You don’t need to take the off-road to enjoy driving it. Every ride in this thing feels like an adventure. But when you do push it off the edge of the map, the barbarian spec Rubicon becomes the best sidekick you could ask for.
(: I begged Jeep for access to the new JL Wrangler, and the company was finally able to oblige me over Memorial Day Weekend. Unfortunately, the previous borrower had cracked the windshield and there was no time to repair it before my scheduled trip, so I’m obligated to inform you that the glass damage you’ll see in some pictures was battle damage, not a manufacturing defect.)
The outgoing JK Jeep Wrangler was solid. And honestly, so was the short TJ before that and even the square-eyed YJ in the ’80s and early ’90s. But the new-for-2018 JL is so much nicer inside and so much easier to use, without sacrificing the capability that made Jeep famous in the first place, that driving it just made me want to tear off into the sunset and never come back.
So this last long weekend, that’s exactly what I tried to do.
Our adventure started late Friday night, Memorial Day weekend, like so many others: sucking fumes in the scrum of traffic entering Los Angeles International Airport.
My old man was flying in from Boston to get a tour of the desert, and I couldn’t wait to use that as an excuse to spend some quality time with the new Wrangler. And dad, too. Of course.
The airport traffic is where I first noticed that the clutch in the Wrangler Rubicon’s manual transmission is ridiculously light, like a button, and that the LED headlights are intimidating enough to sear the eyes of those who would dare cut me off for a late merge.
By the time I finally made it to the Terminal 4 curb, my dad had a look of exhausted bewilderment but quickly snapped back to reality when he spotted the Firecracker Red Wrangler.
“Good eye,” I said, as his bag landed on the rear seat with a thud and we shook hands. “You’re easy to spot,” he replied. “Those new headlights are, uh, pretty darn cool.”
Highways
Saturday morning, it was on. First thing. After a heavy breakfast of snappy-hot Louisiana hot links at S&W Diner and a bunch of coffee, dad and I were loaded up and leaving west LA at the crack of nine. Thirty. Ish.
While we caught up on each other’s lives and dad gave me advice on my pending nuptials (pretty much refrains of “Don’t DO it, bro! Just kidding, she’s wonderful.”) we got to make observations about the Wrangler Rubicon’s behavior on a slog across Interstate 10.
High Country
Driving to Big Bear from Los Angeles gets fun as soon as you leave the main highway. Route 330, which takes you up out of the valley and into the land of lanky trees, snakes up through canyons and through some spectacular vistas.
Unfortunately, on this particular Saturday morning, soupy fog trapped us in a slow line of cars carefully picking their way through a decidedly un-scenic ascent.
“It gets way better,” I promised my dad, as we listed and rolled through the turns in a grey cloud, like a fishing trawler that’d gone too far from shore.
Up the hills, high gear wasn’t happening. The V6 just needs to be wound up to access most of its 285 horsepower, and almost every drop of the engine’s energy is required to get the 4,400 pound Jeep up a grade.
The Wrangler may be more refined than ever, but there’s no escaping physics when you’ve got straight axles and tall all-terrain tires underneath you. Body roll is going to happen here, and if you’re not used to trucks, it can be a little unsettling. That said, if you have spent much time in older 4x4s the 2018 Wrangler will seem pretty damn smooth.
,” which doesn’t really explain why it only half-worked in my ’18 Wrangler.
It’s annoying as hell and I’ll keep looking for solutions. But in the meantime, I have to say, the view from behind the wheel of the Wrangler in the forests above Big Bear was a lot better than anything on the screens, anyway.
With refresh iced coffees in the console cupholders, a bundle of overpriced firewood in the back and a full tank of gas, my pops and I rolled out of Big Bear toward Joshua Tree for the next phase of our basic bitch backcountry quest.
“We’re taking a shortcut,” I told dad. “The long way.”
He figured out what I meant as I peeled off Route 18 onto the rocky goat path that drops into a place called Cactus Flat. The Jeep bounced and bucked in protest as I forced us over sharp rocks with its big all-terrain tires hyper-inflated for highway travel.
At a lower speed, the Wrangler easily walked its way down a track I really wouldn’t have taken many lesser vehicles down.
“Four-wheel drive recommended,” dad snorted. “Those signs kind of undersell, huh?”
“Haha... ah,” was all I bothered to reply, wondering to myself just how long of a long-ass day we were in for with the entirety of Smarts Ranch Road between us and our next opportunity to stop for beer.
Dry Lakes And The Real Joys Of Desert Driving
Dad and I made it over the hill to Pioneertown and Joshua Tree in time to catch a desert sunset, from an incredible vantage point high above the dry lake just north of Joshua Tree National Park.
Again, the Jeep’s ability to clamber and scramble its way up and over whatever was in front of us unlocked a whole new tier of coolness for our little trip. The two-tracks winding up big piles of rock were as open to us as any other road.
Dismantling The Jeep
We spent our second day in Joshua Tree checking out the park, where you can’t drive like a lunatic and most roads are paved. That didn’t bother me at all, because it was the perfect place to test out the new Wrangler’s soft top and door removal.
The . First you have to remove the rear window, which is done by tugging the bottom half outwards and sliding the whole thing to the left.
Homebound
Fans of automotive adventure could not possibly have asked for a better update to the Jeep Wrangler than what we got with the JL. The 2018 Jeep Wrangler Rubicon feels like a truck–classic, utilitarian and a little rough. But it’s been refitted with just enough modern tech inside. Somehow, even the giant high-resolution infotainment screen doesn’t feel out of place in an aesthetically archaic vehicle.
The improvements to the roof’s ease-of-use would have been enough to make the JL a legendary step forward for the Wrangler, but the beautiful interior puts it over the top.
Besides the buggy Off-Road Pages app and the depressingly high cost of this vehicle, it’s extremely easy to option one to $50,000 like our tester, I couldn’t really find anything I didn’t like about the new Rubicon and the experience I had exploring in it.
Hell, according to the trip computer we even averaged just over 20 mpg even with a whole day of slow-paced off-roading. (Granted, we basically coasted down the length of Angles Crest Highway to make up for the crawling, but still.)
Jeep’s changeover from the longstanding JK Wrangler platform to the new-for-2018 JL has been big news over the last year, and in that time we’ve talked all about the , and that make this machine iconic.
Simply said, it’s a new truck that looks (and when you want it to, feels) like an old truck. Everybody loves that shit. Jeep has managed to bottle a universally appealing amalgamation of good-old-days nostalgia and untethered-youth rebellion to create a product pretty much everyone can appreciate.
There’s no complex formula or secret sauce here. The Wrangler is deadbolt simple: steel frame, boxy body, stick axles and the same basic face the world as associated with freedom since 1941.
The Wrangler’s anachronistic appeal is cool just because... it is. And of course, because the vehicle’s off-road capability actually is robust enough to stand up to the kind of riotous bad behavior you see in Jeep commercials on TV.
Our own David Tracy, a Jeep nut who actually helped engineer the new Wrangler in , gave it a shakedown and concluded that . And that was encouraging news because when a new Jeep comes out, Jeep fans are typically obligated to declare that it sucks, that the last Jeep was the last “real Jeep” and anyone who buys the new Jeep is a sucker and a pretender and a clean-shoed mall crawler.
But the whole reason the Wrangler’s successful is that you don’t need to be on an epic journey for the thing to be fun. Driving this thing feels like an adventure the second you climb into it. And when you do want to tap into the JL’s off-road abilities, you can have no doubt that the thing’s got your back.
Reasonably comfy and user-friendly, but a little noisy on the highway.
Mechanized mountain goat.
Four-Door SUV
3.6 V6 • 6-Speed Manual • 4WD
285 HP • 260 LB-FT
4,439 LBS
$40,495 MSRP • $50,270 As Tested
(Jeep)
zpostcode
Recruit
weather
mreligion
Yellowpages
sport
constellation
shopping
name
game
directory
literature
Word
tour
furnish
Lottery
tftnews
lyrics
News
digital
car
dir
Edu
Finance
