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The front window, which is four centimeters longer, is now somewhat flatter - good for overview and aerodynamics.
Cars like this have their future behind them. Long time. The Wrangler from Jeep gave its name to a whole genus. Today's SUVs, on the other hand, are nothing more than domesticated, if not degenerate, offspring and crossbreds from the genetic material of this once-in-a-lifetime war vehicle called Jeep. Its robust versatility saved the practical veteran of automotive history in civilian life and there to the threshold of digitization. There, the jeep looks like a dinosaur today. That's what makes his charm. And who will extinguish a dinosaur? Certainly not a human, but rather a climate change.
A statement, not a status symbol
Granted, to the looks that show sympathy in the everyday encounters in traffic, already joined the one or the other skeptical facial expression. That was quite different with his slender grandfather, with whom the GIs arrived in Europe more than 75 years ago. The face with the two round headlights and the grille in goulleck look has never given up Jeep over all the wars and continents in which his grandfather and he were deployed. Unlike all SUVs, the recognition value of the Jeep Wrangler is 100 percent - worldwide. A statement, not a status symbol is this car.
The Wrangler ignores common design trends for decades
Even in its "most luxurious" version as a four-door Sahara, it remains at the announcement: This is a SUV, classic, mechanical like no other else. Even Daimlers genetically still most comparable G-class courted today technically - but above all priced - the Kashmir Carrier with Italian designer slippers, while the Wrangler warms the heart of the flannel shirt and boots faction. As streamlined as an old bank vault, this Jeep ignores common design trends for decades. But he has a front bumper on which one can sit confidently and relatively comfortably and look into the landscape.
The exact opposite of sportiness
Never was the Wrangler about being the first. This Jeep prefers to do the last. The one who arrives when everyone else has to give up. The Wrangler stays and still drives calmly. A fossil-seemingly indifferent steering requires over- and circumspection, especially with rough Allterrain winter tires like on the white test car. The brake is no different, it also educates to anticipatory driving and early operation. The Wrangler Sahara stands for the exact opposite of sportiness, which is considered indispensable today for every automobile.
The modern eight-speed automatic is a welcome driving aid
You sit - felt - towering above the ground quite close to a steep windshield, which can be folded down to the front of the bonnet and fixed there today. Leather seats and steering wheel with heating quickly conjure comfort in a little spring-like weather in a cockpit that wants to be functional and nothing else. Okay, today a camera helps to reverse. The spare wheel on the tailgate leaves hardly any other options. And even the modern automatic with eight driving speeds is a welcome driving aid, of which the Wrangler otherwise holds little. For excursions into the terrain, a mechanical gearbox must continue to be taken into hand and be paid attention to the freewheel until the gear reduction. Old school.
A warhorse with civilian consumption
What is far more surprising is the drive. Under the hood, not unlike the size and orientation of a ping pong table, no fat six- or eight-cylinder more, but a commercially available today, unfortunately spurned 2,2 liter four-cylinder diesel with 200 horsepower and 450 Newton meters torque. And far less pithy, as one would expect in this vehicle. Only below zero degrees, he grumbles for a moment and then largely disappears acoustically. The clean diesel makes the 4,88 meter long four-door as expected, not a racehorse, but also not the feared habit drinker. The value of 7,9 liter given by Jeep can not be fully realized in everyday use, but with less than 9 liters the consumption values of the warhorse are meanwhile really civil. Something from the civilian frame falls the price for the Jeep Wrangler Sahara. From 56 000 Euro are already a house number, with all sympathy for the veteran.
Text and photos: Solveig Grewe