2021 Ford Bronco Wildtrak vs Jeep Wrangler Rubicon // OFF-ROAD TEST

okay good day of off-roading time for a drink thomas said that this had a bottle opener like the bronco sport did on the broncos sport it was here i guess it's just some sort of new ford tech what on earth are you doing you said it had a bottle opener like the bronco sports yes it has a bottle opener but first of all that's not how you open a bottle and second of all the bottle opener is up on the c pillar here here you go try again okay here's it it's right there just use it normally i okay thomas i'm ready these ball open as a crap baja mode you're watching throttle house i'm thomas and i'm james and that is the new ford bronco yeah it looks cool it looks so cool real big it is it's big it's really wide it's quite a different car to the broncos did you see me i saw the one they made the water yeah yeah it was really cool like the log flume i felt i felt really awesome doing it yeah sure um so i've got the rubicon you do matches you hold on hold on you have the four by either why did you bring that well the 4 bite is just the engine choice yeah right it's still got all the rubicon stuff and the 4 by e is more powerful than the most powerful bronco and more fuel efficient and i'm not even going to talk about the 392 v8 which you can get this with there's a there's a lot of engine options of this which is very cool there's it's young give it time yeah how's the fuel economy no no what it doesn't have any it's like 13 liters 400 kilometers on the highway either way we have brought the right trims yes you've got sasquatch rubicon yeah so we got all the locking diffs well met good sir we've got the big wheels yeah big tires yeah i think you've got bigger tires than me i have the 33s i thought they were 35's yes they're 35's because they're even bigger yeah okay um can we go off-roading let's do it let's do it all right we're still in baja mode right now still in four high so i've been living with this and uh you know what it's really great it turns so nicely in the city because it's got the independent front suspension it's it's really really easy to drive i will say that everyone's been saying that it's really quiet and it's a lot quieter than the wrangler i'm not sure that's true in fact we tested it with a decibel meter and they're both pretty much exactly 77 decibels on the highway at 100 kilometers an hour i i will say that the top makes quite a lot of noises honestly this is a really nice car to live with and that's because unlike the solid front axle in the wrangler this has independent front suspension and rack and pinion steering so on the highway it tracks straight doesn't wander and is easy to cruise with but don't worry it's still a serious off-roader it has locking differentials off-road drive modes a low-range gearbox and even though the wild track trim which was graciously provided by connor and the team at kitchener ford doesn't get the disconnecting sway bar like the badlands does it should have no problem showing this wrangler that you can live in comfort and crush a trail like this one [Music] okay so yeah the the bronco's probably the better road car but this is a wrangler and that means something first unlike the bronco it didn't just show back up in our lives after going out for a packet of cigarettes 25 years ago it has been fording through rivers and scaling mountains and parking and trader joe's non-stop since 1986 and its cj roots take it back to 1944. second not only can you get the wrangler with a hemi v8 you can also get it in the form of america's newly best-selling plug-in hybrid vehicle the wrangler for by e which we have today paired with the eight-speed automatic gearbox and unlike the mileage that thomas has been getting in his bronco this thing has amazing fuel economy it's actually terrible okay it's not terrible but it's not good in fact the 4 by e is middling in the range of wranglers in fact i think if it weren't for the 392 it might actually be the worst and that's probably because of all the electric weight however and it's a bit of a specific use case because of the electric system this has 35 kilometers 21 miles of electric only range so if you're someone who's commute to work is less than that then you can off-road on the weekends and cruise to work silently but not silently for you because it's still still quite loud in the cabin there's a lot of tire noise lot of wind noise but this thing's pretty quick naught to 60 in six seconds and people who have removed the roof and the doors have managed to get less than that but that's on the road today's all about off-road we switched our vehicles into the correct off-road modes and hit the trail and the first thing i noticed about the bronco was it's not as dainty as the wrangler this feels wide last time i was coming through here is in our 4runner which is our camera car right now didn't feel this wide okay yep up a little hill up a little hill there we go oh yeah this is this is easy for the bronco easy twit's off-road electric only how many other vehicles can boast that they have a v8 and a plug-in hybrid in their lineup and then be able to go on off-road perfectly managing the electric torque here all right take that back bit of a bit of a push there so i'm in four low electric only the wrangler made good use of its ev mode and to be honest so far it wasn't a challenge for these trucks at all they made rock and mud and dirt feel like pavement i've clicked offroad pages now thomas is leading the way but anything he can do i can do wrangler james on a different way what's he doing just because that's new doesn't mean he's first ah no no no no no no oh you son of a wrangler's been leading the way for decades should lead the way here with james now rudely in front of me we started to pick up the pace a bit and whenever possible tested the limits of our trucks i could swallow in the after hole it falls away any concern about how this drives on the highway falls away once you get on the trail it's a specialized car that's what it's for you don't complain that a miata doesn't have two rear seats you don't complain that a hurricane's roof is low when cars are specialized they get to be the best versions of what they are and the crossovers we've driven recently although a lot of them would be very capable at this trail i think the bronco sport would have no trouble they they're trying to do all things for everyone and as a result unless you're paying top dollar and even when you pay top dollar as we found with the aston martin dbx they don't quite do everything a hundred percent that's where the wrangler and the bronco just crush this [Music] so far then the trail had presented neither vehicle nor driver with any significant challenge we had become masters of our fate dominators of nature unfortunately that wasn't quite true for our cameraman carsten oh no oh no carsten what are you doing did karsten just try and run through the puddle [Music] [Applause] he's great at editing navigating puddles not so much we continued to play around with the limits of our trucks and honestly if you've never gone off-roading it might seem slow but speed isn't the only thing that'll pucker your starfish 15 16 17 18 oh oh that's real scary 21 22 i've dropped the walkie-talkie 23. i've pooped my pants i've contributed to the puddle uh 17 17 18. yeah i i don't have any more there's nothing there thomas i feel like the hardcore off-roaders watching this they're gonna think 23 degrees i do 36 degrees leaving my driveway that is 100 what they're going to say yeah as we got further into a point where we couldn't turn around we realized that the rain the previous day had left a little treat uh thomas there's a very big puddle in front of us like very big it's just it's a puddle it's a puddle you said you just said it yourself it's a lake or a river just go you're fine yeah but on tip lake ontario is a lake it looks like an ocean this is okay was it oh oh god i'm out that looks gallow you did it because i might have cleared some water out for you if you find it easier all right here i go no problem i'll even do it slowly oh come oh on deep park aid not available thanks brock that was pretty deep that was pretty deep yeah i don't think i want to go into keeping that without a snorkel to be honest but you're you're protected inside the car why would you need a snorkel i know that he knows what a snorkel is puddles conquered we came to a clearing only to find that our next obstacle was a long steep and boulderous climb that's a road technically i think maybe it just looks vertical yeah i mean yeah i know it it probably looks a little bit worse than it is yeah but like it's just it's it's perspective we did a big puddle that's not uh we didn't do a big puddle huge problem it was massive really now is that good enough no wait we gotta do we gotta know also technically we need to get to the other side to be able to get back to our i'm not worried about my abilities you know what i mean no i mean my limits will never be reached it's the car listen i know these can do that in my in my heart and i hope in reality that's also true so i guess i'll go first you should turn back now that's okay we can do it all right thomas is going to lead the way there's a lot of big like fist-sized stones in the ground which isn't actually making this that easy uh maybe we should leave a bit of a gap well if i get stuck and i have to back down don't like like let me go up the hill first here we go it's getting a little bit steep but nothing nothing we can't handle yeah no okay his dick just cleared a rock i don't want to hit the diff on that rock there all right it's about to get really difficult i think i need some speed oh dear oh dear okay okay avoid the rocks avoid the rocks oh that's a lot of i have a wheel in the air for sure i have a wheel in the air for sure walking diff coming in handy oh it's like helping crawl me forward buddy there we go yes yes yes all right james let's see what you got okay my turn coming up ah it's a big rock take the deer for all costs over the rock yeah i went over the other side okay [Music] i think i'm gonna need some momentum here [Music] here we go here we go oh it's some pitch 22 degrees pitch all right all right where's my high five too slow oh god it's like being back in school i feel like i won twice there why am i walking up when i have a truck all right we did it we did it how cool is that that's really cool yeah oh man okay so here's the problem is it like while it felt maybe extreme to me yes and um yeah i just don't think that we that was technical enough to show which one of these was actually better no i mean i think the closest we came was your i almost watched your rear diff connect with a rock that was just bad driving just but there's yeah the limit of these cars are so high yeah honestly the only thing that held this back was literally just its width it's it's really massive i think i think i would have liked to try a v8 just to see just to see yeah it's pretty cool that you're just like putting around in ev mode though ev mode's great it goes really silent you can really hear the branches scratching the paint and and but it is a bit touchy yeah okay so the only complaint that i have about this is pretty much um in terms of the drive train and i think about that i don't really have one like even with the 10 speed yeah on the road it sometimes it feels like it can't figure out what gear it wants to be in totally fine off-road it like it felt like it was calibrated just for off-road and on-road it's like just when are we turning when are we turning into a trailer yes what so what color was this i don't know the name of the color honestly it's like a blue gray right now it's brown poor knowledge that was a test he failed area 51. oh my god you know why do you know the cut of my car you know area 51 has been very important on the internet in the last year so it's just it's just front of mind okay it looks really really cool i've said it the whole time i was driving it just looks so cool this is one of like the coolest looking trucks on the road it's big you look small again it is actually a very big vehicle it's long especially the forder obviously this is the wild track right so this this comes standard with the sasquatch it comes standard with the sasquatch package which is what gives you the uh the big uh tires and wheels that like the the the bead lock ready wheels gives you the bilstein suspension yeah and some more you know kind of off-roady things however i've been reading the forums okay and apparently you're a bronco guy now i'm a bronco guy now yeah um apparently this isn't the way to do it if you're gonna go off-roading because this is filled with carpet on the inside right well nice yes if you go one trim down and get the badlands then you get the rubber floors with the drain oh so you can murder you can spill stuff yes that's there it is and wash them out with a hose and then you option the sasquatch package on top they're actually calling it the bad squatch i feel like that they they think that sounds cooler than me it's not actually that great what do we do with this genius well this looks like a wrangler rubicon it does with some blue trim around well the blue is is to signify the electric electricity yes yes because i have this plug here don't i in in your oh yeah and your doors come off and my doors come off yes okay so i want to talk about this you i think you win that one don't you i i win because i can roll the window down and they're frameless so and the these are cowl mounted wing mirrors yes so that you just take the door off just the door and i can store the doors in in the truck yeah the wrangler it's the whole door and the wing mirror and it's not frameless yes so however yeah your your bolts that you have to remove are out here yeah mine are in the they're in the hinge so you it's a little bit more annoying they give you a tool kit it's a little more annoying to actually open them and i will say that like i know the doors come off but the doors come off in this thing in the same way that the doors come off in any car in that if you unbolt them but the doors come off yes but there's an easy release on the electricity right yeah it's just a wiring harness most doors have a wiring harness that you i'm intimidated by wiring harnesses and also the fact that you can store them and then this has side air bag curtains yes this doesn't this is actually one of the few vehicles on the road today that doesn't have side curtains now there's got cool events they'll save you when you get hit by a semi and the windscreen folds down windscreen falls down yeah it doesn't do it in that no it doesn't so i guess technically if we both rolled over rolling up this hill i would have been trapped in there for all you know i would also be trapped because the windscreen wasn't down before and also i don't know how to put it down but it can be done yes from the rear yeah i said yours looks like a wrangler from the rear they're very similar yes same same sort of same sort of open door and then the glass that flips up um no it's listen these are both unbelievably cool vehicles however this is better on the road this is better on the road and right now it's cooler because it's newer yes but take away the fact that this is really like new and neat and we all love it yeah objectively driving it here it was more comfortable i've lived with the rubicon for like a couple weeks it also helps this isn't some sort of chimney versus g-wagon comparison no these are basically the same price this is a bit pricier yes but does neera make no difference if you're about to invest in an off-road car between these two it's not that you literally have to choose however i think there's incentives for the 4x8 oh that's true that's possible but either way like they're similar enough the there's like there's like minor advantages and disadvantages yeah and right now if i was going to buy one i would i would just get the bronco because i think it's cooler looking i like the spacious cabin the spacious cabin is nice it's got the the independent front suspension which obviously didn't hold me back at all any of this no like zero problems i can still lock the diff can we look inside yeah okay let's do the bronco oh you're okay i'll show you yeah it's pretty cool actually so i well i took the other panel out last night went for a cruise but what i have noticed is that like unlike the sunroof in most cars which start behind your head so they're pointless for you this is you have so much sky this is like a vintage convertible in here it's really neat it's very nice and i'm looking up here and i see you've got the the auxiliary buttons yeah i have six how many do you have uh almost six that's right what's up i guess i got four yeah but like what do you need six can you even name six things that you'd attach to this yeah of course uh uh lights that's is that one thing oh yeah lights a winch okay uh light lights you said that so like other a second winch for the rear you need two winches and then and then more lights and then more lights and more lights you need a lot of lights james i don't know if you know how much light you know the ball you get the bar that you get the the spots and then maybe some sort of all right okay here is the interior of the bronco nice and spacious yeah the seats are really wide and comfortable yes they are and also a whole lot of headroom a ton of headroom right still the same vertical rake on on all the stuff yes the windscreen is very like vertical as well this screen is massive this is this is the big this is the big boy when you go at the top how do we get back to the home stuff well it's because i'm i'm still in this drive mode so if i switch to a normal mode it will turn off the screen automatically it well it should anyway and then and then currently malfunctioning i think it's cool that it says yeah we'll just ignore that so there is a mount here but we didn't use that today because we're using slightly more serious cameras yes it is a pretty cool mount and there's a little like charging thing there so if you wanted to plug in a dash cam or a gopro to power it indefinitely that's a great idea i can't put that back in now this is the top top trims it's got everything all about the rear seats you can check them out well the seats in the jeep are quite jump seated so are these but these do these recline uh i think they move a little bit yeah yeah yeah they're adjustable yeah yeah shades of grey shades of grey there you go yeah it's comfy back it is exactly right oh you got the screen working is the screen working yeah yeah so i just uh click the camera button here and it will listen to jimmy buffett i was listening to radio margaritaville i was enjoying it on the way here i was how have you got on with the with the infotainment and stuff uh it's just the typical stuff you find like an f-150 or whatever right it's quite nice it's intuitive all of this is intuitive i like the climate control i like i like the gauge cluster it's a bit like jammed in it could have been maybe a little bit bigger it's not very pretty to look at but it tells you all of your information in a in a very usable fashion right all the off-road stuff pops up automatically and has diagrams of where my diffs are locked and all that stuff right which is all you need right i'm not looking for luxury no right i just want usability comfortable seats the seats make a difference the steering makes a huge difference in the road i had no problem proving honestly my only complaint about the interior is the fact that the headliner does creak it it clicks and it bits and it bops and it does a whole bunch of songs and i don't want to hear you sound like a 95 year old little zip boob actually that's a very different person that's a very different yeah we don't talk about him anymore we don't like him can we go check out rubicon yeah okay okay okay ready you also have something yeah i know i know i know it's definitely easier but is it a hard top no but it is as quiet on the highway as we found out look how far it goes it's not easy look at that yeah mine can remove all the things that is really cool actually that's awesome and same thing with the actual distance i've got speakers here my speakers are in the c pillar like a like a wakeboarding boat yeah well there's a cooler because they're right here that's pretty cool okay also pretty vertical stuff yeah very off-roady smaller though it's more vibrant here it is definitely tighter like i feel like this door is much closer to me and more vertical well when we were going through the trees that felt like an advantage it was an advantage but then this is dodgers infotainment stuff which i think is a bit behind ford's and this is the i think this is the smaller screen in ways yeah this is more screen i i don't mind this i find that the menu system is pretty easy look at that it's very laggy yeah maybe lost but never never stuck but we could prove them wrong found the right trail um okay so so last time we were in a wrangler it had the red leather yes red leather yellow yellow and it was it was quite a bit nicer this this light this hides the fact that it's kind of a bit more up mark in here because this is like leather trimmed you can't really see it's not a color um no i like zillery there's your auxiliary buttons down there your did you ever disconnect the sway bar i did you did yeah i wanted as much sway as possible that's right yeah yeah yeah it's cool it's got all the stuff and i like this has a proper like mechanical engagement for the uh the transfer case it just feels really off-roady i've always liked the jeep interior i think it's really neat yeah i have no problem kind of half semi-digital and like as a passenger off-roading this is nice and you've got that one and this like this is actually important because you get tossed around you really do there's not much more to say about this um should we do a final conclusion yeah okay between the two i'm with thomas the bronco wins the day despite my championing of the wrangler the broncos extra style points more spacious cabin and ease of highway driving without it being any more expensive means that it would be my pick even with the inferior fuel economy that said after a week with the wrangler it was on a rare list of vehicles that i didn't want to give back it's charming jeep people wave at you and just bumbling around town it's actually fun and the fact that there's a roaring v8 option now hmm i totally get it but these two don't exist in a vacuum the new defender is a thing and for basically the same price it's far more refined much nicer inside smoother quieter and in many cases just as capable off-road and like the jeep can also be had with a v8 however reliability is a huge concern with the defender then i guess the same could be argued about the other two the point is at least in the world of charming off-road utility vehicles we all have some pretty exciting new flavors to choose from and we don't quite know what it's going to be called yet maybe warthog or the bronco raptor but it looks like there's an upcoming performance model of the bronco on the way thanks for sorry just so you know watching he needs to leave the gap oh the jeep keys cool um

Channel: Throttle House

Views: 1,752,936

Keywords: Ford bronco, new bronco, bronco vs jeep, bronco vs wrangler, jeep wrangler, wrangler 4xe, bronco review, bronco wildtrak, bronco badlands, off road, offroad, bronco off road, wrangler off road, rock crawl, wrangler rock crawl, jeep wrangler review, wrangler rubicon, ford bronco vs jeep wrangler, jeep off road fail, jeep roll, bronco fail, bronco hill climb, bronco mudding, jeep mudding, 2021 bronco, bronco 2 door, bronco 4 door, jeep wrangler mods, bronco towing

Id: 17hx8Cz5EXE

Length: 28min 46sec (1726 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 15 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/rogersmj]

Good video, shows about the degree of off roading that most of us who are casual off-roaders might actually do with these vehicles. I like that you did the side-by-side with both vehicles instead of just going to test the Bronco on a Ford approved course or something. The only thing I took issue with was when you intimated that the Defender is in the same price bracket. It’s really not for the most part. Maybe there’s a little bit of overlap at the top end of the Bronco and the lower end of the Defender, but I think most Defenders are in the $60-$80,000 USD range.

I’m just struggling with the fact that a Badlands trim equipped even conservatively the way I would want it crosses $50k. But no doubt they’ll sell.

[u/MangJuice232]

Bronco is definitely going to cut into Wrangler sales. Competition is a good thing for the consumer.

[u/Aerodax]

23 degrees? I do 36 degrees leaving my driveway.

[u/blacksmith92]

I saw the jeep added a half soft top option recently. Starting to think Jeep is getting scared.

[u/Antique-Guidance306]

I wish they made the bronco in RHD.

[u/Uptons_BJs]

To reopen the IFS vs Solid Axle debate, I just can't see why the Wrangler needs the solid axle.

​

As the Bronco demonstrates, independent suspension still allows for very, very good offroad capabilities. Is the marginal gain in offroad capability that the solid axle really that big as to justify that loss in ride quality?

[u/Shakooza]

I am SO happy there is a legitimate competitor to the Jeep Wrangler..

I stopped buying wranglers after decades of ownership because of their garbage quality and their refusal to repair warranty items based upon their excuse "Its a Jeep thing"...No the roof leaking on a 50k vehicle (at the time) and flooding the floor every time it rains is NOT a Jeep thing and you need to repair it.

The second thing that aggravates me about Jeep is that the community has been asking for bigger engines and tires/lift in stock form for decades. Jeep pretty much ignored the community until the Bronco was announced. Now we have stock Jeeps on 35s and V8s under the hood. They dont actually care about what the community wants. They gave us just enough because there was no competition..

[u/GarfieldBroken]

The straight pipes video also got it from Kitchener Ford and they said they didn’t take it off road for respect of the dealer lol…

[u/Falldog]

Baja Mode, or Chocolate Chip Cookie Mode?