2023 Jeep Wrangler Reviews, Pricing & Specs

If you’ve ever wanted to drive a brick, now is your chance. The fourth-generation JL Wrangler has nary a curve on it, exuding a rugged, take-no-prisoners design aesthetic. You can snag a the two-door Wrangler or the four-door Jeep Wrangler Unlimited, and then take those doors off if the mood strikes you. If rolling doorless makes you feel too exposed to the great outdoors, the optional Dual-Door Group adds half doors for better visibility without sacrificing a feeling of safety.

The Wrangler’s windshield folds down, which is cool if you want the wind in your teeth, and there are a variety of top options for open-air exploring. All models get wide fenders, Jeep’s iconic seven-slot grille, round headlights, and old-school exterior hood latches.

Around back, the tailgate swings out and the rear glass lifts up for easy access to gear in the cargo area. Taken as a whole, it’s a simple and functional design. Well, save for the new purple paint colour of our tester. Dubbed "Reign," this limited-edition colour is the first time purple has been offered on a JL, and it brings a whole bunch of razzle dazzle to the SUV.

Jeep also offers the new "Earl" colour for 2023. This gray shade is highlighted with just a smidge of aquamarine.

The practicality continues on the inside, with easy-to-clean floor mats and seats. Again, there are plenty of straight lines here, with no extraneous doodads. If you want ambient lighting or massaging seats, go buy a Mercedes-Benz G-Wagen. We dig the body-coloured dash, the chunky HVAC controls, and the manual transfer case shifter.

If off-road performance is what you’re after, the Wrangler, with its solid axles front and rear and optional differential lockers, is the SUV to get. However, you’ll have to decide just what kind of power specs you need for the off-roading you want to do, as there are myriad engine options to choose from.

Your standard Wrangler comes with a Pentastar V6 engine, a group engine shared with other Chrysler, Ram, and Dodge products with 285 horsepower and 260 pound-feet of torque, or a 2.0-litre turbocharged four-cylinder mill with 270 ponies and 295 lb-ft of torque. Both the V6 and the turbo-four can be had with an eight-speed automatic transmission or a six-speed manual transmission.

Torque lovers will like the 3.0-litre Ecodiesel V6 with 260 hp and 442 lb-ft of torque. If you want a go-fast, and very thirsty, Wrangler, grab the Jeep Wrangler Rubicon 392 with a 6.4-litre V8 engine, 470 hp, and an equal amount of torque. If you’d like an off-roader with a few electrons in the powertrain, the Jeep Wrangler 4xe is a plug-in hybrid (PHEV) with two electric motors and a 17.3-kWh battery pack good for 35 kilometres of all-electric range. These three engines are only available with the eight-speed automatic transmission.

For this review, our tester is the snorting, heart-pounding, gas-gulping 392. This Jeep will do burnouts all day long, destroying its 35-inch BFGoodrich KO2 All-Terrain tires (wrapped around 17-inch wheels), all while leaving trails of rubber down the street. This full-time four-wheel-drive (4WD) monster can womp up dunes and over rocks, with an Off-Road Plus button that adjusts throttle, shift points and traction control, all while accelerating from zero to 100 km/h in roughly 4.5 seconds.

Different Wrangler models come with different off-road transfer cases. Here the Selec-Trac 4x4 system provides a 2.72 low range. Not as much as the 4:1 low range in the Rock-Trac part-time transfer case in the Rubicon, but that still translates to a crawl ratio of 48:1, plenty to get this rig up and over obstacles. However, our tester comes with the Xtreme Recon package, which costs $4,995 in Canada and ups the crawl ratio to 58:1. Yeah, buddy!

When it comes to on-road performance, though, the 392 has a few glaring flaws in its brakes and steering. Jeep didn’t upgrade the brakes to account for the increased power of the V8, and slowing down can be terrifying. Brake hard and brake early, my friends. The 392 gets a beefier steering wheel, which is nice, but the steering itself is vague. You never know just how much input is needed for anything as subtle as a lane change or as aggressive as a hairpin corner.

However, these aren’t a problem with the less powerful powertrains. The brakes are well-suited to other Wrangler trims and the steering, while still imprecise, is not quite as flawed in other models as in the 392.

Ford has come out swinging against the Wrangler with the new Bronco. The Bronco has an independent front suspension so it’s a bit more comfortable to drive on the pavement. You’d have to drive your rig pretty hard to really see the difference in performance between the Jeep’s solid front axle and the Bronco’s independent set up—99 percent of folks won’t really care. The Bronco Raptor is a solid competitor to the Wrangler 392, with the added bonus of competent steering and brakes.

The front seats of the Wrangler are comfortable, but if you want hot cross buns you’ll either need the Wrangler Sahara High Altitude or the 392, or pony up for a cold-weather package. Ventilated seats aren’t on offer. In theory, the rear seat can fit three, at least in the four-door models, but it’s a tight fit. The rear doors are also pretty small and it can be tough to climb in and out.

There isn’t a ton of storage for small items in the Wrangler. The flat dash means there isn’t any kind of cubby or place to rest your phone. Further, both the glove box and the centre consoles are tiny. The Wrangler does have a bin on top of the dash, but putting your phone up there runs the risk of overheating.

Larger cargo space is also limited, coming in at 2,050 litres with the rear seats folded. Sure, the Bronco only bests it by a little more than 100 litres, but when you’re loading up gear for an adventure, every little bit counts.

The hard top can be taken off in one piece, or drivers can remove the two front panels quickly. There is also a Sunrider option for the hard top. This half soft top easily flips up to expose the front row to the wind and sun.

The soft top is fairly easy to remove, although taking out the rear windows can take a bit of time. Further, the plastic rear window can be a bit of a pain when the soft top is up and you want to access gear in the rear cargo area—especially when it’s cold and the plastic gets less malleable.

The easiest (and most expensive) option for natural air conditioning is the Sky One-Touch power soft top. Push the button and the top slides back in 17 seconds, which can be done while the Jeep is rolling at up to 95 kilometres per hour. The rear side windows can be removed with this top, and the rear window is glass, so it’s easier to work with in the cold. However, some might find the open-air experience not quite complete with the non-removable glass rear window in place.

The Wrangler does a great job at supplying charging points, with two USB-A and USB-C ports up front and in the rear. There are also a smattering of 12-volt outlets throughout the cabin and a 115-volt outlet in the centre console.

A 7-inch touchscreen running Jeep’s Uconnect infotainment system is standard, but our tester has the larger 8.4-inch touchscreen. There are no hard buttons here, instead everything is accessed from the touchscreen. As a result, Uconnect looks really complicated at first, with all kinds of icons to tap for various features, but once drivers stop panicking it all makes perfect sense. Jeep’s off-road pages are great with information about power distribution, temperatures, oil pressure, pitch and roll as well as GPS coordinates with altitude. Bluetooth, Apple CarPlay, and Android Auto connectivity are all here and work as advertised.

Jeep doesn’t have too much tech for tech’s sake. Sure there is a forward-facing camera to help out on off-road trails and four auxiliary switches so you can wire up aftermarket lighting and such, but you won’t find anything too fancy. There is no digital key and any over-the-air updates only apply to the Uconnect system, not to the performance of the vehicle itself.

Jeep doesn’t really do a stellar job when it comes to safety features. The only standard components across the board are the mandatory rearview camera, electronic roll mitigation, and stability control. Blind-spot monitoring, forward collision warning, rear cross-traffic alert, and adaptive cruise control are standard on only the top Sahara High Altitude and 392 models—elsewhere, these features are part of an option package. Lane-keeping assist is not offered at all.

The good news is that drivers who opt for those safety features can dial them in to their liking. The blind-spot system can be set with a visual or audible warning or both. The forward collision warning can be set to go off early, normal or late and the adaptive cruise control has a few distance settings.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) shows an almost even split between Good and Marginal ratings in the 2023 Jeep Wrangler’s crash worthiness, crash avoidance and mitigation, and seat belts and child restraints categories. Headlights on some trims, however, get a Poor ranking.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) gives the Wrangler four out of five stars for a frontal crash test rating. The rollover rating is three out of five, but the 2023 Wrangler has not yet been rated for a side crash.

The Wrangler’s fuel economy varies depending on body style and engine choice. Generally, expect anywhere from the high 10s to the low 12s in litres per 100 kilometres combined. The 3.0-litre diesel can achieve 9.5 L/100 km combined, while the plug-in Wrangler 4xe comes in with 4.8 litres-equivalent per 100 kilometres combined.

In most trims the Wrangler does much better than the Bronco, which in many configurations stays stuck above 13 L/100 km combined. However, the Wrangler Rubicon 392 with the thirsty V8 is pretty dismal, with a Natural Resources Canada fuel consumption rating of 18.5 L/100 km city, 14.1 highway, and 16.5 combined, although that’s not far off the Bronco Raptor’s 15.7/14.8/15.3 ratings. During our time with the SUV we managed 17.8 L/100 km driving a mix of highway and city streets.

The least-expensive way to get into a model year 2023 Wrangler is to choose a two-door Jeep Wrangler Sport model for an MSRP of $41,095 (not including destination charges, which vary from $1,895 to $2,595 depending on your location), but that won’t have any differential lockers or aggressive dirt tires, or even power windows. Our tester, the top Wrangler Rubicon 392 starts at over $100,000 in Canada, and again, that’s not including destination. However, it is on par with the Bronco Raptor, its chief competitor.

For our money, we’d take the four-door Rubicon trim at $58,085 (before destination and other fees) with front and rear differential lockers, a front disconnecting sway bar for better articulation, rock rails, and skid plates. If you know you’ll spend a lot of time in the rocks, the Xtreme Recon package is a good add here, upping the crawl ratio to 86:1 and adding an extra 380 millimetres of ground clearance. However, you can only get the Recon package on the four-door. Those who prefer a shorter wheelbase are out of luck.

Keep in mind, however, that the Bronco is an excellent buy here next to the Wrangler. You can snag a two-door base model and add the Sasquatch package with bigger tires and front and rear lockers and still walk out at just under $60,000, including destination, without having to get the longer-wheelbase four-door model. Plus, there’s a next-generation Toyota 4Runner on the way that could throw another wrench into this mix.

Note: Images show a US model.