Car of the Year Awards 2025: Best family SUV for off-roading
Let's not beat around the bush: the Jeep Wrangler isn’t the most sophisticated family SUV to drive on the road.
It’s noisy, has an unsettled ride and would fall far behind, say, a BMW X3 if you tried to hustle them along a country road. But – and it’s a big ‘but’ – if you need to get somewhere that isn’t covered in a layer of Tarmac, you wouldn’t want to be in anything else.
We regularly put SUVs through their paces on tough off-road courses, and the Wrangler always outshines the rest.
That’s especially true if you opt for range-topping Rubicon spec, which equips this epic mud-plugger with some really serious off-road tools, including knobbly tyres, multiple differential locks and a detachable anti-roll bar (to aid in keeping individual wheels in contact with the ground).
Add in massive ground clearance and the Wrangler will keep grinding on through terrain that would leave the pricier Ineos Grenadier and Land Rover Defender floundering. The 2.0-litre petrol engine is good, too.
True, it doesn’t sound as nice as its rivals’ smooth six-cylinder motors, but it’s got the grunt to pull you to the peaks of the steepest slopes.
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