The rock staircase climbed up from the sand, flanked by chaparral and sagebrush. As the red sandstone steepened into nearly a 30-degree pitch, the terrain appeared brittle, like the inside of a Butterfinger. This was no candy bar.
A 2024 Jeep Wrangler Willys skittered on a loose rock, the wheels pulled left, the guides shouted, and the driver arrested its slide. But it was stuck. Backing down would’ve been too tricky. Turn the wheel right up slope, and it would’ve rolled over; turn left and it’d dive 20 feet into the sand, led by the new steel bumper and a factory-installed Warn winch.
Good thing for the guides and their recovery Rubicons. Better thing that Jeep fit the available Warn winch and its 8,000-pound capacity on all the test vehicles. In what took maybe five minutes, the team unspooled the power winch from the recovery Rubicon, connected it to the tow hook on the driver’s side of the stranded Jeep, yanked the nose, and pulled it into a course correction. It was so fluid it could’ve felt staged, if not for the mortification of the driver.
2024 Jeep Wrangler
With dozens of drivers, and skill levels ranging from expert to noobs, the $3,495 Rubicon accessory proved worth it on more than one occasion. This area of deep sand, slick sandstone, and improbably cartoonish rock formations is popular terrain for Wranglers, and serves as the proving grounds for much of Jeep’s validations.
Sand Hollow State Park, in southwestern Utah, could be a kind of Moab-lite, temptingly simple if you know where to go but deceptively challenging overall. It was just the place to test the redesigned 2024 Jeep Wrangler that has some simple updates that make a big difference.
2024 Jeep Wrangler: New seven slot grille
Jeep hasn’t strayed too far from what makes this icon of automotive icons so iconic. Ten wheel designs, ten body color choices, two-door and four-door options, four different convertible rooftops only knock on Pandora’s Box of Wrangler customization. The major change to the exterior is a shorter seven slot grille with different color trim rings to signify the grades. It’s stouter, but the grille bars have more texture that enables more engine cooling lost due to the shorter slots. All of this is in service of fitting the available Warn winch, and in Rubicon X models, a steel bumper.
Lurking behind that grille is one of four engine options, unchanged from last year except for the discontinuation of the turbodiesel. The base 285-hp 3.6-liter V-6 comes with a 6-speed manual with long throws and gappy gear spacing, but most buyers will opt for the $2,500 8-speed automatic that feels more at home in the modern Wrangler.
2024 Jeep Wrangler
2024 Jeep Wrangler
2024 Jeep Wrangler
The 2.0-liter turbo-4 is more potent. It makes 270 hp and 295 lb-ft, the latter of which peaks at 3,000 rpm, much sooner than the V-6 and its 260 lb-ft at 4,800 rpm. It’s a quieter, quicker, better daily driver, and worth the $2,500 upcharge over the V-6 with the 8-speed.
More Wrangler buyers are opting to pair that turbo-4 with a motor-generator as well as a traction motor integrated into the 8-speed automatic in the 4xe plug-in hybrid model. Jeep said the Wrangler 4xe accounted for 38% of sales in the first quarter of 2023, and it’s expecting that number to increase to 50% by next year. That’s crucial for a brand experimenting with an electric Wrangler and struggling to meet CAFE requirements.
It’s not just a numbers game. Fed by a 17.3-kwh battery pack, the 100-kw traction motor partners with the turbo-4 to generate 375 hp and 470 lb-ft. Not only is it more powerful than the turbodiesel, it’s the best daily driver, quick and light off the line, quiet and smooth with its transitions. With 22 miles of all-electric range, it’s the model I’d recommend to many Wrangler fans who overlook its off-road ability in favor of its topless convertibility. It starts at a lower entry point this year in the $51,790 Sport S. The 2024 Wrangler costs about $700 more than last year’s model, ranging from $33,690 for the base Sport to $89,390 for the Rubicon 392.
The 4xe offsets the thirst of the Wrangler Rubicon 392. Its 6.4-liter V-8 makes 470 hp and 470 lb-ft on its way to a 0-60 mph of 4.5 seconds, though the top-heavy beast feels more thrilling than that. Open up the exhaust baffles, and it sounds and moves like it’ll conquer anything on-road, off-road, and in between. Jeep tweaks the steering hydraulics in the 392, so not only does the wheel feel heftier in the hands, there’s also more feedback than in other models from the otherwise loose recirculating ball steering, especially compared to the 4xe.
2024 Jeep Wrangler: About that full-float rear axle
The biggest mechanical difference for 2024 bolts into the rear, and it’s also exclusive to Rubicon models. It upgrades from a Dana 44 axle on other models with a Dana 44 HD full-float rear axle often used in commercial trucking applications. Essentially, it allows increased towing capacity, more structural rigidity, and a simplified process of replacing a wheel or axle shaft if you find real trouble on the trail.
The perfectly capable semi-float rear axle on other Wranglers both carries the load of the Jeep and handles the rotational force of the torque to the rear wheels. The design of the full-float axle splits those duties, so the axle tube bears the load, and the axle shaft transfers torque to the tires.
“It’s unique in the way the wheel hub attaches to the axle,” Pete Milosavlevski, chief engineer for the Wrangler, explained. “There’s an extra bearing that allows us to attach the wheel hub directly to the axle tube.”
The extra stability allowed Jeep to increase the 2024 Wrangler Rubicon’s towing capacity to 5,000 pounds, but only with the 2.0-liter turbo-4 or the V-6. Other models with the semi-float rear axle remain at a 3,500-pound capacity, while two-door models are rated at 2,000 pounds.
2024 Jeep Wrangler
2024 Jeep Wrangler
2024 Jeep Wrangler
2024 Jeep Wrangler
We tested the V-6 with the 8-speed hooked up to a 4,300-pound Airstream camper on a 96-degree desert day around Sand Hollow reservoir. It was well balanced and with no trailer sag on the rear axle, the great silver turkey planted on its steel platter. The V-6 strained uphill at 55 mph, with the 8-speed automatic keeping the engine above 5,000 rpm. It wasn’t for long, and it wasn’t that unusual for such a weight and such an engine. I couldn’t help but wonder how the discontinued turbodiesel and its 442 lb-ft of torque would perform, or the 4xe or Rubicon 392. Jeep did not get SAE validation for the higher towing figure with those engines, due in part to the weight balance with a massive V-8 up front, as well as the roughly 700 pounds of extra weight due to the 4xe powertrains.
On milder ascents such as on-ramps, it held much calmer in the 3,000-4,000 rpm range. In either case, the V-6 didn’t feel overmatched by the hefty load, it just required more patience.
Milosavlevski doubted an occasional Wrangler driver like me would notice the increased rigidity when driving unladen.
“Behind the wheel you’re not really going to feel it unless you’re trailering,” he said. “It gives you a sense of security and confidence because the structure is doing its job, and the axle shaft is focused on running the torque to the wheels.”
I wouldn’t have noticed without a back-to-back demo of the two towing capacities. But getting blasted by a convoy of semis on the single lane highway worried me, as normal. After the initial wave of air, the Wrangler and its load remained steady and without sway, so I imagine my anxiety would lessen over time.
The aluminum alloy turkey was about a half-foot wider on either side than the Wrangler, so dual side mirrors for towing would’ve been helpful, as would the available trailer camera lacking on our tester. The brake controller is a Mopar accessory that needs to be installed at the dealer, but Rubicons come with the trailer tow package with a 7-pin connector and Class II hitch. The max tow package costs extra.
2024 Jeep Wrangler
2024 Jeep Wrangler
2024 Jeep Wrangler
2024 Jeep Wrangler
2024 Jeep Wrangler: Standard 12.3-inch touchscreen
The last big development for the 2024 Wrangler is the addition of a standard 12.3-inch touchscreen with wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, and several available camera angles. It stretches horizontally across the compass-oriented dash, which is still flanked by circular vents and grab bars on the pillars. It’s well integrated with classic Jeep dash elements, such as another grab bar in front of the passenger, and traditional hard dials for fan speed, volume, and tuning below the touchscreen.
A vertical menu bar keeps the toggling simple, and off-road features such as pitch and roll have much brighter, larger displays. A new Trails Offroad app has 62 Jeep trails across the country baked in, and another 3,000 available for an annual subscription fee of $39.99. It can also record your route and add breadcrumbs, or way points, to help track where you went to save it or share it with others. You need navigation, however, which relies on TomTom mapping instead of Google, even though Uconnect runs on Google’s operating system.
2024 Jeep Wrangler
2024 Jeep Wrangler
2024 Jeep Wrangler
The large touchscreen is modern and classic Jeep at the same time, without overwhelming the dash. The same could be said for the rest of the updates to the 2024 Jeep Wrangler. They let it do even more Wrangler things, while still being a classic.
That it can now tow more than the Ford Bronco and its 4,500-pound capacity is incidental. “Competition is good but all of these improvements were in the works anyway,” Milosavlevski responded. “We’re always looking to refine and up our game because the customer wanted it.”
One of those improvements is a factory-installed Warn winch that can save a precarious off-roader the terror of falling down one of nature’s staircases.
Jeep paid for lodging and airfare for Motor Authority to present this firsthand report.
