How reliable are jeeps? Here’s what Consumer Reports says – Jalopnik

The Chevrolet Corvette and Ford Mustang are both iconic, but I would actually argue that the Jeep Wrangler is probably the most iconic American car. Looking at last year’s sales figures, Americans seem to agree, as the Wrangler completely buried both the Corvette and Mustang. Most people who buy them won’t actually use their Jeep’s legendary off-road capabilities, but they usually don’t pretend they will either. They just love the atmosphere. The question is, are Jeeps actually reliable enough to be worth buying?

Unfortunately, there is no national reliability database that tracks every vehicle ever sold, but thanks to the massive annual owner survey, Consumer Reports perhaps the closest. You can argue about how it weighs the importance of each category, but with reliability data from hundreds of thousands of readers, this is probably the most, well, reliable source available if you want a better idea of ​​how fraught the car ownership experience will be.

So what does the latter do Consumer Reports Does data say about Jeep reliability? As a brand it’s not great. Jeep ranks 19th among the 22 automakers included in the latest reliability list, putting it slightly ahead of GMC and Cadillac, but slightly behind Volkswagen and Tesla. That doesn’t mean it would be wrong to buy a Jeep anyway, but it is important to at least know what you are getting into before you do so, so that you as a new owner will hopefully have fewer nasty surprises.

That said, Jeep reliability isn’t the same across the board either. In fact, it varies greatly depending on which model you choose. Among the vehicles Jeep currently sells (that Consumer Reports also has enough data to rank), the Gladiator pickup is by far the most reliable. Being so closely related to the Wrangler, you’d probably expect them both to be equally reliable, but it turns out that wasn’t true for the owners. CR questioned. In fact, the otherwise terrible Compass actually did better than the Wrangler in this reliability survey.

In terms of each model’s reliability versus the competition, the Gladiator comes in close behind the Ford Ranger and Honda Ridgeline, while far outperforming the Nissan Frontier and the Chevrolet Colorado/GMC Canyon. Meanwhile, the Wrangler can’t match the reliability of any serious off-roader, including the Ford Bronco, Toyota Land Cruiser or Toyota 4Runner. Then there’s the Compass, which does beat the Dodge Hornet and Ford Escape Hybrid in terms of reliability, but that’s about it. Even the Mitsubishi Outlander performed better than the Compass in this study. As for the Grand Cherokee(s), they’re about as close to the bottom of the barrel as you can get in that segment, with the plug-in hybrid Grand Cherokee actually coming in last.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough data to provide reliability ratings for Jeep’s other vehicles, like the Wagoneer, Grand Wagoneer, or the new electric Wagoneer S, but based on how the rest of the lineup fared, you wouldn’t expect great reliability from these cars either. Of course, there will always be exceptions, and it’s entirely possible that you know someone who has never had a single problem with their Jeep, but based on the experiences of the owners included in this survey, if you care about reliability, buying a Jeep that isn’t the Gladiator will be a gamble at best.