Why You Should Buy This Car: The 2007 Wrangler Rubicon is Jeep, not a Jeep. Like a Zippo or a pair of Levis, the Wrangler is an icon, and Jeep's perfected its looks. Best-in-class off-road performance. Best-in-several-other-classes off-road performance. Detachable front sway bar is the killer app. Much more livable in grocery getting situations than all of its predecessors combined. You love fording streams. You like climbing walls. You feel happy while riding in it.

Why You Shouldn't Buy This Car: You need the four-door Unlimited model. You hate dirt. Your idea of the great outdoors is an Ansel Adams book. Getting in and out, especially on slopes, is tricky and never graceful. The Wrangler bounces around constantly and gets wallet-draining mileage. Keeping up with freeway traffic is work. The top and the doors come off, but where do you put them? Comes standard with a soft-top, but the owner's manual shows a picture of a rubber mallet (?) during the installation process. There isn't room for both buddies and gear. You like the Mars Lander looks of the off-roadgasmic Toyota FJ. You like the short-bus looks and zero capability of the Compass sibling. More than $30,000 for a Jeep Wrangler is steep, especially since you've never even seen an unpaved road.

Suitability Parameters:
· Speed Merchants: No
· Fashion Victims: Yes
· Treehuggers: No
· Mack Daddies: No
· Tuner Crowd: No
· Hairdressers: No
· Penny Pinchers: No
· Euro Snobs: No
· Working Stiffs: No
· Technogeeks: No
· Poseurs: No
· Soccer Moms: No
· Nascar Dads: Yes
· Golfing Grandparents: No

Vitals:
· Manufacturer: Jeep
· Model tested: Wrangler Rubicon
· Model year: 2007
· Price as Tested: $31,110
· Engine type: 3.8L OHV V6
· Horsepower: 202 hp @ 5200 rpm
· Torque: 237 lb-ft @ 4000 rpm
· Redline: 6000 rpm
· Wheels and Tires: 17" Aluminum wheels w/ 32-inch B.F. Goodrich Off-Road tires
· Drive type: four-wheel drive w/ low transfer case
· 0 - 60: 10.2 seconds
· 1/4 mile: 17.4 @ 74mph
· Fuel economy city/highway: 16/19
· Observed economy overall: 16.5
· NHTSA crash test rating front/side/rollover: NA

– Jonny Lieberman

Related:
Jalopnik Reviews: 2007 Jeep Wrangler Rubicon, Part 1, Part 2 [internal]

Exterior Appearance *****
Plato was interested in ideal forms. Your eyes are round, he taught, because somewhere there exists a perfect circle. May I present to you the archetypal SUV. In fact, the 2007 Wrangler is so perfectly formed, I can't even imagine how, say, a 2013 model can be made to look any better. (An extra gas can hanging off the back? Shovels mounted below the doors? Naw, too busy.) Luckily, and assuming DCX survives the new year, they'll have the better part of a decade to figure it out.

Interior Appearance ****
Jeep has a huge advantage here. Compared to other 'merican-side DCX products, buyers expect the interior to be cheap and hard. Just by adding a minimum of aesthetically minded ergonomics, designers made the Wrangler feel classier than it is. (It's like eating at Black Angus instead of Applebee's.) However, like the vehicle itself, the parts you touch the most have a reassuring solidity. The steering wheel, column stalks, door pulls and "oh shit!" bar all feel rugged. And nothing inspires more confidence than reaching up and grabbing a fist full of roll bar. Why not five stars? Ask a short female friend in heels to climb aboard. Want more laughs? Tell her to get in the back.

Acceleration **
I'm giving it two stars because the Wrangler exists in the form of a painfully slow vehicle; zero-to-60 times are best left unmentioned. Relatively speaking, it deserves four stars, just because putting pedal to metal is such a hoot. The Jeep rears back on its haunches and the engine snorts — a horse-and-buggy experience that makes you think you're doing something quite dangerous, which you probably are.

Braking **
See acceleration.

Ride ***
Back to our general theory of relativity here. For an open-top Jeep, the new Wrangler's ride is superb. Compared to other SUVs with fully independent suspension setups, not so much. As the Rubicon is still a top-heavy, body-on-frame type affair — and you are longer than the wheelbase — the ride is fairly crude. There is a big however, however. There is a particularly brutal set of expansion joints near Dodger Stadium that I use to evaluate a vehicle's ride. In the Shelby GT500 traversing these road imperfections was miserable, highlighting just how primitive the ber-Mustang was underneath all the bluster. In the Wrangler, the ride is so ignoble that it seemed to leap from joint to joint. Imagine your favorite wooden roller coaster. You're driving it.

Handling (On-Road) *** (Off-Road) *****
Shockingly, bombing about town in this little Jeep is a blast. Credit the puny wheelbase and rear-wheel drive. Still, a belly-button-high center of gravity and an arm span between the wheels is the recipe for a rollover at high speeds. At low speed, and especially when lug-nut deep in the muck and mire, the Wrangler is magical. Pointing sideways on an especially challenging slope, I turned the wheel to the right as far as possible. The Jeep was beginning to slide in the mud and, considering I was at a 40-degree angle, I was convinced I'd soon be laying the poor thing on its door. I quickly hopped off the brake and, ever so slightly, gave her some gas. Miraculously, though predictably, the tires bit and the Wrangler continued down the hill. Amazing.

Gearbox ***
We wish our tester had come with the six-speed manual instead of the mileage-sapping, old-school four-speed slush box (an $825 option). Still, the tranny performed well, holding gears to around 85% of redline (6000 rpm). And it never hunted for a gear, unlike some DCX products (I'm looking at you, Sebring). Considering we averaged a pretty pitiful 16.5 mpg, a fifth (or sixth) gear is badly needed.

Audio/Video ***
You know my rule — Howard Stern on Sirius makes me happy. And even though the Wrangler's Freedom Top features removable panels, wind noise never interfered with the lesbians. The rear part of the removable top even had speakers. Thankfully, unseasonable weather kept me from trying to lift it off. You can plug your iPod in, too.

Toys ****
First the clich ; The Wrangler Rubicon is a toy! Second, the Freedom Top, with its individually removable T-panels, is devastatingly cool. At a stoplight, the driver or passenger can remove their particular panel and throw it in the back seat. And since there are no electronics to worry about, you can do so while moving (though not recommended). Plus, the Rubicon has all that great off-road kit and the doors come off and the windshield folds down. Good times.

Trunk **
Not so much. With the rear seat in place, the T-tops will not fit in the back. Folding the rear lets you stow the tops, but it also continually bounces back and forth, smashing into whatever you do manage to shoehorn in the back. If four people go camping, they will need to cart their gear in another Jeep. There is a tiny mini-truck under the bed for loose junk. Ahem, tiny.

Value ****
Our every option checked tester showed up with a $31,110 sticker. Which is a lot of money for a bouncy, poorly insulted truck. That said, the capability you get is essentially unparalleled, and the power windows and door locks are worth the stretch.

Overall *****
A joy of a vehicle. On road the 2007 Wrangler is refined (for what it is), comfortable and great looking. Off road, this cute little guy transforms into the bully of the sandbox. The mileage could be better and the heater could be stronger and the top speed could be higher, but I'm nitpicking. If I could afford two cars, I'd buy one.

– Jonny Lieberman

Related:
Jalopnik Reviews: 2007 Jeep Wrangler Rubicon, Part 1 [internal]

I recently went shopping for jeans with a friend. She dragged me to a little boutique on Melrose in Los Angeles, where I stood bored while she searched intently for the ideal pair (i.e., those that made her butt look the best). Seeing how most women I know do not even own a pair of sensible shoes, her criteria made sense. Pair after pair, brand after brand — more than a dozen in all — she tried them on, before deciding a $225 number with no back pockets.

As jeans go, my requirements are different. The more pockets, the more useful. The denim must not only be tough, but also be able to hide mustard stains. And, because preventing a "There's Something About Mary" moment is a priority, no zipper to speak of. As such, I've been rocking shrink-to-fit Levis 501s since the sixth grade. I mention this because, like jeans, there are dozens of other SUVs to be had, but there is only one Jeep. Hell, even among Jeeps there is only one Jeep, and it's called the Wrangler.

Like the functionality inherent to my Levis, the Wrangler Rubicon is dripping with promise. It can go anywhere. If it gets stuck, there's an entire Bat Belt of off-road goodies with which to come unstuck. The top comes off, the doors come off and the windshield (still) folds down. Sure, there are more capable SUVs for sale, like the Porsche Cayenne. But you'd no sooner thrash the Cayenne in the rough stuff than my ba-donka-donk friend would do yard work in her fancy pants. And while the Cayenne gets 'er done via prissy air-suspension and a bank of computers to calculate yaw, pitch, traction and wheel slippage. The Wrangler just plain goes over stuff.

Cayenne aside, the Wrangler is the king of the hill, or mud pile, as it were. Unless it's aimed at a brick wall, no earthly substance short of molten lava will hinder the Rubicon's forward progress. Dirt becomes like blacktop, rocks became pebbles, sand is a cinch and even over a foot of water was a walk in the park, albeit off-highway vehicle park, Azuza Canyon OHV. And that's in two-wheel drive. Only double-fun muddy slopes required a switch to four-wheel low for accompanying superpowers.

An editor of Trailer Life magazine once schooled me in the off-roading arts, which I'll relate vis- -vis the Wrangler. Rather than engaging every bell and whistle as the asphalt gives way to trail, it's best to stay put and let high ground clearance, wheel articulation and approach/departure angles handle the bulk of operations. If you can't go anymore, shift into four high. If you still can't move, engage four low, which makes a large portion of obstacles completely beatable.

For the steep, messy, goopy final one-percent, the Wrangler comes massively equipped. Dash buttons electronically lock either the rear axle by itself, or both axles together; the latter transforming the Wrangler into a tank. Torque is now evenly split between front and rear, and no wheel can turn without the other three going along for the ride. Just as mighty are the Brake Lock Differentials (BLDs), which stop airborne wheels from spinning to preserve precious torque (just like the Cayenne). Even better, the BLDs are now integrated into the Jeep's stability control algorithms, so there's no manual fumbling. Still not enough? There's one final trick, that is, electronically disengaging the front sway bar, which increases wheel travel by 28%. It's only slightly hyperbolic to say only dynamite could outperform this combination of electromechanical trickery.

On road, the 2007 Wrangler is more carlike than any convertible Jeep in history. While a bit childish, what with chubby tweeters poking from the top of the dash, the spartan interior is a fine place to while away the miles. Quickness is not an option; even with the most potent mill ever offered in a Wrangler (202 hp / 237 lb-ft of torque) — you're nonetheless driving a brick with 32" tires. But despite such leadenness, it's impossible not to smile. After all, the Wrangler, like all Wranglers before it, is fun above everything else. – Jonny Lieberman

Related:
Exclusive 2006 SEMA Preview: Four-Door Jeep Wrangler Rubicon Unlimited — Like A Hummer, Only Good [internal]