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The Jeep Wrangler doesn't have a lot of frills — but that's a good thing by Matthew DeBord on Mar 1, 2017, 5:01 PM Advertisement
 Cars have come a long way in the past 30 years. When I first started driving, you didn't get much more than an AM/FM radio and maybe tape deck. Airbags hadn't yet become common. Self-driving was called cruise control. Anything that drove "sporty" cam from Europe. Now safety is extensive, infotainment and navigation are copious, autonomous features are becoming more common and self-driving could soon be a reality, and many vehicles, from 2-doors to pickups, can handle like sports cars. The antidote to all this progress is the Jeep Wrangler. Jeep has been building this thing since the mid-1980s, and before that, the DNA of this pure offroader ranges all the way back the original Willys military vehicle of World War II. Prior the the Wrangler, Jeep sold the no-nonsense CJ. Over the years, the Wrangler has collected a few more creature comforts, but this is still just about the most rudimentary vehicle you can currently buy, purpose-built to leave the pavement and head for the hills, the rocks, the rivers. Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, Jeep's parent, recently let us borrow a 2017 Sahara Wrangler, with a base price of about $30,000, but for our tester, optioned up to almost $38,000. The idea was that we might get to tackle some gnarly East Coast winter snow. The bad weather, sadly, never arrived. But we did our best to put the Wrangler through its paces, anyway: SEE ALSO: Range Rover's stunning Porsche fighter is here — and it's a high-tech marvel The Wrangler is unmistakably a Jeep, from the stout tires and wheels to the boxy body panels and blocky shape, the flat windshield and hood latches, the aggressive bumpers and un-integrated fenders to ... 
... that signature, slotted Jeep grille and the round headlamps. Note the hooks on the front bumper. What we have here is the automobile in basic, near-tactical form: body-on-frame design, a pair of solid axles, and a genuine four-wheel-drive system that's prepared to take on the backwoods.  The consumer version of this famous ride has been in more-or-less continuous production since 1944. The allure is obvious. Unlike more versatile SUVs and crossover that claim to have offroad credibility, the Jeep Wrangler makes offroad credibility its defining characteristic. Essentially, you have a relatively powerful and torque-y motor (but not one that that's too large or too powerful) yokes to a 4WD setup that, when applied through four beefy tires, should be able to conquer terrain that would cripple other machines. How much legit offroading do Wranglers get into? More than you might think (a shielding gas tank comes standard, after all). But there's a contingent of owners who buy the vehicle because it exudes outdoorsiness. What it can do is more important that what it typically does do.
Our tester came with a "Silver Metallic" paint job, a basic-black interior, two doors, an nearly inaccessible back seat, and a $2,000-extra hardtop that can be disassembled. The doors can also be removed, by the way.  Somewhat hilariously, my first grader kept getting stuck with his backpack trying to squeeze in the back seat. It would have been easier if the weather had been warmer and I'd figured out how to remove to top and the doors.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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