A Colorado Jeep Story

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:

• • • 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.

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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