• Petrol V6, eight-speed automatic speed only;
• 2.72:1 transfer case (crawl ratio 44:1);
• 18″ wheels (255/70/18, 32.1 inch diameter);
• Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEB);
• Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) with stop;
• Blind Spot Monitoring (BSM);
• Leather seats;
• Hard Top;
• 8.4 Uconnect touchscreen , satnav;
• 230v power; and
• Remote start.

• Diesel and petrol engines, eight-speed automatic only;
• 4.1:1 transfer case ratio (crawl ratio 77.2:1);
• 17-inch wheels;
• 32″ BFG KM3 mud terrain tyres;
• Front and rear cross-axle locking differentials;
• Front swaybar disconnect;
• Underbody protection;
• Heavy duty front/rear axles Dana M210/M220;
• Rock sliders; and
• Winch bar.

• Leather bucket seats;
• Leather shift knob; and
• Heated front seats, steering wheel.

• AUX switches – see below;
• 240A alternator (standard 220A); and
• 700CCA battery (standard 650CCA).

Jeep has developed an auxiliary switch system which provides the driver with four programmable auxiliary switches located in the lower switch bank of the instrument panel. The driver has the ability to configure the functionality of the auxiliary switches via the Uconnect settings.

All switches can be configured for setting the switch type operation to latching or momentary, power source of either battery or ignition, and ability to hold last state across key cycles. The switches control four separate relays, with fused 15-amp and 40-amp circuits (two of each).

Each relay output circuit terminates at two blunt cut wires, located in the engine compartment and under the dashboard. This caters for the fitment of electrical accessories both inside and outside the vehicle, without needing to route aftermarket wiring through the firewall.

Below is a photo of a JK Wrangler Rubicon I had on test some years ago with its swaybar in and out. I was unable to get a similar shot for the JL, but the principle is exactly the same.

Cross-axle lockers are a huge boon in rough, wheel-in-the-air rocky climbs. A single locker in the rear, as is fairly common in many 4x4s, is a good option although in many cases effective brake traction control working across all four wheels such as on the Toyota Fortuner is better than engaging a single rear locker.  Yet even the best traction control isn’t as good (yet!)  as twin cross-axle lockers when you’re crawling up steep, rocky terrain, and having both front and rear lockers is a significant performance advantage over just a rear locker.

Both engines and drivetrains deserve a gold star too. For off-road performance, the tractability of an engine is often overlooked. You want ready amounts of torque for quick reactions and pickup, but not a flighty, unpredictable throttle that requires a feather touch. Jeep has the balance right for both engines. The transmission can pretty much be left in D for Drive too, but when required you can lock in a gear and pull away from stationary up to 3rd low according to the manual or 4th low according to my experience. Either is good. The eight ratios mean you can choose exactly the one you need, and the engine braking is very good too.

Even better, the hill descent control (HDC) is amazing, it even brings the car to a complete halt and smoothly lets it move on, working down to 1km/h. Never seen that before, so impressed. However, the track didn’t have any properly steep hills to truly test the system, but previous Jeep HDC experience has been very good so I’ll assume this next generation is even better. The system is a bit odd, though – the speed is set by the gearshift, and the car decides the gear to go with the selected HDC speed so you lose manual gearshift control.

If you want, in low-range you can use the ‘drive through the brakes’ technique with left foot on brake, right on accelerator. In the road modes this technique doesn’t work as there is a brake-throttle inhibitor.

No matter how much clearance you have, you’ll scrape eventually and the Rubicon has a decent amount of underbody protection, plus rock-sliders for the sills which can take the weight of the car.

The owner’s manual actually recommends removing the standard sidesteps on Sport S and Overland before off-roading…if other manufacturers did the same there’d be a lot less bent alloy! Nevertheless, I do think a 50mm lift is in order for the Rubicon. And on the subject of the owner’s manual, interestingly the manual also says chains must only be fitted to the rear wheels, presumably for clearance at the front. A bit sad for a vehicle like the Rubicon, especially as it has a front live axle which should offer more clearance than independent suspension.

Only twice on the launch did a Wrangler become stuck, the first was driver error after driving the vehicle into a hole, and the other time was thick mud which would have stopped anything short of 35-inch aired-down tyres so hardly a reflection on the Rubicon. After some track-building and judicious use of Maxtrax we got the vehicle un-bogged, and the others went through without much drama.

We finished Climies Track in the dark, allowing evaluation of the headlights which are excellent, being modern LEDs. I’d still go for a set of auxiliary lights though, but would advise owners to try the vehicle at night first so they can decide where they need extra light.

Does it have a spare? Yes, a full-sized spare tyre with matching alloy wheel, mounted on the rear tailgate where it is easy to access off-road, and doesn’t take up storage space. Rear mounted spares can get in the way of rear visibility, but the Wranglers JLs all have reversing cameras (and the spare is mounted lower than on previous models).

Can you tow with it? You can indeed, a claimed 2495kg for the Unlimited (long wheelbase) models, with a decent 250kg towball mass limit. However, while that’s an improvement over the JK which was a mere 2300kg, even nearly 2500kg isn’t much when other wagons such as the Everest and Pajero Sport are 3000kg plus. It is also good to see Jeep have added trailer stability control.

But, as is so often the case, the 2495kg rating is unlikely to be achieved in reality. The tare mass of the Rubicons is 1992kg for the petrol and 2160kg for the diesel. The GVM (maximum it can weigh) is only 2562 and 2630kg respectively so payload (amount it can carry) is an unimpressive 570kg for the petrol and 470kg for the diesel. This means the the diesel variant can’t carry 5 x 100kg people legally, and if you add 100kg of camping and recovery gear there’s not much payload available for either. I see GVM upgrades figuring in the future of many Wrangler owners.

Back to towing, and the GCM (max combined weight of trailer and towcar) is only 4808kg for the petrol, so we if subtract off 2495kg from that we get 2313kg, and from that we delete the tare mass of 1992kg to give us…a payload of 321kg. And for the diesel it is 221kg. Ideally, you want the GCM to be the sum of the GVM and max tow and the Wranglers are short by 249kg.

I could go further with the towing maths and figure out the effect of the rear axle load and the towball mass – you can read all about it here – but there’s no point as the story is clear. Don’t buy a Wrangler thinking it’ll tow 2495kg in the real world. I’d suggest thinking in terms of a lightish camper trailer only, below 1500kg. 

The ute version of the Wrangler, the Glaidator, is due here with a 3500kg tow rating but if the payload isn’t up to the mark then it too will join the ranks of cars with tow ratings that exist purely in brochures and not the real world. Interestingly, the US handbook has the 3.6L 4-door only capable of towing 1587kg with a 158kg towball mass.

Here’s a table of Rubicon weights, all in kg:

* accounts for a 250kg TBM

As you can see in the above table, there’s not a lot of payload left when towing at the maximum allowed.  The Jeep people will disagree, but the Wrangler JL is a fantastic, short-range fun car. It is not suitable as a long-range tourer or tow car.

What about ownership? Jeep Australia has, in past years, developed quite a reputation for poor customer service and unreliability and my personal experience through involvement in the 4×4 scene bears this out – no less than three of my personal friends have reluctantly dropped Jeep for this reason, let alone the others I hear about, and I myself have experienced Jeep customer care.

However, let’s be fair here and look forwards, not backwards. Jeep Australia boss, Steve Zanlunghi acknowledges the challenges Jeep faces in Australia, and talked about his determination to put it right. Tellingly for me, he said he started his career on the phones in customer care, right on the frontline of disgruntled owners. I asked him for one single quote that summarised the Jeep Australia view of the customer, and he gave me this: “We have fundamentally changed the culture where customer focus is now a priority.” As evidence, he offered that warranty claims are down 35%, and buy-backs down 52%. And there’s the 5-year warranty, albeit that’s now industry standard and Jeep’s is only good for 100,000km.

Jeep is keen to keep customers coming back to dealers, and have made efforts to ensure that you cannot get your Jeep serviced elsewhere for cheaper. There is a capped price servicing deal which Jeep say is $850 less servicing than the JK over 5 years. Warranty is 5 years but only 100,000km and includes lifetime roadside assistance when serviced within Jeep’s authorised dealer network.

Servicing for the petrol is $299 per service with intervals of 12 months or 12,000km, diesel is $499 with intervals of 12 months or 20,000km. However, as always, off-roaders or those who tow should consider more frequent servicing.

Should I buy a petrol or diesel Rubicon? Petrol all the way for me. Firstly, $5000 extra for a diesel engine buys a lot of petrol. Secondly, while the diesel is good, I prefer the revvy petrol as a fun driving machine. Both are equally capable off- or on-road, and share the same eight-speed automatic albeit with slightly different ratios to suit the engines. Also counting against the diesel is another 168kg of weight, and while the GVM is higher you get only a 470kg payload which is pretty small.

The only reason to choose the diesel, really, is the extra range – a combined fuel consumption rating of 10.3L/100km vs 7.5L/100km for petrol and diesel is quite a bit –  but frankly, the Wrangler is not a long-range tourer or tow car so I don’t think that’s a big issue. There’s a decent sized 81-litre fuel tank so the petrol isn’t exactly short-legged for range. You’d need to drive a long way to make up the $5000 in savings too. The diesel engine is only available on the Rubicon.

So, what about competitors? Jeep see the Wrangler competitors as the FJ Cruiser (now discontinued), the G-Class and Defender…so it doesn’t, according to them, have any real competitors. Buyers are apparently coming to the Wrangler from the Ranger (15%), LC70 (9%) and Colorado (11%). Oddly, I think, Jeep don’t see the Suzuki Jimny in the same class. I do, because while the Jimny is smaller, it too is a short-range fun 4WD, and significantly cheaper plus offers three-star ANCAP safety. In fact, I’d say the Wrangler competitors include other vehicles you don’t need but want, such as the Fiat 500 Abarth and Toyota 86.

What safety features does it get? The Wrangler JL has scored a one-star safety rating from EuroNCAP, and as our local ANCAP scores are increasingly aligned with EuroNCAP, it’s fair to assume the JL will score the same over here, or possibly two stars at best. Jeep has defaulted to the usual carmarker response when there’s a poor safety rating by listing all the safety features they can think of for the JL, which total 70. That sounds impressive until you realise included in that list of desperation are GPS, roadside assistance, driver instrument cluster, child restraints, headlamp time delay off, keyless entry and even a universal door opener.

So let’s break this down. One criticism I have of the ANCAP (and EuroNCAP) ratings is that they are overly simplistic. These days, a car’s safety rating is made up of:

• passive safety – the basic crashworthiness, how well the car protects occupants. Covers the crumple zones, airbags and the like;
• active safety – when you’re on your way to an accident this helps prevent or mitigate the crash. Includes tech like ABS, stability control;
• proactive safety – helps stop an accident even occurring. Autonomous emergency braking, lane keep assist, blind spot warning and the like; and
• The safety rating is also made up of adult protection, child protection, and pedestrian protection. It is, in theory, possible to have a car with great passive safety but weak everywhere else and so it scores a low rating.

According to EuroNCAP, the Wrangler loses points for not having a rear seatbelt pre-tensioner, no airbags for knee or pelvis, no ISOFIX childseat mounts, no active bonnet for pedestrians, no AEB and no lane keep assist. Safety ratings are simplistic, and don’t always reflect individual preferences or usage scenarios, and the Overland and Rubicon variants will have AEB. Also, many owners will modify their Wranglers with aftermarket gear which often compromises the performance of advanced proactive safety gear anyway, for example AEB sensors aren’t always well replicated in bullbars.

So, how about we dig into the actual crashworthiness, which is what most owners will care about. Here we find a score of 50%, with the crash-test dummies an unhealthy mix of colours denoting Weak to Good, but mostly Adequate and Marginal. And here’s how a 3- and 5-star 4×4 rates compared with the Wrangler, according to EuroNCAP. All three are separate-chassis designs, and the Jimny is almost as old as the Wrangler and shares a live axle at the front.