Jeep Wrangler Review 2023

If you’re the sort of person who spends your weekends belting along green lanes and winching yourself up mountains, rather than nipping down to Starbucks and getting your nails done, then the Wrangler could well be for you. If you’re not that dedicated to the off-roading cause, however, then it very probably isn’t.

There aren’t many cars of any price that can do what the Wrangler can do off-road. It’s packing all manner of mud-plugging hardware that allows it to venture along terrain and up slopes that many people wouldn’t think possible in a car. What’s more, it also looks really cool and is dripping with charm and heritage.

However, this ability in the rough stuff means it's very compromised on the road in terms of comfort, handling and refinement. It’ll also cost you more to buy and run than many rivals, and it won’t give you as much practicality or kit. It’s safety record is also woeful. Those after a left-field family car need not apply. Those after an off-roading icon really should, though.

Over the years, the Wrangler has only had one real rival, another car derived from ancient military field transport: the Land Rover Defender. Otherwise, genuine hardcore off-roader rivals are hard to find. The Suzuki Jimny is much smaller and much cheaper, while the Mercedes-Benz G-Class is much more expensive. However, if you’re simply after an SUV rather than an off-roader, there are countless choices, the Audi Q5 and Volkswagen Tiguan, to name but two.

If you’ve had a Wrangler before, you’ll be impressed by the quality on show in the latest one, because it’s a distinct improvement on what’s gone before. While most SUVs have soft, squishy interior surfaces, most of the Wrangler’s are hard and robust, but that completely suits the nature of the car. 

Indeed, the interior is designed so you can wipe it clean and hose it out, although if you look closer, there are several nooks and crannies in the floor where mud could be very hard to get at. Most importantly, though, everything feels solid and substantial, giving the impression that this car will last a lifetime. Also, there are stitched leather wrappings for the steering wheel, transmission shifters and door pulls to help inject a bit of classiness.

The entry-level Sport trim gets a different touchscreen system to the rest. We’ve not had the chance to have a play with it yet, so we can’t tell you what it’s like to use, but we can tell you it supports DAB radio, Bluetooth and voice control.

From then on, you get an 8.4-inch touchscreen that adds navigation, upgraded sound and Apple Carplay/Android Auto. What's more, the screen is responsive, the graphics are fast and sharp and the menus are reasonably easy to find your way around. Granted, some of the on-screen icons are a little bit on the small side, making them a little bit fiddly to hit, and it’d be even easier to use if it had some physical shortcut buttons, but these really are minor gripes on what is generally a very good system.

All versions also get a digital display between the instrument dials to deliver key information. The display can be configured in a wide variety of ways, and pretty much whatever you do, it’s easy to understand and the graphics are clear.

The Wrangler is available in two very different forms, the two-door and the much longer four-door, and your car’s performance in this area depends greatly on which one you pick. 

The two-door’s practicality is limited to say the least. The two rear seats are (just about) roomy enough for adults, but they’re not awfully comfortable, and you feel very hemmed in by the proximity of bulky parts of the roof to your bonce. What’s more, getting into them is a very difficult and ungraceful process due to the tiny aperture that’s made by tipping and sliding the front seats forward. 

That's on the passenger side; try clambering in on the driver's side, where the steering wheel gets in the way, and things are even tighter. The two-door Jeep Wrangler boot space is tiny – only 203 litres – and if you want any more luggage room, the single-piece rear bench means you have to fold both rear seats down and flip them forwards, effectively making your Wrangler into a two-seater.

The four-door, on the other hand, is much better. There are three rear seats instead of only two, and they’re surrounded by a lot more space, allowing adults to travel in some semblance of comfort. The boot is also much larger – the five-door Jeep Wrangler  has boot space of 598 litres – so you can take plenty of kit with you on your adventures into the wilderness. The rear bench, meanwhile, folds down in two portions, giving you more versatility when you need to carry big loads. While there is a small sloped step in the load floor, your extended loadby is still reasonably level.

On both versions, the side-hinged tailgate makes the space a little bit awkward to get to when you’re in a tight parking space, and you have to flip up the rear window separately.

Both versions of the Jeep Wrangler have  bulky dimensions – the two-door Jeep Wrangler is 1872mm wide, 4173mm long and 1867mm tall. The five-door is 4696mm long, 1877mm wide and up to 1848mm tall. 

The engine choice is nice and simple with the Wrangler: petrol or diesel, and there’s one of each. The diesel is the most popular, and it’s a 2.2-litre with 200PS. It delivers reasonably brisk performance in most situations, and its generous low-down muscle not only makes it flexible, but it also helps when you’re wading through the sticky stuff, too.

The petrol is a turbocharged 2.0-litre four-cylinder petrol engine that delivers 272PS. You can certainly feel its extra power over the diesel, because it feels properly strong, and because the urge is again delivered from low-down in the rev range, it doesn’t lose out on flexibility, either.

Both engines are mated to an eight-speed automatic gearbox driving all four wheels. It shifts up and down the ratios smoothly and cleanly, although it could react quicker when you ask it for a sudden burst of acceleration. 

The diesel engine has a distinctly agricultural sound at all times, and the noise and vibration you’re subjected to increase as the revs rise, although neither ever gets to intolerable levels. That said, it really suits the rough-and-tumble character of the car. It’s funny, because the petrol is considerably quieter and smoother, but somehow it doesn’t feel quite as appropriate in a car like this. 

Otherwise, the blunt shape of the front end means you hear a fair amount of noise from the wind rushing over the top of the windscreen, and it catches the large door mirrors as well. The wide tyres kick up a fair amount of road noise, too, and if you pick a version with knobbly off-road tyres, noise levels will increase dramatically, turning from a murmur into a proper rumble. This isn’t a quiet way to travel, then, but in fairness, that’s not what it’s built for.

There aren’t many cars these days that don’t manage to achieve the full five stars in Euro NCAP crash tests, so for the latest Wrangler to score just one is a fairly spectacular failure. And, if you read the detailed report, it looks like it was pretty lucky to get that.

While most modern cars offer six or more airbags dotted around the cabin, the Wrangler gets just four, and all of those are up front. So, those in the back have to rely on little more than their seatbelt and crossed fingers for crash safety. There’s also a reversing camera on every model, and basic systems such as anti-lock brakes and electronic stability control are provided, but there’s none of the fancy automatic braking, automatic parking or adaptive cruise control features that you might - well, should - expect from a modern car.

Jeep Wranglers sell in such small numbers in the UK it's hard to to get an accurate sense of the car's reliability, although we have heard reports that it suffers from leaks around the rear footwells. That said, a three-year warranty comes as standard with all models. 

Depending on the version you go for, insurance groups for the Wrangler lie between 32 and 41. It’s worth noting that variations in trim level make more of a difference than which engine you choose. This means that premiums shouldn’t be ruinous on the car provided you’ve got a decent no-claims bonus, but they probably won’t be dirt cheap, either. Compare them with those of the Land Rover Defender, and they’re pretty much spot-on, and they’re also very similar to more conventional SUVs like the Audi Q5.

The latest Wrangler was launched in 2018, after the Government decided to change the VED tax laws to apply a flat rate of £150 to petrol and diesel cars, and to apply a five-year surcharge of £325 to cars that cost over £40,000 when new. All that applies to every version of the Wrangler, so it’ll be relatively pricey on VED. 

Buy used, and you’ll dodge getting clobbered by the hefty first-year tax payment (or ‘showroom tax’, which is between £1850 and £2175 depending on model), but then between years two and five of the car’s life, you’ll pay a annual bill of £475. After that, you just pay the £150 flat rate. The hefty CO2 emissions will mean company car drivers are very unlikely to consider a Wrangler, because monthly BIK bills will be very pricey indeed.

There are four trims available on the Wrangler - Sport, Sahara, Overland and Rubicon - but bear in mind that the two-door isn’t available in the most basic of these. That’s not great shame, really, because it’s not awfully well stocked. Standard kit includes dual-zone air-conditioning, electric windows, powered mirrors and keyless go, rear parking sensors and a reversing camera, but that’s about it. Sahara trim is much more like it, if only for the enhanced infotainment system, but you also get LED headlights, climate control and ambient lighting.

From then on, the Overland offers buyers a more luxurious route, while the Rubicon is for proper hardcore off-road fans. Overland gives you leather upholstery, heated front seats, some posher design touches, a hardtop headliner and some extra safety gear, while the Rubicon gives you disconnectable sway bars, extra differentials and an auxiliary switch panel to help with wiring in aftermarket mud-plugging gear such as spotlights and winches. Jeep also did the odd high-value special edition, the fabulously named Night Eagle being one example.