Jeep Wrangler Review 2022

Few cars of any price that can do what the Wrangler can do off-road thanks to all manner of mud-plugging hardware. However, if you’re after an everyday SUV rather than a hardcore 4x4, pretty much anything else at the money  - like an Audi Q5 or Volkswagen Tiguan - will serve you better, with more practicality, more quality, more civility, more comfort, more precision and more luxury. Seriously, those after a leftfield family car need not apply. Niche, but full of charm and character.

The Wrangler story started way back in the 1940s with the arrival of the original Willys Jeep. This was a rugged utility vehicle that took the US military over inhospitable lands in all four corners of the globe, made all the more inhospitable by the fact that they were probably having some sort of skirmish with the natives of the area at the time.

Yes, things have changed since the 40s, but the character and the ethos remain. The iconic upright shape remains, and rather than following the crowd of newer SUVs and watering down the ruggedness in pursuit of luxury and sophistication, the Wrangler is still a non-nonsense, rufty-tufty, off-roader. This thing will go places that owners of regular SUVs would fear to even think about, let alone tread.

It also has a few party-pieces up its sleeve that are inherited from its ancestor. Each version has a roof that’s removable in some way (a variety of different options are available on that score, from a folding fabric soft-top to a removable hard-top), and if you really want to open yourself up to the elements, you can also remove the windscreen and the doors.

Try doing that on an Audi Q5. You’ve also got a spare wheel bolted onto the side-hinged tailgate. No crummy pot of sealant here.

Two body styles are available. The two-door looks good but is woefully impractical, so we’d advise going for the much bigger four-door, which is much better on practicality, not much more expensive and still has loads of charm.

Two engines are available, one petrol and one diesel. Both are pretty punchy, but we reckon most buyers will probably be better off with the diesel due to its low-down pulling power and better fuel economy.

It should be said that the Wrangler's focus on ruggedness means it’s not a civilised car, especially compared to regular SUVs at the same (rather expensive) price point.

The ride is jittery, the handling’s untidy, the cabin is noisy and the interior is more functional than flashy. So, if you’re an average SUV buyer who’s merely looking for a stylish family car, pretty much anything else on the market will suit you better: those looking for a leftfield SUV choice will be biting off way more than they can chew with the Jeep.

That which the Wrangler does, though, it does very well indeed, and it’s no accident that this car has legions of dedicated fans the world over. 

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 head.

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. The boot is tiny, 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 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, so you can take plenty of kit with you on your adventures.

The rear bench 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.

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.

The interior is designed so you can wipe it clean and hose it out, although 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. And, 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 good system.

First of all, it’s worth noting that the four-door doesn’t cost too much more than the smaller two-door, and it’s definitely worth paying the extra for due to the added practicality it gives you.

At the time of writing, prices for the Wrangler started at just over the £40,000 mark, and rose to just north of £50,000.

Compared like-for-like, prices seem very similar to those of the car’s only real rival, the Land Rover Defender, while other proper hardcore off-roaders are way off on price. The Suzuki Jimny is much less, the Mercedes G-Class is much more. More conventional SUVs like the Audi Q5 are reasonably similar, if a bit cheaper.

There’s a colossal difference in terms of resale values, though. The Wrangler’s are terrible compared with the Land Rover’s, and also compared with more conventional SUVs, and that will prove expensive for buyers of new versions because they’ll lose much more in depreciation come sell-on time.

That poor depreciation will also mean relatively high monthly payments for finance customers. At the time of writing, Jeep’s website was offering the 2.0-litre Petrol Sahara in four-door form for just under £420 per month on a four-year PCP after a deposit of around £11,500. That represents a £2,000 deposit contribution from Jeep.

Choose the diesel engine over the petrol if you want to keep fuel bills down. It returns around 37mpg according to official averages, where the petrol returns between 28-31mpg.

Strangely, there’s not that much difference in official fuel economy between the two-door and the considerably bigger four-door. 

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.

The first-year VED  tax payment (or ‘showroom tax’, which is between £1850 and £2175 depending on model) is pretty steep, and you’ll pay £475 per year for the next five years, and then £150 per year thereafter. 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.

Jeep wasn’t included in the 2019 JD Power Vehicle Dependability Study, but parent company Fiat was, and it came second-to-last in the manufacturer standings. You do get a five-year/75,000-mile warranty, though.

The Wrangler can go places that SUVs can’t thanks to four-wheel drive, low-range gears and selection of other off-roading hardware.

The soft suspension also allows a lot of wheel movement, and if you select the ultra-hardcore Rubicon model, you also get disconnecting front sway bars that give the wheels even more freedom of movement.

On the road, meanwhile, it can deal with potholes and speed bumps better than most normal cars, and you won’t think twice about mounting a kerb. However, the Wrangler’s level of off-road excellence inevitably means some compromises in on-road sophistication.

The car jitters and judders the whole time, regardless of whether the surface beneath you is messy or immaculate. Just as unsettling is the way that the body bounces around untidily on undulating roads. 

You can’t criticise the Wrangler too much for its shortage of handling precision, given the sort of car it is. However, you can’t ignore the fact that the steering is very slow and overly light, while the sloppy body control means you’ll find yourself slowing down for bends much more than you would in a more conventional SUV. 

Having said all that, though, the latest Wrangler is appreciably less compromised on the road than previous versions, so that’s something. It’s also worth noting that the four-door Wrangler is rather better on both ride and handling than the shorter two-door model.

The engine choice is refreshingly 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, 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.

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.

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 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 expect from a modern car.

The Wrangler might well appeal to those who regularly tow, because you’d think it could pull pretty much anything.

However, the two-door Wrangler can only pull a braked trailer of up to just under 1,500kg, and while the four-door does much better at just shy of 2500kg, it’s still nothing special. For context, a Land Rover Discovery will tug a trailer of up to 3500kg.

That said, what the Wrangler can pull, it’ll probably be able to pull it across a muddy field, up a mountain, or across the surface of the moon, such is its off-roading ability.

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, powered mirrors, electric windows, 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 some posher design touches, leather upholstery, heated front seats, 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 offered the odd high-value special edition, the fabulously named Night Eagle being one example.