2023 Jeep Wrangler

TRAVIS LANGNESS: The Jeep Wrangler has been the king of off-roading for a long time and with good reason. It can go places other vehicles can't even dream of, and it does so in a relentless pursuit of being really good off road while sacrificing some on-road comfort, no matter what Jeep Wrangler owners will tell you. Uncomfortable, loud? I'll show you uncomfortable and loud. I'll take the doors off and throw them in a river for good. (SLOW MOTION) In a river for good. But no reign as the king of off-roaders can last forever, and that is where the Ford Bronco comes in. [MUSIC PLAYING] This thing is aimed right at the heart of the Jeep Wrangler. It comes in 2- and 4-door configurations just like the Wrangler, a soft top and hardtop configurations just like the Wrangler. These two are competing to see which one is the best SUV for you and which one will get all of your off-roading cash. Speaking of cash, if you want a cash offer on your car today, go to edmunds.com/sellmycar. [LAUGHS] King of segue. I bet you didn't see that one coming. Aside from trophy truck stuff, things like the RAM TRX and the Ford F-150 Raptor, the Bronco and the Wrangler are the best off-roaders you can currently buy. And why? Well, like trucks, they're built on body-on-frame construction. They've got four-wheel drive, knobby tires, great approach and departure angles, locking differentials, tons of articulation. The list goes on and on. But these things will go places that nothing else will. f And more than just getting to those tough places or going up steep rock hills, we want to know what they're like on their way there. Are they comfortable? Do they soak up bumps? But then what are they like when they get there? What's the articulation like? How easy is it to switch out of two-wheel drive into four-wheel drive? Et cetera, et cetera. And we've got tests for all of those things, including that bump factor. These off-roaders ain't cheap. Sure, the Bronco and the Wrangler start under $30,000, or at least that's what the brochures tell you, but that's before you include destination, which is part of the price of the vehicles, and before you option them up to be able to take on any off road obstacle you come across. The Bronco we brought out is our first edition long-termer. We keep it in our fleet for a year and test it. If you haven't seen our video on that, go ahead and click the link to check it out, but it is basically the most expensive Bronco you can currently get aside from the Raptor, which isn't out yet. So to compete with it, we had to get a pretty well-equipped Wrangler, which is what we have. We got the Wrangler Rubicon 4XE which is the Rubicon version. That's the basically most affordable version of the Wrangler, and the 4XE means it's a plug-in hybrid. Now, we could have brought out the Extreme Recon with the 3.92 V8, but we thought that was overkill. Plus, if you consider the price of this particular Wrangler being around $68,000 with the one-touch convertible top, you take that $4,000 option off, you've got a $64,000 truck, a lot closer to what the first edition Bronco is rocking with its $62,000 price. So the first of the off-road tests for these vehicles is the world famous ziggurat of integrity. We're going to take both of these trucks up to ziggurat and see how far they go before lifting a tire up. Essentially, it's an articulation test, and I'm going to give them the best chances they've got. I'm going to disconnect sway bars, engage lockers, four-wheel drive low, see how high it can get before the rear tire comes off the ground. And it might not come off the ground at all. And in that case, it would be a success for both the Wrangler and the Bronco. But Wrangler first. All right, sway bar is disconnected, front and rear lockers engaged, four low, moving up, easy does it. All right, now we watch the 5 foot 8 man climb out of the car that's 12 feet off the ground. Oh, that was fun. So as expected, Wrangler made it all the way up. Rear tire's still on the ground. That is a win over the ziggurat. You can see all the fun hardware underneath here, the body-on-frame construction we talked about, the lockers. There's not much different about the 4XE underneath. And that's kind of what makes it cool, is it's a plug-in hybrid that's also still a Wrangler. Now, I got to get back in, which is going to suck. Does anybody have a step stool, guys? No? This is where you need flexibility. The technique is, please don't die. All right, so now we're going to go for the Bronco. I've got the front and rear lockers engaged, stabilizer bar disconnected, four low, same chances as the Wrangler. See how well it does. I feel that rear wheel coming up. I'll give it a looksie. So we have found a weak spot for the Bronco. And as I get out of it, you see even more that this rear wheel is off the ground, which means you're going to lose traction. So that's a point in the Wrangler's favor because it's going to maintain traction longer. Now, this thing is larger, wider. It has taller tires on it, so I thought it would do better. In this case, I would err down significantly if I was going off road. With 35's, make the comfort better, make traction a little bit better. But I'm actually pretty surprised that the Bronco didn't make it all the way up there without keeping all four wheels on the ground. And yeah, I can see full air underneath. Now, it could make it up there, but the point I'm looking to prove here is which one has better articulation. And in this case, it's clearly the Wrangler. Now, we're going to do the "less famous than the ziggurat but still world famous" hill climb. This one has actually caught out a couple of vehicles in the past, where it's high centered and we couldn't make it all the way up. But I don't think the Wrangler and the Bronco are going to have any trouble with it. I'm going to start out in four high. I'm not going to engage the lockers, and I'm see how far I can make it up the hill. If there's a problem, if I lose traction, if I can't quite make an articulation move, then I'll start changing settings. All right, pretty simple. Here we go. Up the hill climb. Now, I try and pick the same line every time, sort of right up the center, do my best not to get stuck. I don't want to give myself a problem that I have to solve later. I'm still in four high, still in four high, and the electric motor on this is really good at just crawling up things. I don't think I'm even going to need to go into four low. Oh, hey, there we go. Big, big ditch. Still in four high, going to make it out, though. My high center a bit, oh, a little bit of sliding, sliding. Stayed in four high. [LAUGHS] Definitely got some dirt spitting out there, but made it to the top. Well, that was fun. I had to send it a little bit. Got some dirt inside the cabin because the window was open, but had a good time. It was relatively easy, and I stayed in four high the whole time. Let's try it with the Bronco. All right, we're going up the same line. I can actually see where the tire tracks are from the Wrangler just a moment ago. I'm still in four high in the Bronco. I want to treat it the same way, see if it can make it up without any assists from the systems. Sway bars still connected. Ooh, four high doesn't want to do it in the Bronco. I might have to switch to four low. Oh, don't want to get stuck. All right, so I'm going to go into four low. I got to go into neutral for that. OK, we are switched into four low. That's real interesting. Did not want to go in four high. I wonder if the-- OK, no, now I'm just going to dig myself a hole, so I got to back out of it, give it a little bit better chance. I think what I'm going to do is engage the front locker. It seems that the left side on that one is-- remember, this is the same line as the Wrangler. I might have to do with the 35s, too. OK, lockers, lockers, now that did it. Front locker did it. It got me out of that mess. But now, I'm on a line that I do not like. I got dipped into a hole. This is not as easy for the Bronco as it was for the Wrangler. The Wrangler just went right up this stuff. So I'm going to do rear lockers as well. Four low, front and rear lockers engaged, going up the exact same line as the Wrangler. Now it feels a little bit easier. That was just too much for the Bronco without the lockers, which is, man, you think you know a truck, and you put it up against some tough stuff. Now, I probably could have left it in the four high and then just engage the lockers. But you try one thing. Then you try the next. And you're up the hill. Now, that was not as easy as I expected. It was a lot more difficult. I had to engage four low, which didn't do the trick. Then I had to engage the front locker, which got me past one of the sets of hills, and then I had to engage the rear locker to get me past another one of the sets of hills. And finding the buttons was easy on the dashboard, but boy, it's a lot easier to do that in the Wrangler than it was in a Bronco. All right, so we're going to do an out and back on the dirt. It's essentially a little course that we've designed here with some cones, and we've done it before with like the Ford Raptor. The best time I could get was around 30 seconds. Oh, boy. Come on, Raptor. Don't let me down. 37s. Whoops. Now I'm going to do it in the Wrangler, four high, see how fast I can do it. And hopefully, I do well. Count me down. JOHN: 3, 2, 1, go. TRAVIS LANGNESS: Oh, boy. I don't want to get too much dirt. Oh, there we go. Now this is much tighter. I thought I wasn't going to-- oh, can I make it? No, I got to back up. Oh, that's going to cost so much time. OK, the Bronco has the trail turn assist, so it's going to do better there. Boy, this thing is bouncy. OK, OK, OK, too much bounce there. Too much bounce. Oh, boy. A little faster and across the line. whoo, that is fun. It raises your heart rate quite a bit. What was my time, John? JOHN: 30.56 seconds. TRAVIS LANGNESS: [LAUGHS] Oh, man. That is like one second off of the Raptor's pace. That's really good. All right, now we're in the Bronco. We set a time about 31 seconds with the Wrangler, and I'm going to try and do better in the Bronco. That was a lot better than two of the other Fords we tested. This one, though, has a trick up its sleeve that I get to use at the other end, and I'm very excited for it. Four high, put it in drive. Let's go. JOHN: All right, go in 3, 2, 1, go. TRAVIS LANGNESS: Would it-- would it-- a little bit of loss of traction. This thing is so powerful. All right, and trail turn assist. Keep that inside wheel going [LAUGHS] and I do not have the 3-point turn. Now that is a big difference. That is going to save me like probably three seconds. Man, this part gets real dippy, and then I speed out at the end, cross the line. That trail turn assist is really cool. It breaks the inside wheel, and I can just do a really tight u-turn. And it does it at a pretty good speed to. It's doing it again. That's fun. What was the time, John? JOHN: 25:32. TRAVIS LANGNESS: Wow, wow. The fact that you don't have to do a 3-point turn really cuts the time down. Let's talk about the interior on the Jeep versus the interior on the Bronco, and we'll go with the Jeep first, obviously, because that's the one I'm sitting in. Now, this display, this is about 8.4 inch, I think, display, was one of our favorites when it debuted, and honestly, it's remained one of my favorites. I really enjoy the user functionality of this, how quickly it responds to inputs, and it's a really good-looking display. Plus, the forward-facing camera gives you a great view, forward if you're traversing some tough rocky areas. Then there's the layout of the buttons, pretty good except for the fact that the AUX controls, for example, if you hook up a winch or exterior lights, are buried behind this, the gear selector. The cup holder is reasonable size and a big large center stack here that has two separate openings, one for smaller items in the top. It's not great in terms of interior storage. The doors have nets because, well, they're designed to come off so why design them with cup holders? And they want to give more interior space. The Jeep is actually pretty narrow compared to the Bronco, so there's not much room. You're pretty close to the person next to you when you're sitting in the front. Otherwise, there's not much to explore in here. It's a reasonably nice interior. It's not what you would expect from a standard SUV in $60,000 to $70,000 price range, but I like it. So now let's check out the interior of the Bronco, and comparatively, the first thing that stands out up against the Wrangler is this massive 12-inch screen. And this is able to be here because of the way Ford has organized the buttons. These are, obviously, much smaller buttons than what you get in the Wrangler, so depending on your preferences, you may like one over the other. I don't think these are too small to operate. There's nice duplication of features down here in the buttons and on the touch screen. And then some of the off-road controls, for example, the locking front rear differentials, are up here. And where on the Wrangler there's the gear selector right in front of the AUX controls, Ford has decided to put the AUX controls up here. So you've got your Upfitter switches, and it's like being in an airplane. That's so cool. I much prefer that. It just kind of makes me geek out a little bit. And then you also get additional center console space. So in the Wrangler, there's kind of this weird slot underneath the controls that's not blocked off on either side, so if you put your smartphone there, it's just going to slide off to one side or the other. Here, you get wireless smartphone charging, the USB ports down in front, similar-sized cup holder space, and similar-sized center console. So a big deep center console, fit plenty of water bottles in there. Another benefit you get in the Bronco is wider seats. Because there's a wider interior, you can fit larger seats in here, and me, being a wider human, I like these seats better for road trips. Now, there is a drawback on the Bronco's interior. It, like the Wrangler, has nets on the doors instead of actual physical holders because they know you're going to be taking the doors on and off or at least they think you might be, and so they put in nets. But in the Bronco, the nets only go half the distance of the door. In the Wrangler, they go full the distance, so you get less net for your money. Oh, and one final thing-- the cameras on the Ford are excellent. The 360-degree camera is super high resolution, and when it's supported by a screen this large, when you have the forward- and rear-facing camera-- which you also get on the Jeep-- but when you have them here in such a big screen, it's easier to see. Plus, you can put this thing in Baja mode and go full speed ahead with a forward camera in operation. It's a pretty cool feature. The Rubicon, the four-door over there, it's got 31 cubes of cargo space behind the rear seats and 72 cubes when you fold them down. The Bronco, respectively, has 35 and 83 cubes, so more cargo space, which you would expect from a vehicle that's a little bit bigger. And I'd love to show you that cargo space, but it's broken. This is our long-term Bronco. We keep it in our fleet for a year and test it. We bought this one for the purposes of testing, and sometimes that includes when things break. Honestly, we've tried everything. We're going to take it to a Ford dealer to get it fixed next week, but trust me on this one. It's got more cargo space. We know what both of these are off road, but let's talk about them on road just for a brief moment. We've already done deep dives on both of these cars, how they are to drive with these trucks. So if you want to see those, check the links in the description below. But briefly, I'll talk about how this vehicle, the Bronco, has rack and pinion steering and the Wrangler has recirculating ball steering, which means the steering is really light, really vague, and when you're on the highway cruising 65, 70 miles an hour, it moves around a lot. If you have a big load in the rear or if you're towing something, it gets exponentially worse. The only thing that I can compare a modern Wrangler to in terms of driving dynamics is my old heavy duty van. It feels like its nose is pointed in the air and the tires are barely touching the ground. Honestly, the Bronco just wins outright. So if you want one that's better to drive every day, pick the Ford. So which one of these SUVs comes out on top? Well, the Wrangler is a little bit easier to off road. At least when it came to our hill climb test and our articulation test, the Wrangler won handily. But the Bronco did win in terms of the [? whoops ?] test. And the Wrangler comes with a number of different powertrains, the V8, the V6, the turbo four, or the plug-in hybrid where the Bronco only gets two choices for engines. But the Bronco wins in almost every other category. It's more comfortable. It's got better tech, better interior, more space, and it doesn't fight you when you're trying to steer it on the freeway. As a result, it wins out in the Edmunds ratings categories and, overall, ekes out a win against the Wrangler. But which one would you choose? Which one would you daily drive in? Which one would you want to go off-roading with? Let us know in the comments below. Click like and subscribe, and let us know what you want to see the Bronco and the Wrangler up against next.