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2016 Jeep Wrangler Rubicon Unlimited review

A crowd of crusty dirt bike riders gathered at the bottom of the slick, nearly vertical sandstone face to watch with bated breath (I assume) my descent of the seemingly impassable sandstone face.

I had brought the boxy, hydro-blue 2016 Jeep Wrangler Unlimited Rubicon to the Hungry Valley off-road area about an hour outside Los Angeles to eagerly test the off-road capabilities of the iconic trail rig.

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Feeling exceedingly confident in both my and the truck's four-wheeling capabilities, my co-driver and I — along with our two other buddies wedged in the backseat — found the only double black diamond trail on the map and made a beeline straight for it.

Up until the moment, having rolled over many stones and through a few dusty gullies, we'd felt unstoppable. Our confidence peaked, however, just as we rounded the sharp right-hander to discover a 100-foot near-45-degree sandstone rock face.

A video posted by Nick Jaynes (@nickjaynes) on Nov 30, 2015 at 7:24pm PST

As we surveyed the golden rock, weathered into a steep, smooth surface, our confidence — and stomachs — sank.

Standing atop the stone barrier that stood between us and the valley below, we debated turning around. It appeared from our vantage point that a single miscalculation could send the Jeep tumbling ass over teakettle down the incline and to our demise.

As we stood there, hands on hips, hemming and hawing over the angle of approach, the sounds of a dozen slowly idling single-cylinder dirt bikes at the base of the hill and beat out an ominous rhythm. The sounds of the exhausts bounced off the rock walls like a distant drumroll, daring me to tackle the descent.

Finally having built up enough courage — or at the very least pushed away enough fear — I climbed into the rig, put the transfer case into four-wheel drive, locked the front and rear differentials, popped the transmission into drive, let off the handbrake and began the journey downward.

Like nothing else

The Wrangler is truly like nothing else on the road today. It's not just blessed with classic body lines reminiscent of its World War II heritage — it's underpinned by some stone-age stuff, including the chassis and suspension. I don't need to get into the details here, but suffice it to say it's about as modern as the Greek Parthenon.

Despite it's ancient underpinnings, Jeep designers have made the Wrangler a competent inner-city commuter. The car's 3.6-liter Pentastar V6 is quite peppy, thanks to its 285-horsepower and 260 pound-feet of torque. The five-speed automatic transmission is smooth shifting. And the brakes, though a bit squishy, will bring the boxy 4x4 to a quick stop.

The Wrangler is especially comfortable over potholes and speed humps, as the off-road-y suspension was designed to soak up much more than any on-road commute could ever toss as it. And, if you're into loud, thump-y tunes, you'll absolutely love the optional and, importantly, weather-resistant Alpine stereo system.

That said, the Wrangler still a bit strange. Due to its old-school steering and big, knobby tires, the Wrangler doesn't track straight down the road. This requires a steering technique that make you feel like you're in an old-timey movie, continually forced to make the seesaw motion with your arms to keep the vehicle straight in the lane.

Rear-seat passengers of four-door Unlimited models fitted with the standard cloth-top will find road noise to be excruciating at speed. They'll also be either quite hot or quite cold, depending on the outside temperature, since there are no climate control vents in the back seating area.

There are other niggling issues. The door catches, for example, are made of cloth. That means they don't stay open. So when you're trying to load something in the car, the door will swing closed on your back.

Those are there not because Jeep is cheap but rather because the doors are designed to be easily removed. So it makes sense. When loading, say, a child into the backseat while the wind is blowing, however, you'll feel a bit like you're in a scene from Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.

That said, if you walk into Wrangler ownership understanding it won't be like anything else you've ever commuted in, it can still be an enjoyable daily ownership experience. That's because it frees you up to do things that no other modern vehicle can. And the Jeep doubly proved that point, as it descended to sandstone rock face.

The descent

White-knuckling the steering wheel, I guided the Wrangler about halfway down before I hit potential disaster. It was a divot in the slope several feet wide — broad enough I couldn't well steer around for fear of tipping it but deep enough I dreaded going straight through. Driving in, I imagined, would surely cause the Wrangler to bottom-out.

Seeing no way around it, I headed straight on, gritted my teeth and hoped for the best. Before even nearing the crevasse, my imagination was already conjuring the sounds of grinding, steel-on-stone. But, to my surprise, the Wrangler rolled over it, albeit with a bit of wheel slip, as if it were a measly pothole. I was amazed.

Once through that, the rest of the descent was smooth sailing. I had Hill Decent mode engaged, which prevents the rig from exceeding 5 mph, so I didn't have to do much more than steer the thing down the decline.

A video posted by Nick Jaynes (@nickjaynes) on Nov 30, 2015 at 4:32pm PST

At the bottom, completely unscathed, I quietly celebrated from the driver's seat. Meanwhile, the Mad Max-y dirt bikers roared off down the trail, clearly disappointed they didn't get to see a crash or at least some damage caused to the showroom-fresh $45,000 4x4.

As my heart rate dropped down into normal range, I looked in my rearview mirror and squinted and mischievously pondered my next move. Feeling exceedingly unstoppable, I pulled a U-turn and headed back up the rock-face I had just nerve-rackingly descended.

Although there were tire burn marks scarring the rock where drivers clearly had to gun it in order to summit the gradient, the Wrangler climbed the stone hill as if it were casually pulling into a suburban driveway. As you can hear in the video below, I made my jubilation known.

A video posted by Nick Jaynes (@nickjaynes) on Nov 30, 2015 at 3:46pm PST

Nothing else we encountered that day — from traipsing through the desert to crawling through a mud hole — came close to overwhelming the off-road capability of the Wrangler. But we did come awfully close to overwhelming it's on-road capabilities.

Highway to hell

After getting our fill of wheelin' and muddin', the four of us put the cloth top back on and headed home. This required over an hour on high-speed Los Angeles freeways that Sunday evening. Traffic was plenty and it was fairly fast-moving. It was there I got my first glimpse into the Wrangler's biggest shortcomings.

During my suburban commute that week, I'd noted the road noise allowed to permeate the cabin through the soft-top. On the freeway, however, the backseat passengers described the road noise as "deafening."

Loaded up with four grown men and their things, cruising at 70 mph, the Wrangler handled as if it were made of pudding, easily pushed around by wind and thrown off track by even the slightest crown in the road surface. If fighting the steering wheel in order to stay straight wasn't worrying enough, the hood bounced wildly — up to three-quarters of an inch by my estimation — on its rubber tie-downs like it was about to come loose and flop against the windshield.

We were being tossed about by wind and roadway imperfections, deafened by tire noise, and the hood was threatening to attack. From where I as sitting, a collision was imminent. Thankfully, it never came. However, that hour and 20 minutes of freeway wrangling I was forced into was exhausting and, frankly, scary.

Unlimited

Normally, such a poor highway performance would nullify any affinity I felt for a car. In the Wrangler, though, it didn't.

I fully recognize that virtually no one will ever utilize the Wrangler's off-road capabilities but instead use it as a way to get to work during inclement weather or as a high-riding convertible. So the sacrifices in modernity you're making for 4x4 aptitude are essentially wasted.

A video posted by Nick Jaynes (@nickjaynes) on Nov 30, 2015 at 4:27pm PST

That said, I am a real believer in investing in cars that are fun — you can't be practical all the time. Frankly, there's almost nothing smart about the Wrangler, but it is tons of fun.

When you're in it, your mind is constantly flooded with images of playing hooky from work to wheel off into the desert to escape it all. The Wrangler unlocks a part inside every American, the romantic part that yearns for freedom and solitude and the open sky. I reckon it's the cowboy part of our brains.

So, if you invest in a Wrangler, you need to realize that 99% of the time you'll suffer from abusive doors, deafening road noise, pudding-y handling and woeful fuel economy. On that one weird day each year that you let yourself go and really embrace the Wrangler lifestyle and drive through a mud bog or down a sandstone rock-face, for that fleeting moment, you'll be happier behind that wheel than any other time in your life.

And if that feeling is worth it to you, I say go for it. If not, get a Kia Sportage.