Over land in new Jeep Wrangler
Can the very tough Jeep Wrangler cut it as a luxury lifestyle vehicle? David Linklater finds out.
The all-new Jeep Wrangler has a couple of very important things to do. The first is to keep on being one of the best off-road vehicles in the world. That’s where the fully kitted up Rubicon model comes in. We’ll be heading into the wild in one of those in the next few weeks. I’ll let you know how we get on.
But given the big money now being asked for the JL Wrangler in New Zealand, the rest of the range also has to make more of an SUV case for itself.
The luxury-oriented Overland Unlimited (that’s Jeep-speak for fourdoor) is cheaper than the Rubicon, but it’s still $89,990. Ninety grand opens a lot of doors in SUV-world.
To put the Overland to the test, we put our best life-styley attitude on and went on a weekend road trip from Auckland to Taupo¯ , overnighting and heading the long way back via Rotorua.
That’s more than 700 kilometres and four lakes, people.
Wranglers are known to be great at a lot of things, but long-haul openroad travel is not one of them.
Inappropriate? This was all undertaken at the invitation of Kiwi Jeep importer Ateco Automotive. Not as part of an official media event, but it was the company’s idea nonetheless. Confidence.
You will notice that the new Wrangler looks a lot like the old Wrangler. That’s because the customer base in the United States is extremely, um, particular and the last time Jeep tried to change anything major (like the shape of the headlights) there was something approaching a civil war.
But the JL is indeed all new and it’s fascinating to see how modern technology and design touches have been hidden in ye olde profile.
It’s a lot more aerodynamic (which is a different thing to actually being aerodynamic) and if you look closely you’ll see rounded corners and a more steeply raked windscreen.
The round headlights remain of course, but inserted inside them are slivers of hi-tech LED lamps.
The door handles are chunky, but now have keyless entry technology. The daytime running lights are hidden in the leading edge of the front guards. You really don’t notice them until they light up.
Under those flat body panels and exposed door hinges, the Wrangler now has sensors for safety stuff like Blind Spot Monitoring and Rear Cross Path Detection.
The door mirrors have protective recesses that hide and protect the built-in indicator lights.
Even the old-school exterior-mounted spare wheel plays a part. Look closely and you’ll see the reversing camera is built into it.
To Taupo¯ , then. The first thing to note is that while the JL Overland is vastly more refined than the previous model, it’s still also a highly capable off-roader first and foremost. Which means there’s still quite a bit of compromise in its on-road performance.
The steering is slow (as it must be for the really rough stuff), the axles are still rigid and wind noise is a real issue at 100kmh. Or 90kmh. Or 80kmh.
But we drove to Taupo¯ and we didn’t go mad. The primary ride is well controlled and it’s only those secondary ripples that agitate.
It does go around corners much better in Overland form than the Rubicon because it wears all-purpose tyres rather than specific off-road rubber. The stability control is present but not obtrusive.
The tech helps. The Overland now has adaptive cruise control (albeit that weird Jeep system with separate buttons for standard and radar-assisted), so you can let the car take care of the following distance and focus on steering smoothly.
There are some little things that you can’t forgive because they could have easily been addressed: like the cramped footwell on the driver’s lefthand side, which is presumably a right-hand drive only issue. Again.
The seats seemingly lack shape, but we did the whole trip without any aches or pains.
The interior looks traditional, but the fit and finish has improved out of sight over the previous model (it needed to) and there are plenty of surprise-and-delight features, like a glossy silhouette of a wartime Willys Jeep on the gear lever.
It seems a bit too nice to have
removable carpet and drainage plugs for a hose-out. But it still does.
The Pentastar V6 engine is an old friend, but it’s now matched to an eight-speed automatic gearbox.
It’s smooth and more to the point, helps achieve a remarkable improvement in fuel economy for this brick of a thing. We didn’t hang around and averaged 9.8 litres per 100km, which is bang on the official Combined figure.
Wrangler has serious off-road abilities; as an on-road vehicle you have to approach it with a sense of humour.
When you reach your destination you can still pop off the front panels (there’s a bespoke bag for them in the boot) and enjoy the sun. You can also still remove the entire rear roof section, fold down the windscreen and remove the doors – but you’ll need tools and time for that.
The elephant in the room is Wrangler’s now-infamous one-star crash-test rating. It is what it is and while you can’t excuse it, it’s also true that it’s far from the smallest vehicle on the road. Wrangler fans probably don’t care and it was subjected to the newest and toughest iteration of a test that isn’t kind to a specialist off-road vehicle.
Then again, Toyota just resubmitted the upgraded Hilux ute to ANCAP and got five stars, so there are still few excuses.
Seems a shame to end on a low note, because we came away from our 700km all smiles.
In the old one you would have rolled out the door, wiped the sweat from your brow and called the chiropractor. This one is a lot more fun even when you’re not climbing every mountain.