Even if our Broncos have issues, I suspect the joy we experience will far outweigh any problems. (I bet most Jeep owners would say the same!)
INMHO- All the car reviews like this are geared towards a commuter car. In defense of Jeep thats not really what it is or is designed for. If I had the crappy commute I had in DC (3 hours to go 30 miles)- any thing other than a comfortable car with a good entertainment suite is going to get low marks.
My old CJ8 was not really great for on pavement driving- It topped out at 60, had a non-syncroed 1st gear so around town it was functionally a three speed, with the top off you were in the elements- with it on you were in a ham can, it was non-power brakes, and the tire noise from the 32" M/T's was terrible. If you weren't moving in the summer, it was hot as hell. In the winter, the heater core would routinely fill with air and stop working. It also had lap belts and exposed bolts on the dash. My wife called it "3WC" short for third-world country because it was loud, dangerous and on road she was always kinda vaguely sick.
That was not why I drove it. We could drive right out on the beach and grill out of the back. I never met a hill the CJ with a t-18A and rear locker couldn't climb. I ran it all over mountains and trails when we were stationed in Hawaii, camped out of the back and had a very good time with a bunch of great Jeep guys that I met running trails.
None of those things I can do in the Hybrid Sedan I drive now, though she has never given me a lick of trouble, is comfortable, quiet, and gets 41MPG. Which one is Consumer reports likely to rate higher? Which one am I going to regret parting with long after its gone?
Sure the CJ decided to blow all the oil out the crankcase through the dipstick tube for no good reason on a drive in the middle of nowhere. Sure the rear brakes failed on a mountain decent. Sure It was a constant fight against rust meaning I was always doing bodywork. All of that plus a billion other things were a major league pain at the time, but in retrospect that was "part of the charm" I guess. Don't get me wrong, I no longer want to fool about with maintenance issues like that ever again, but these kind of "figure out how to fix it if you want to get home" issues were part of the reason I had such a connection to that truck. After a while, I knew what every noise and vibration meant (and what it would mean for my afternoon plans). I never got there with my F series truck (the computer hid all the maintenance issues until they were catastrophic). Not making excuses for bad engineering or design here- loads of those on a CJ- but they were designed to be simple, strait-forward machines and the more one tarted them up, the worse they got. I think maybe some of that is what the Wrangler reviews are about, but I will confess to feeling that quality control is definitely slipping at Daimler-Chrysler (or at least thats my impression).
I guess that connection with the vehicle is what the Jeep community (or the Mustang Community, or the Rover guys or any vehicle with a passionate following) has that can't really be scored on a consumer reports score card. There are just some vehicle that are more than just basic transportation. Jeep has (or had) that figured out. I am hopeful the Bronco will too.
2023 Wildtrak. "Sometimes you got to get lost, to get found" -J Bronco
