglers,” said dude responded. Hmmm. I always thought it might be cool to have a Jeep. I could pretend I was Joe Gresh.
“I’m in,” I said, and I was in in my very own Jeep Wrangler of the two-door turbocharged four persuasion. Short. Choppy. Uncomfortable. Gas guzzling. But a lot of fun. Gresh, I get it. I want one. Not enough to buy one, but enough to rent one again.
You can buy a Jeep with four engines this year:
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- The standard V-6 3.6 liter
- The same V-6 with an electronic motor hybrid deal (it sounds on the Jeep site like it’s not an Al Gore eco thing, but more of an assist for rock crawling).
- A turbocharged smaller four-banger (a price delete option, which is a nice way of saying it’s an option that lowers the price of the new Jeep).
- A 392-cubic-inch hemi. Just for grins I looked for a dealer online that had one of these $80K hemi Jeeps in stock, and I found one. It’s an $88K Jeep that gets 17 mpg on the highway and 13 in the city. Here in the People’s Republik, gas is well over $6.00 per gallon. Filling up my Subaru cost $95.12 yesterday.
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My rental car had the turbo four banger and it still sucked fuel like a politician seeking campaign donations. At first I thought it was not going to be so bad because the instrument info center said I was averaging over 20 miles per gallon, but when I got out on the freeway at 77 mph it said my instant fuel economy was in the “you’ve got to be kidding me” category. That little 4-banger was actually doing worse than what Jeep claimed the 392 Hemi would get.
I suppose I might as well get the negative stuff out of the way first. For starters, fuel economy was atrocious. But then, folks don’t buy Wranglers for their fuel economy. And on that subject, I found that switching between screens to get the fuel economy info was tricky…tricky enough that I couldn’t find my way back to the instant fuel economy screen. Maybe the Jeep genies thought I didn’t need to know. Some things are better left unsaid, I suppose.
Another negative, which is maybe a positive, is that my Jeep felt gangly to me. Not as in tattoos and gats, but as in unsteady on its feet and ready to tip over (think of me putting my pants on in the morning and you’ll get the picture). Part of that was due to the Jeep’s height and its extremely tight turning radius (small steering wheel inputs made for huge course corrections, and on the freeway steering that barn door at nearly 80 mph it was all a bit unsettling). On a dirt road, though, K turns become a thing of the past. This thing can turn on a dime and give you nine cents change. It can make a U-turn on a two lane road.
The key fobs were huge, and I guess that’s okay, but I found I was unlocking the Wrangler or setting off the panic alarm damn near every time I put the key fobs in my pocket, or if I stuck my hand in my pocket to get my chapstick or anything else.
Cargo space? As the Sopranos might say, fuhgeddaboutit. The rental car dude folded the rear bench seat up, but it wouldn’t stay up, and even when it did, there really wasn’t any room for my gear. You’re not going to be taking a lot of stuff with you in a two-door Wrangler. That pretty much killed it for me as a rifle range car. I wouldn’t be able to get all my shooting gear in there.
Wind noise is another issue. Oddly, it didn’t bother me when I was driving, even at freeway speeds. But no one could hear or understand me on a Bluetooth telephone conversation. Two folks gave up altogether and just hung up. Maybe that’s a good thing.
One last point…although the overall build quality seemed to be pretty good, Jeep lost me from a quality perspective with the fuel filler cap fit. It looks like the production tolerances were either not met or they were assigned by an AutoCad jockey who went to the Doris Day school of mechanical design.
The good news? Well, the good news is that there’s lots of good news. I fell in love with my Jeep. It was cool and I felt cool driving it. And even though it was tall enough to make getting in and out difficult, I knew almost immediately I’d be renting one on my next secret mission. I don’t need the Aston Martin and its machine guns, smoke dispensers, and ejection seat. For my secret missions, I want a Jeep.
Man, that Jeep was fun. Once I got over the difference in feel between it and a regular car, I felt invincible. Seriously. I mean, I’m a 71-year-old Jewish kid from New Jersey with a different doctor for damn near every organ in my body, but I still felt invincible in my Wrangler. I was driving directly into a Colorado hailstorm east of the Rocky Mountains at close to 80 mph, but I was in a Jeep. Gresh, I get it. It’s a power thing.
After the hail passed and I was back on the road, I found another plus: The headlights actually lit up the road, even on low beam, and that’s something I had not experienced in any rental car in a while.
So I was out there in cow country and the center of an ag world, doing my secret mission thing and having fun like I always do. Way off in the distance from the secret mission du jour there’s a couple of hills called Two Buttes (it’s actually one hill with two peaks). I had always wanted to ride out to Two Buttes and see what it was all about. I knew a Jeep wasn’t really essential, but the combination of longer days (more sunlight), the draw of a place unexplored, the dirt roads to get there, and my Jeep worked its magic.
From the main road, Two Buttes looks like it would be easy to find and easy to find my way around. Like elections, though, what you think you’re going to get and what you actually get aren’t often the same. When I got closer to the Two Beauts, I found the area was a maze of dirt roads laid out in no particular order. The guys I was working with on my secret mission told me about a hidden lake, and my objective was to find it and grab a few photos. Waze was sketchy as hell out there in farmroadland, but I didn’t care. I was in a Jeep.
I explored, I shot a bunch of iPhone photos, and I had a good time. I want a Jeep. I’m not going to get one. But I want one.
Maybe it would be even more fun with the 392 Hemi. I did a bit more research, and I learned that Jeep only introduced the 392 Hemi this year, in 2022. It seems that the new Ford Bronco (you can read our mini-review of it here) will be offered with a V8 in their Bronco Raptor package and Chrysler felt compelled to counter. Hey, whatever floats your boat. I found this 392 Hemi Jeep review and I thought you might find it interesting.
A Jeep. Who’da thought. A Jeep. Man, it was fun.
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Joe, if you want most of the off-road capability of the Wrangler with comfort, look at the Cherokee or Grand Cherokee Trailhawk versions. Think Gresh in a tuxedo.
Gresh in a tuxedo. You should start a blog, George.
Joe. I agree. Jeep Wrangler is a fun vehicle, but not a daily driver.
Thank you for the bit on Two Buttes. I used to drive US 287 right past them several times a year, and never really noticed them. I will check them out next time I am down that way again.
Same here, Dan. I drove past there many times without visiting. A Jeep gave me the nudge I needed to wander out and visit.
An $88 thousand dollar Jeep (more than I paid for my house) that costs 35 cents per mile to drive. Oh how times have changed. I have no words.
One time at a lunch with some of my motorcycle buddies one of the guys who was never at a loss for words said the same thing. Someone else told him: keep talking, you’ll think of something.
Hahaha, same here. If I’m at a loss I dig deep and come up with a theory (which is usually difficult to dispute on short notice).
Hi Joe: Everything you’ve mentioned about Jeeps some is true, especially the part about how expensive they are for what they offer, meaning for me not perfect. For sure it’s a fun car & I don’t have the comforts of what a regular car now a day offers, but still, it has been very reliable to me with good maintenance! I own a Jeep Sport Wrangler Limited Edition, 4 doors, hard top 2013. I purchased it after I moved to Chino Valley-AZ with 53,000 miles. I did choose it because this area with dirt and gravel roads is tough, especially during the winter & monsoon seasons. During the past years, I’ve done multiple long trips with my Jeep including to Baja CA. I have crossed small rivers, ice, snow, mud, and hard rocky dirt road, and gone up hills performing great. The 4 doors Jeep has a really good size trunk for being a small SUV, many people can tell you about me how I pack when I travel, LOL! It fits a full 2 large Suitcases & 2 carry on and in the side, small bags, with that said I still have free the back seats for people to ride with me. My Jeep gives me decent mileage in town 19.5 mpg and on the Interstate and Hwys 23.5 mpg which is not bad for an SUV. I love everything about it, except the fact that I need at least 2 people to help me take the hard top of the back. I can do the front on my own. I wanted to trade it in 2019 for a newer year, but unfortunately, I was unable to trade it because I wanted to keep the same color (Electric Lime Green) and they discontinued it. So I decided to keep it. Overall, it’s a good car, holds its value, is not so expensive to maintain and why not show off a bit when you are in adventurous areas.
That’s pretty cool, Annie. I didn’t know you had a Jeep. Send us a photo when you get a chance!
The ill-fitting parts, the rough ride, the noise, the gas guzzling it just make Jeeps irresistible.
Next time you visit I’ll let you drive Brumby, my ’92 YJ. You’ll be amazed at how much worse a Jeep can be.
Deal. I’ll start planning the trip now.
Joe – As you may know I work in car repair and we love Chryslers. Why? Because they all, including Jeeps, are what you might diplomatically call “quality challenged”. The modern Jeep is nothing like it predecessors and are a much less robust animal. They are still fun but that can come with a pretty high tariff. Most of the engines are now Fiat designs (YIKES!!) and they just have problems that no well designed and built car should have. Lease or rent one so when you are done you can give it back to whoever owns it and let that timebomb be their problem. I often look at the current state of the American car industry and wonder what the hell happened. Even with CNC machining and things like CAD and rapid prototyping they seem to be turning out more bad engine and transmissions then they ever did. Might be government regs playing a part here but either way I advise my customers to avoid modern Jeeps and don’t even think about Chrysler passenger cars. Unless you want to put my kids through college. Or help me afford that vacation home I’ve been wanting.
Interesting comments, Bob. I had fun with that Jeep and the next time I need a rental car I will try to get one again. I’m not going to buy one unless I hit the lottery again, but they are fun to play with.
All of your complaints about the Jeep is what makes a Jeep a Jeep. You can’t drive a lifted brick with 4 banger down the road and expect anything else. That being said, I get the same gas mileage with our 2 dr 2015 V6 Wrangler as I do with my 2012 Silverado crew cab 4×4. And if you take the rear seat out and leave it in the garage (or basement in my case) there’s plenty of room for all your shooting equipment. Who wants to take 2 other people with them anyways. One trick if you do talk yourself into buying one. There’s no sound deadening insulation in the doors or under the carpet. A couple hours and a few yards of Dynomat make them much quieter and keeps the exhaust from burning your passenger’s ankle.
Good inputs, Kenny. Thanks for commenting.