Driving a Jeep Wrangler is still a singular experience. You sit tall, looking not so much over but down on a narrow hood. Inside, it’s narrow, it’s loud, and the inside of the hardtop is white, which makes it look unfinished. There’s no damping on the doors, so they open and close very easily, and you have to be careful opening them when it’s windy, especially in crowded parking lots.
But you can take them off. The doors, the roof, and—if you really want to work at it, the windshield—all come off. Driving a Wrangler makes you look at your surroundings in a different way, and all this extra visibility helps. You eyeball ditches as you drive alongside, wondering if you’d have to go in sideways to keep from burying the bumper in the dirt. Berms are assessed according to the probability they high-center you. Traffic jams aren’t inconveniences any more if you can just drive around them.
It’s easy to see why people still love these vehicles despite their honest-to-evolution developmental pace. If you want to do what it is built to do, a Wrangler does it better and cheaper than anything else you can buy new. The Unlimited even makes sense, with its longer wheelbase and extra doors and cargo space.
