Long Term 4 Year 35,000 Mile Jeep Wrangler Rubicon Review

Hey my name is Jared and you're watching Back Road Exploration and today I want to give my long-term review of this Jeep Wrangler JK. Well so much for it being fine. That's gonna be a problem. Now I want to set out the expectations of this review right out the back. The first thing is this isn't going to be like a detailed specs breakdown, that type of a review, for a couple of reasons. One, this isn't even the current version of the Jeep Wrangler that you can buy right now. It's the JK. The current versions that you can buy are the JL. There's been a lot of documentation out there. My purpose with this is really to share my personal experiences with this as I've used it as my primary off-roading and overlanding vehicle exploring the most remote areas in Utah over the past four years. For reference, this is equipped with a 3.6 liter Pentastar engine and a six-speed manual transmission. When I purchased it four years ago, it had 45,000 miles on it and now it has right at 80,000 miles. So over the past four years, I've put 35,000 miles on the Jeep. Now you may be thinking, man, four years, 35,000 miles, really not that many, and you're absolutely right, but I need to point out that this was a purpose built adventure and overlanding vehicle. I don't use it to commute. I have another vehicle that I do for kind of my driving around, running around type things. I really purchased this to use it for exploration purposes primarily. So while I do enjoy driving it because it's fun on the weekends and sometimes in the evenings, the vast majority of the miles have come on my adventure. Some of those notable adventures are driving all the way across the West Desert in Utah along the Pony Express Trail over to Nevada and back. I've explored thousands of miles in the San Rafael Swell, headed into the high Utah mountains and everything in between. So the miles that have been put on this Jeep have been hard miles. Now I want to point out I am not a rock crawler. If you've watched my videos, I do take on some technical terrain, but that's not the primary focus of my adventure travels. I really want to get into remote areas and explore versus necessarily jumping in and doing like your hard technical rock crawling. While I have tackled some of the more popular fun trails in the Moab area, it's not the focus of the way that this vehicle has been used. In my opinion, this vehicle has been used and abused in all of the right ways, exploring really fun, beautiful, remote scenic areas in Utah. And I want to break down how I feel about this vehicle now that I've owned it for four years. Give you the things that I like, the things that I dislike. In simple terms, to break down the good, the bad, and the ugly. So to start with the good, the first thing that I need to point out is that the Jeep Wrangler, all years, all vintage, are insanely capable. They are the best vehicles that you can take off of the lot prepared for remote backcountry exploration and taking on technical, difficult terrain in stock factory form. Now, you'll look at my Jeep and you'll recognize there's been a lot of additions added to it. It is not in factory form at all anymore, but you can drive a Jeep Wrangler Rubicon Edition, especially off of the lot and take on exceptionally difficult terrain in stock form. And to me, that's one of the very best things about a Jeep Wrangler and what makes it such an awesome option for overlanding, off-roading adventures. From the factory, the Rubicon Edition comes with front and rear lockers. It has an electronic disconnect sway bar. It comes with good approach, departure, breakover angles. There really isn't a lot that you're not able to do in a stock Jeep Wrangler, unless you want to get into really technical rock crawling. And from that standpoint, then you're going to need to make additions and upgrades to it, which really breaks down the next amazing thing and good thing that I love about this vehicle is Jeeps are so easy to modify. Customizing a Jeep Wrangler to fit your needs is so easy. It doesn't matter if you want to be a hardcore rock crawler, you want to be an off-road overland adventurer, you want to put a 20-inch rims on it with little rubber band tires and kill my soul. You can do all of those things and there's tons of aftermarket support, which really sets the Jeep apart from really any other vehicle. Now, because off-roading and especially overlanding has gotten so popular over the past few years, a lot of the other vehicle manufacturers are getting way more off-road and overlanding support from the aftermarket world, which does make owning them a little bit easier from an upgrades perspective, but none of them compare to the Jeep. So while I think that no matter what rig I ever own, it will never be finished because as my needs change as a family, the things that I need my vehicle to do are going to change. I do feel like the Jeep is in a really good place after years of changes and years of exploring in it. Now, from a driving perspective, I really like the way that the Jeep handles. They're very nimble. You can turn tight. I love the width and the length, even of the JKU. It's really well suited for almost any type of terrain that you're going to want to tackle when you're off-road. And so I feel really confident. In fact, I feel more confident in the vehicle than I do in my own driving abilities. I know that it's more capable than I am. And so it doesn't matter what type of terrain I'm coming up on. I know that the vehicle is ready to handle it, which builds a lot of confidence and has been able to take me into some really unique, excellent places. It handles exceptionally off-road. Now, I want to point out that because it has solid front and rear axles, you have great articulation, but that doesn't necessarily always give you the best comfort. And I'll address that kind of in the bad. But overall, if you're looking for a vehicle that's going to be fun, enjoyable to drive off-road and insanely capable, you're going to be super thrilled with the JKU, with a JLU. You're going to be super happy with where you're sitting. With Jeeps, I love that you can take the doors off. You can take the top off. You can fold the windows down. I can take the freedom panels out. So if I don't want to take the whole top off and deal with messing around with getting the rack moved and things like that, I can just take the freedom panels off and over the driver and passenger, you have open air access. It's really nice that way. It's so fun to drive on the weekends like that. I love the driving position in the Jeep Wrangler. I've driven in a lot of vehicles, and sometimes I feel like you sit too low. You don't sit high enough so that you can't necessarily see. The Jeep Wrangler does only have a small windshield, so you don't necessarily have an amazing view out of it. So the fact that you sit up high, you're in a comfortable driving position with your hands, all of that makes you feel really comfortable and confident when you're driving. Overall position within the cockpit, for lack of better words, very good. And something that I think anyone is going to be comfortable with their first time in a Jeep, or if they've been driving one for years and years and have put thousands of miles in the seat. In addition to having a really good seat position, the Jeep Wrangler has tons of leg room, especially for the driver. I'm 6'2", I never feel uncomfortable. I can have the seat all the way back. My kids can still be there. If you were a 6'2 adult and you were sitting behind me, you probably wouldn't be super comfortable. So you should know that as the driver, you're going to have a lot of leg room there. But if you are going to be, if you're the type of person that sits with a seat all the way back, I'm not one of those people, when you're driving, whoever is behind the driver is going to have to be short or a child or something like that, because there is a lot of forward and backward motion in that seat. But overall, plenty of leg room. I'm a big guy. I don't feel cramped inside of the Jeep. I feel comfortable as far as that goes. I don't love the seats. I'll address that and the bad. But overall, the driving position, really, really nice. The controls, everything is nice within reach, easy functional use, really nice when you're driving off-road, no problem. I don't want to spend a ton of time reviewing the interior of the Jeep for a bunch of reasons, but mostly because the JK, I would give it an okay as far as the interior goes. So I used to have a TJ, the upgrade from a TJ to a JK in the interior, it's like a totally different world. But the jump from the JK to the JL is even that much better. The JL, which is the current version of the Jeep Wrangler, the interiors on that are absolutely incredible. And in my opinion, if you're comparing that to other off-road vehicles, it has the best interior. There might be some vehicles, the Bronco has some things that I like about the interior that are a little bit better than the JL, but not enough so that it's overall, in my opinion, better than the JL. If you're looking for a purpose-built off-road rig, the JL Jeep Wrangler, in my opinion, has the best interior that you can get. The JK is definitely a step down from that. I have the 2012, so it's even on the older end of the JK spectrum. But the interior, the components and things are good. I haven't had issues with things breaking. We are really hard on the vehicle. I'm a big guy. I'm getting in and out all the time, setting up cameras for video. I've got kids who are crawling all over in there. We sleep in the Jeep. My dog is always in the back of the Jeep for all of our adventures. We are really hard on the interior. And if you look at my interior, you're definitely going to say, man, that looks like a 10-year-old interior. But the way that we have abused it, it has actually held up exceptionally well. Now, to talk about the bad, I feel like the Jeep is mildly comfortable on the pavement. Now, it's hard. If you go and look at auto journalist reviews, they're always comparing a Jeep Wrangler to other vehicles that really, it's an apples to orange comparison. It is a mid-sized SUV, but comparing it to other mid-sized SUVs as far as the driving and handling, it's just night and day different because they're totally different purpose-built vehicles. So most vehicles come with IFS, independent front suspension, and often independent rear suspension, for a reason. It's just way more comfortable. On the pavement, you're going to have way better driving experience if you have IFS. The Jeep Wrangler has solid front and rear axles, which allows it to have incredible articulation, but doesn't make it the most comfortable driver. You're going to get feedback when you're on the pavement that you're maybe not used to in another vehicle. You hit a little bit of a bump, and you're going to feel a little bit of a wheel jerk or things like that, that if you were driving in a vehicle with IFS, you wouldn't necessarily notice. So I don't feel like comparing the two is necessarily fair at all, but I do just want to point out that I feel like I spent a lot of time on the pavement heading to my adventures. I spent a ton of time in the San Rafael Swell. It's about two hours for me to get there, so I spent two hours going through Spanish Fork Canyon on Highway 6, and it's a mildly okay driving experience as far as it goes. Now, I'm not like miserable by any means, but I'm not going to sit there and try to tell you like, this is super comfortable, and I would want to do this all of the time. So I go on these adventures all the time, but if I wasn't going to be going off-roading and wanting to use the other things that I really like about the Jeep, you should get a different vehicle. If you're mostly driving on the pavement, don't buy this. If you're going to be doing a ton of off-roading, and you want a vehicle that is okay on the pavement, you're going to be happy. Addressing, in my opinion, the worst thing about comfort in the Jeep is I feel like the seats are terrible. It's super common that people take them out and replace them with better seats. I don't feel like they're super comfortable. The padding is very stiff. I've driven in some of the leather ones. I feel like they're a little bit more comfortable, but mostly what I dislike is the headrest. I have no idea what Jeep was doing with that. It's like, I feel like it's tilted like this with the headrest. If you're going to try to use it for like a comfort, like put your head back and just get into a nice relaxing driving position, it's like non-existing. You need to like turn the headrest around almost to even do something like that. I don't know what they were thinking. It's very uncomfortable. If you were short, probably not a big deal, but if you're over six foot, you're going to hate the headrests because they kind of come in weird on the back of your head, and it just, it's not a comfortable position as far as that goes. I don't think the seats are great at all. Now, I've driven 35,000 miles, not a big deal, but if you're looking for a super comfortable driving experience as far as, you know, the seat being super soft and those kind of creature comforts, you're not going to be happy. And to me, that's why it goes definitely into the bad section. Now, another area under the bad that I don't love with the Jeep is that it has limited cargo space. With 31 cubic feet of cargo space, it is on the small side in the mid-sized SUV as far as how much cargo space you have. That can be good and bad. I'm a firm believer that we often get over-focused on gear and we want to bring everything in the, you know, everything, the kitchen sink included on our adventures, and sometimes I think that can take away from the adventure. If your primary focus in the overlanding and off-roading space is the hobby of building a vehicle, great. But if your primary focus is going out on adventures, I think that you have to find that compromise. And so one of the goods of the Jeep is you can't bring everything, so you have to compromise on some things. But if you want to have every single creature comfort, you don't have enough cargo space to do that. I have a roof rack here. I'll talk about that more. But the reason that I have a roof rack is for my family of five to go on a multi-day adventure, we need the roof rack to be able to put some of our light, bulky gear on the roof rack so that we have enough space for our family of five and our dog to go on those types of adventures. It's just limited in space. The Toyota 4Runner has, I think, almost 10 more cubic feet in its regular setting. Inside the Jeep, you have the roll cage in the inside. That takes up valuable storage space. I've come up with creative solutions to stick things in between the window and the roll bar and trying to take advantage of as much interior space in the Jeep as I can. But at the end of the day, it's limited in its space based on the overall size of the vehicle. And you're going to have to take that into consideration. If I'm the person that wants every creature comfort on my off-roading and overlanding adventures, then it might not be the right vehicle for you. Now, if it's just you and one other person, plenty of space, especially because you can fold the seats down. But if you're going to bring a family, then you have to start being really selective about what you want to bring. I have a great video that shows all of the things that we bring for our family of five to go on a multi-day adventure. We're able to do it, no problem. You can check that out to kind of see how we pack things and everything that we bring. But you'll notice that if you compare that video to some other people's kind of like breakdown of their full kit, I definitely am not bringing all of the creature comforts that everybody else is because there just has to be some sacrifices on what you want to bring and what you don't want to bring. I want to briefly talk about the ugly, the things I absolutely hate about this vehicle. Now, one of them is specific to all Jeep Wranglers, so I'm going to talk about first, and then another is specific to this one. So the one that is all things is the interior carpet in Jeeps suck. I've had two Jeeps, the carpet in the TJ sucks, the carpet in the JK sucks. I've seen the carpet in the JLs, they suck. For a vehicle that you're going to spend, if you're going to go and buy one brand new in the $60,000 range, the fact that you have this flimsy, low-grade carpet that I swear catches all dust, all hair, and just puts it right there, visible, gross, is pretty unimpressive to me. There are aftermarket solutions that people buy where they kind of put these like foam rubber inserts in the inside to replace the carpet. It helps with sound deadening, it helps with temperature variations and insulation, and they still have the drains so that you can easily clean it out. There are solutions in the aftermarket space that are way better, in my opinion, that should come factory stock with especially like the Rubicon editions where you're already in the highest price points in comparison to other vehicles. The other benefits that you get from a Wrangler versus like a Toyota 4Runner or a Land Rover Defender or some of the other popular off-road vehicles that are out there, there's definitely some downgrades in interior carpet quality that I just don't think is necessary. Now they make the carpet in the way that they do so that you can pull it all out, spray out the interior of your Jeep, and use the drain plugs in the bottom to spray the water out. So I understand why it's not like a nailed down hard carpet situation, but I think you could come up with a better material that can allow you to still clean out the inside of your Jeep in the way that you want to without compromising with just this low-grade carpet. It's super thin, it kind of shifts and moves around over time, it's not uncommon for dust and dirt and grime to then get underneath the carpet, and so not only are you vacuuming, cleaning the carpet, but then you have to like peel it back, clean underneath there. If you do ever get any water in there, you have to be really careful to make sure that it dries right or you get like a mildewy smell and things like that, and especially with vehicles where you can take the top off, that's problematic. And so my opinion, Jeep really needs to step up, come up with a different interior flooring solution so that you have better comfort, better insulation, better temperature control, and better sound deadening that isn't just this low-grade carpet. And for the price that you're paying for one of these vehicles, in my opinion it's almost ridiculous how bad the carpet is and I hate it. So the second thing that I absolutely hate and goes into the ugly column, and is specific to my Jeep, is the six-speed manual transmission. This is the second Jeep that I've owned, both have had manual transmissions, and I will never do it again. I had a TJ before, I have the JK, I do think now that the JK is easier to drive, it has the hill start assist, so if you're on a hill, basically kind of applies the brake automatically when you let off the clutch so that you don't roll back and you're not worried about smacking into someone, and you can let out the clutch and start driving forward. That's a nice, you know, modern technology convenience that I didn't have in the TJ that I definitely like, but I just don't see any advantages that a manual transmission offers over an automatic transmission. To me, the only reason that manual transmissions still exist is because of nostalgia. I do think that you feel closer to the vehicle, like there's a this more like, I don't know, visceral or whatever connection with the vehicle that you just like, and I admit I like that when I'm just kind of in the groove and I'm flowing and I'm driving, it's nice, and I think, oh man, this is so fun, but on a regular day-to-day basis driving around town, manual transmission, annoying. You get in a drive-through line, annoying. You're driving off-road and you're having to, where you would be in a situation where you want a two-foot drive, where you want to have one foot on the brake, one foot on the gas, so that you can slowly go and do that and moderate your skinny pedal really well so that you're not going over-bearing with it, not possible because your foot is on the clutch and you're letting the clutch out, so it's just a pain. I really dislike it at high mountain elevations. I have issues with being able to start out without having to feather the clutch on hills and things like that. In fact, there's some situations in which because I have the manual transmission, I have to actually shift down into four low so that I have enough power to start out in situations where I've been with automatic Jeeps that they didn't have to do that in their automatic transmission, so my Jeep could definitely benefit from a re-gear, but even if it was re-geared, I would run into situations where I'm having to feather the clutch more than I want to because the first gear in this manual, this six-speed manual transmission is just not low enough. It needs to be in my opinion like half as low as it is right now, like it needs to be a huge step down in gearing so that you can just, it almost be like a granny gear to really take advantage of it. That's kind of how the TJ first gear was. It's not uncommon that people who have TJs will actually start when they're driving around in town in second gear because first gear is just so low. You really need that with this vehicle. It's not there. I just don't see any of the advantages of a manual transmission over an automatic transmission. Automatic transmissions have gotten so good, so reliable. The new ones in the JLs have eight gears and so you have a really low gears, really high gears. It helps with your fuel economy. It helps in your off-road settings so you have really good crawl ratios. Just overall, an automatic transmission is better. I regret buying a manual transmission. I've loved this vehicle, but that's not something I will ever do moving in the future is buy another off-road vehicle that has a manual transmission. With the good, the bad, and the ugly outline, I actually want to address some of the specific questions that I've gotten over the years of driving this Jeep. A lot of you have reached out to me and said like, hey, what do you like about the Jeep? What do you dislike? Should I buy this? Should I buy a 4Runner? Should I buy a Tacoma? Should I buy a Gladiator? I've had a lot of questions come in asking me vehicle type questions and I want to address just some of the more common ones to kind of help you know if this is the right vehicle for you or not. I want to start by addressing the elephant in the room when it comes to any off-roading or overlanding vehicle and specifically Jeeps, which is reliability. Now, I want to start by saying I actually think reliability is vastly overrated and I am going to actually do another video about that why I feel like we put way too much focus on it, but in short, almost all modern vehicles are going to give you a really good chunk of miles of relatively reliable operation. You're highly unlikely to be left stranded in almost any modern vehicle that you're going to be looking at now for an off-roading or overlanding vehicle. Most of the issues that would arise are things that don't have to necessarily be addressed at the moment. They're not going to leave you stranded. You're going to be able to get back into town and for the cost of the light bar that you want to put on your Jeep, you can buy a GPS location device that you have a monthly subscription on and pay for a lifetime of subscription for what you're putting in lights on your Jeep or your off-road vehicle and you have a device in which if you did break down in the worst scenario in which you have no cell coverage, you're on a trail that no one's going to come on and you're all by yourself. As you know, a lot of my trips I drive solo. Guess what? You can send a text and say here's where I'm at to your buddy. They can come and help you. While that's inconvenient, probably very unlikely that it's even going to happen and so we build up these scenarios in our minds in which we think like, oh, I have to have the most reliable vehicle that's ever existed or else I can't even leave the pavement or go on an overnight or overland adventure. The reality is I've had this Jeep for four years. I haven't had a single instance in which the Jeep has left me stranded in a way that I could not get home. I always believe that the best adventure vehicle is the one that's in your driveway right now. Go use it, have fun in it, push it to its limits and then once you know what its limits are, if you want to go beyond those limits then maybe look at getting something else. Now that I've set that stage, I do want to talk about Jeep in general. Jeep has done an excellent job over the past decade, even longer than that, to really improve the reliability of their vehicles. The TJ, which isn't typically your off-roading overlanding vehicle, it's more of like your rock crawling and those types of vehicle, that four point liter engine is absolutely exceptional. There's guys who put hundreds of thousands of miles on them and continue to drive them today. They're easy to rebuild and they're going to be on the market for a long period of time. The only Jeep Wrangler that I would tell you to avoid are the JKs between 2007 and 2011 that are running the 3.8 liter engine. Now there's tons of people that have had great success with those but it typically has two, it's kind of been ridden with a little bit of problems and it's underpowered and so if you're looking for a Jeep, there's enough JKs that are in the 2012 to 2018 range that have the 3.6 liter Pentastar engine in it that I would just go for those. Now there's people that have had great success with the 3.8 liters. If you know what you're getting going in, it's fine. I personally would avoid them. I went with the 2012 for that reason. Now the 2012 was the first year with the 3.6 liter in the Jeep and it actually did have some issues. I haven't had any of those so far but if you're looking at the used market at the moment, my recommendation would be from 2015 to 2018 in the JK market. In the JL market, you're pretty good to go forward. The 3.6 liter Pentastar engine has turned out to be a really good engine. It's not super high on power but it has been very reliable which is why Jeep has stuck with it for so long. It's been in since 2012 all the way till now. You can still buy a JL with it and when it's paired with that 8-speed transmission, it's actually really peppy because the gearing is just right. It feels like a totally different vehicle. If you get in the 3.6 liters in a JL and drive it, you honestly feel like you're driving with a different engine underneath the hood. Overall, Jeep has done a lot to improve their reliability. You can go and look at consumer reports and other things like that and they're not going to compare with other off-road models in the same fashion. I've been all over the state of Utah in really remote areas on tough terrain in this Jeep and it's been great. I have had two instances in which I've had problems with the Jeep. One, nothing that the Jeep could have done to change differently and one that I'm pretty disappointed in. If I'm going to break down the reliability and my personal experiences with the Jeep Wrangler, I'm going to give it an A- in reliability. I've put 35,000 miles on it and it's been in the shop two times with problems. The first, if you watched my Kanab Utah trip, it's a really excellent adventure. I take my entire family. We do a bunch of exploring in the Kanab area. We had an issue where it totally died and left us stranded. We got it to the shop, we had to get it towed. Comes to find out as they go to drop the gas tank because they thought maybe my fuel pump had died because that's what I thought had happened. There was a squirrel that had jumped up at night underneath there, chewed the electrical wiring harness and completely severed it. So we're driving on the highway, it totally dies. Now obviously not the Jeep's fault. A total freak, strange, crazy thing that happened and after splicing those wires back together, we're back on our trip and having an excellent adventure. So not something I can blame on the another instance in which I've had a problem. The oil pressure sensor died. Now sensors are not a big deal. I do think, and I don't know like how long your oil pressure sensor is supposed to last, but it died at about 65,000 miles and in my opinion that's premature. Like I just think that I think that's ridiculous. Maybe they are supposed to go in that time range but I don't think so. So I was disappointed. Now that's not a cash, it's a pressure sensor. So everything's still working, the vehicle worked fine, I was on an adventure, there was no problems, I was able to complete the adventure, the check engine light came on, I read the code, I knew what it was, I know it's not a big deal, continue on doing my thing, get back and get a new oil pressure sensor put in it. So not a big deal but disappointing that it died at 65,000 miles in my opinion. I feel very confident in telling people that if they want to go and have amazing off-roading overlanding adventures that they can go pick up a JKU or a JL and it is going to do that for them. So I always look at it this way, if guys like Dan Grek from The Road Chose Me can circumnavigate Africa in his Jeep, I can take mine out on the weekends and be confident. If guys like Chris Schantz who I very much look up to him and the things that he's done in his Jeep can live out of it full time and travel all over the United States, I can have confidence in taking my Jeep out for the weekend and recommending it to someone like you who's interested in using a Jeep for overlanding vehicles. Now one of the most common questions that I get about the Jeep is, is this the right vehicle for me? Now the reality is it depends, like all things in life it depends. What do you want to use it? What's your family situation? How are you going to be using the vehicle? There's so many you know parts to that question they can't all be addressed in a single video but what I want to do is point out who I think a JKU is right for and who I don't think it's right for and this applies to a JL as well. So if you're the type of person that wants to have an insanely capable off-road rig, you want to personalize it to your use, you want to be able to upfit, modify and do a lot of repairs and fixes and things like that on your own, you want to be part of a really cool vehicle community and you're going to be doing your adventures with you, your spouse or significant other and one or two children for three to four days max, a JKU great. Now if you're the type of person that you're going to come in and you're buying a vehicle that has 200 plus thousand miles on it and you want to use it just as kind of your off-roading overlanding vehicle and you want to take a little bit more people and gear than what I've just mentioned, then I don't think I would buy a JKU. I'd maybe go get a Toyota 4Runner that has more cargo space, that is more likely to get you 300,000 trouble-free miles than you're likely to get out of a JKU and trouble-free is really relative but you get the idea. I think that there are kind of you know things in there that maybe you're not gonna like. If you're the type of person that wants to take everything under the sun or at least just more of those creature comforts, then you might want to go with like a Gladiator or a Tacoma or a full size where you have the bed that you can really outfit with racks or caps and put rooftop tents on it and things like that. A lot of people ask me like, hey how come you're not running a rooftop tent? Well the main reason is I use the top of my jeep for some of our cargo and so because of that it's just not, I don't have a great fit set up to do something like that and so overall if you want to take all of those creature comforts then you might want to get something that's going to be a little bit bigger but if you're okay with two to three day adventures even four day on the spectrum depending on how you want to eat and you're going to happy to sleep in a ground tent with your family you're going to be really happy with a JKU or a JLU. If you want to go beyond that or something different then you might need to get a different vehicle. Like I said you really probably need to go to a truck of some kind. Now I think to truly review something you have to be able to answer two questions and this is kind of the summary of what I wanted to do with this in the first place. The first is if you could go back in time to when you bought the vehicle or the product, whatever it was, would you do that again? And the answer to that is yes with one small caveat. I wouldn't buy the manual transmission. I would buy a JKU 2012 to 2018 that didn't have the manual transmission. That's the only thing that I would change. The second question is if I was in the market today would I buy this same vehicle? That's where I'm going to have to say no and it isn't an indictment on the vehicle because it didn't do something that I wanted to do it's just as my family and our needs have changed my goals and desires have changed as well. I've done so many of these amazing adventures one of the main things that I want to do is extend our adventures. I'm talking a week-long adventure with the entire family perhaps never even checking in for fuel or food or water things like that and to do something like that I need a little bit more space. Additionally I love to take Molly. She's getting older now and so she needs more space than she needed in the past to be comfortable. I've noticed that on some of my adventures I get out and she's uncomfortable and so I would probably if I was in the market today I would be going for either a gladiator or a full-size truck. The reasoning with that being because it's going to give us way more space to bring a few more comfort items that my wife wants to go on that long of adventure. She likes coming if we're going for a couple days but if we're going to go for a week she wants to be able to check in on a shower or something like that and so for me to be able to have some type of a water system with a shower that I can help kind of you know take care of that need I need more space. Additionally with Molly I could put her kennel in the back. I can put in a nice pad for her and just make it so that her experience is more soft and comfortable. So my needs as a family and as an adventure have changed from when I bought this four years ago. So for that reason I would have to say to the second question that I wouldn't buy this exact vehicle again. I feel like that sets up the main answer to this video which is did I make a mistake in buying this jeep and with that I have to say absolutely not. I've loved this vehicle. It really fit our needs at the time. It's taken us to so many amazing adventures. I've absolutely loved everything about it. I have a ton of incredible adventures planned for 2022 and I'm looking forward to taking those on in this jeep. If you enjoyed this video please like and subscribe. If you want to catch my adventures I have a massive backlog of really cool adventures exploring some of the best places in Utah. Jump into the backlog check out all of those videos so you can see the places that this has been. I'm not just reviewing this because I drove it around on a press day for a couple of hours and say like oh this is really cool. I have four years of ownership 35,000 miles of driving time in it all on really tough extreme quote-unquote you know depending on what your version of extreme terrain is and I've absolutely loved this vehicle. I'm looking forward to many more adventures in it. If you enjoyed this and you want to follow me on the day-to-day you can do so on Instagram at Backroad Exploration. Thanks so much for watching.