Bronco vs. Wrangler vs. 4Runner: Which One Is The Easiest To Live With Every Day?

hey tommy can you believe that we've put on 4 000 miles onto the new ford bronco we're doing pretty well yeah yeah and in this video slash podcast we're not going to be talking about the bronco but we're going to be talking about what it's like to live with not just the bronco but the wrangler how do we get a wrangler well we bought one long term actually i bought one long term we've also had them a lot and of course when we got the bronco we had to call toyota and say hey guys can we borrow a forerunner and they said sure and we took it up imogene pass and compared it to the bronco we also took the bronco up red cone and compared to one to the defender and the electrified jeep and then i also well we've just done tons with it i compared it to a modified defender off-road and all sorts of craziness so we've had a lot of experience long-term with not only the bronco but the wrangler and the forwarder that toyota lenta so we're going to talk about in depth today the pros and the cons of each one and maybe discuss which one you should buy and why and if you don't know why we have a bronco thank tim for that and thank the ronald mcdonald house which by the way is a great charity so if you want to support you know a home away for home for sick kids definitely take a look into that charity so how do you want to compare these three what i would say most popular in some ways the best off-roaders that you can buy today well i think first we need to talk about what they are and just the basic structure of them because they are pretty fundamentally different so the ford bronco and the jeep wrangler are available in both two and four-door configurations they are both convertibles and they both have removable doors and all that fun stuff the forerunner is only available in a four-door configuration with a fixed roof but we're throwing it into the mix today because a lot of people cross shop the toyota with the other two yeah uh and in terms of pricing of course uh they vary i i think that probably the biggest bandwidth is either the wrangler or the bronco the forerunner because it um you know it isn't available with multiple engine choices or in different configurations is pretty much such and we'll talk about pricing in depth here as we continue along our comparison journey so the first thing you have to decide in my opinion is whether or not you want the convertible capability of the ford or the jeep because the toyota is locked in as a hard top uh you know you can get a little sunroof in the vehicle but it's not really a full-on open-top experience like the other two so if that's important to you the toyota is probably off your list right away you know i would i'm guessing here but my gut tells me that if you want a foreigner you want a foreigner if you want a bronco you want a bronco if you want a wrangler you want a wrangler i don't think there's a lot of people out there who are like hmm i think i'm going to go test drive all three which you by the way probably can't do because the bronco is still pretty much unobtainium right the forerunner has become unobtainium because of the chip supply chain issues uh and the wrangler has also disappeared from the lots well you heard it here first guys thank you for listening to today's podcast according to my dad if you know what you want you know what you want we'll see you next time no no no i think what does that mean i think that means that in this in this uh uh podcast we're gonna talk about look here's a secret that you guys don't know maybe maybe tommy knows this but you guys might not know this we get a lot of emails from people who want our advice on what they're buying and over the 11 years we've been doing this tommy i have figured out the secret you know what the secret is that people only want us to reaffirm what they already think you know the secret yeah we get an email from people and they say hey i'm thinking about buying let's say it's a forerunner they don't want every time i've been like hey you know that's a great choice but have you thought about you know a bronco or have you thought about a wrangler that always makes them very grumpy what they want me to say and so i say it is great choice here are the reasons why you'll be happy i think there's a lot of people out there though that are genuinely curious which one is the best that fits their needs and i think that's kind of the whole purpose of doing this video because the fact of the matter is they are both incredible in our all three of them are incredible in their own respects it's just the respects that they're incredible in are quite different and that's what we're going to help sort out today so we've discussed kind of the shapes and the sizes now if you're looking at the ford or the jeep you're going to have to decide if you want the two or the four-door configuration and based on what most of you are buying the vast majority of folks are gonna get the four-door and why the four-door over the two-door because it's practical yeah exactly that was that was quite the simple way of saying it now even if you throw your mom back there your dog you got a lot more room for your stuff right it's just it just fits your and it still does everything the two-door does so you can take the top off so it's got all the advantages of the two-door with all the practicality of a four-door yeah but they don't look as good no they don't but you know looks are subjective and they're not as easy to park and they're not quite as good off-road in a lot of situations because of the longer wheelbase keep in mind that tommy just did buy the two-door well yes because who needs friends and dogs and family you know what i mean wrangler uh well you have all that well i don't have many friends you do and you have a dog yeah my mom doesn't often ride in the car because she refuses to get in the back seat it's a win-win-win blaze the puppy loves the back seat it's perfect and and the ford was more expensive and i couldn't afford the four-door yeah to be fair uh the backseat of a two-door jeep we have never been in the backseat of a tudor wrangler you have i haven't uh is pretty pretty uh pretty pretty bad so the deal with the back seats on the two doors both for the jeep and the ford is they are both perfectly adequate when you're back there and they actually feel pretty roomy it's just the process of getting into the back seat where the issue lies and then of course you have the smaller truck but yeah i think well if you had if you had a convertible and a cherry picker it'd be easy right yeah you could bypass that hole trying to get the front seat you know out of the way and then trying to crawl into that little tiny space that's left when you fold the front seat down and trying to do it in such a way that your private parts either don't show or don't bang on something very very good point but i think for the purpose of this comparison we should probably focus on the four-door models because that's what people are going to be buying for the vast majority of of consumers yeah you know let's do it the typical tfl way we'll cut them down so let's start with the oldest first then we'll talk about the wrangler which is an x-hole disc obviously in terms of its model lineup and then we'll talk about the newest of broncos so let's start with the 4runner just because i think that one's been around the longest in its current form and you know we just like i said spent a long time with the newest newest version of it uh and there are a bunch of good things that it has going over the other models first and foremost it's got that incredible four liter uh uh six cylinder which i think is one of two's best engines okay outside of the you don't agree what well i mean it's not it's not fuel it's not fuel efficient it's thirsty but as a reliable uh powerful and well matched engine to the five speed this is crazy i'm saying it gearbox that f4 liter is better than the 3.5 that's in the tacoma so let's talk about the engines i think that that is a great place to start the 4-liter is extremely long-lived you're absolutely right and that that that's by far one of the biggest selling points of the forerunner so it's been around not only in the forerunner but in the fj cruiser and the older tacomas and even in certain land cruisers in certain parts of the world so they just go forever now power wise somewhere around 270 horsepower fuel economy wise figure-like mid to high teens so not a very efficient engine and uh if you want the foreigner can only as you mentioned be mated to the five-speed automatic which in 2021 is kind of archaic but yes i do agree with you from a longevity standpoint incredible from a power and performance standpoint it's not as potent as for example some of the ford or jeep engines no especially up here at a mile above sea level you know the forerunner to me is like an old shoe it's comfortable uh and it fits but it's getting a little uh shall i say smelly tommy uh just because once again a five speed is uh i think i can't can you think of any other vehicle that you can buy that has a five-speed ah is there anything else out there with a five-speed off top of my head let me know in the comments there might be yeah actually yeah there's uh some five-speed manuals like the chevrolet spark automatic automatic no i don't know if there's any five-speed autos so i i think that i disagree with you on it feeling smelly because the current generation of forerunner called the fifth generation smelly's a bad it's a bad analogy but but by smelly i mean it's just really dated and long but i think they've done a phenomenal job keep in mind that even though it's going on a decade old they've really updated it um in such a way where the design is phenomenal i think it's one of the best looking suvs on the market the front end i love the kind of squinty headlights with the angry eyes and the big bold grille the interior quality is top-notch probably one of the best in the industry the technology is not as good as the other two but it still is pretty decent and toyota's done a good job of keeping it relevant i think over the years but one of the reasons i like the foreigner so much is not only the fact that it'll last forever but i think it's the best on-road of the three it just has the most compliant driving dynamics i think the steering is some of the best um it's the most car like and it's the most confident in my opinion on a daily commute you know what really blew me away about the foreigner when we took it up imogene which is pretty challenging it's not i'd say it's a 5 out of 10 in terms of colorado mountain passes it's outside of urani and it connects kind of urani and telluride and you get a little bit of everything there's you know you can watch the video it's over at tfl off-road but what really blew me away about the foreigner was i was thinking that the bronco would just run away from it with the 35s right let's face it um the size of the tire is probably the easiest and most important change you can make to a vehicle to make it better off-road so when you go from what's the foreigner is it 33 32 something it's like some weird size right it's like a 32 yeah so you know that's a substantial difference so i thought that the bronco would just run away from the four runner and the foreigner did everything the bronco did um i wouldn't say as athletically but it did it and it didn't complain it did phenomenal the forerunner is still one of the most capable vehicles out there on the road today and what i like about the toyota is that there are also quite a few number of trims that you can get depending on how much capability you need so you can get an sr5 you can get a limited you can get a tier d offroad you can get a trd pro depending on your budget and the best one to get is the trd off-road version of the 400 because you get 99 of the pros capability without having to deal with the markups and the crazy prices that dealers ask for them because they still have the rear locker they still have the 8-track capability and the multi-terrain select and all of that they just don't have the fancy shocks of the pro or the cool badging but it'll still do everything you need it to do yeah you know uh my pharmacist bought one and they ran into one issue with it which i think is fair to point out because of that kind of very complicated design language on the front of it it's really hard to find uh a bumper that looks good when you try to change out the front bumper on it because there's all this like design going on because you got all these like intersecting curves uh and so it's it's it's a little tricky to like you know throw a different front bumper on it uh because of that look that you're talking about that squinty eye you know um angry bird look whereas like a wrangler or a bronco you just well bronco aftermarket parts are just starting to come on the market but certainly with the wrangler you have uh maybe a 20 minute job to swap out the front bumper and it looks nice no matter which one you get so i'm looking at the pricing right now on the sr5 version of the 4runner so it is the most expensive starting of the three 37 000 starting um and then you've got tons of different trims so you've got the sr5 the trail special edition which i drove pretty recently sr5 premium limited 2d off-road 2d offered premium and then the top dog pro and the pro starts at 52 000 if you want kind of the most premium version of the off-road truck so the one to get as we mentioned is the standard trd off-road starts at 41 grand and there's a lot of benefits of going toyota so for example uh standard toyota safety sense 2.0 which is a huge deal so that's all of the safety gear included including convenience gear like adaptive cruise control um and all of the the cool autonomous braking features and that is a huge win for the toyota across the board they have them not a win for toyota is you have to get one with four-wheel drive because it's one of one of the uh vehicles that that you can still get without a two or four-wheel drive so make sure you get a four-wheel drive one at the at the minimum yeah don't don't get the uh florida special and i i do agree with you on the interior um certainly it's it's not as techie as some of its competition i think it's still very easy to use and it's got plenty of tech for 99 of people it's got you know apple carplay and that kind of thing but it isn't you know full of massive screens and huge mind-blowing technology but it's very usable and i wouldn't bother with getting like a limited or really high-end model with all the fancy gizmos just get a standard trd off-road and go from there what's it like to live with tommy you know first and foremost for some reason just like the old fj it's got a really loud fan so if you buy one you probably know this uh when you start up you get this incredible like fan sound which is kind of disconcerting right until the thing actually for some reason decides that it doesn't need the fan full on uh and then uh driving it around town you know it's it's comfortable i think the five-speed transmission does hinder it a little bit on the highway around town i always feel when i'm in a foreign around town like i'm just using a lot of fuel unnecessarily because the fuel economy is pretty poor uh and there's a sense that you're burning a lot of gas to move a lot of vehicle is it nimble no is it particularly quick no uh but does it feel rock solid can you see over traffic yes is it comfortable for uh you know the passengers and your family hell yeah it's got a lot of room in the back uh the back row is a little tight but not uncomfortably so i like the flat uh surface where you could potentially put your arm i'm doing a little putting my arm out the window thing right now if you're listening to this i also like the way that it steers it doesn't necessarily hunt uh which is uh probably the best steering of the entire bunch what do you mean by hunt can you explain that well the bronco with the 35s likes to kind of wander down the road okay um uh the the the transmission uh does you know um yeoman's job of snapping out gears this is not a sporty vehicle so if you're looking for something that's going to be rewarding in the canyons don't look at this vehicle but if you're looking for something that's very practical and very ah i would say athletically lifestyley then this is a great you know every time i see one i expect you know like a gold to come leaping out the back so speaking of goldens coming leaping out the back you can haul around a lot of goldens in this vehicle too because it does have the highest towing capability of the three so up to 5 000 pounds so if that is a consideration if you've got like a little boat or a little camping trailer the toyota is the most capable in terms of max towing which is a big deal because the other two only total max of about 3 500 so significantly more i agree with everything you said i think that it is a little cumbersome in the city but very solid i still think like you said steering is the best of the three the suspension composure is amazing now from an aftermarket standpoint not maybe quite as large as the jeep still tons of availability in terms of lockers the bumpers you talked about are hard to modify but you can still get bumpers lifts are all over wheels and tires and all those are available as well it is a little bit more expensive in my opinion to modify than a wrangler especially from a lifting standpoint because it's got independent front suspension but it's very doable you can create an off-road beast with these things if you want to go that route or just drive it straight out of the box and enjoy it for what it is and it will last you a hugely long time and you can sell it for a ton of money down the road the resale value is through the roof and you can roll down the rear window which is great for those doggos out there yeah i was going to say like the most thoughtful feature is you can roll down the rear window it's also the easiest one to slap a rooftop tent on sure fixed roof does have its advantages by far uh and yeah you're right it's gonna uh it's gonna be around probably much longer than the other two in terms of resale value uh even though wranglers hold their resale value i think it's too early to say about broncos because obviously you know very few people right now the resale value is through the roof but that's not because of the market condition well i mean it is because the market conditions but the market conditions are weird so i wouldn't take a any kind of take-home lesson from that right now so i would say cons the reason i was a little hesitant on the 4-liter is because it is not a very quick vehicle in a straight line which is fine i mean i would i would sacrifice quickness all day for reliability but i need to keep in mind that some folks really do do value that that snappiness off the line and it isn't all that quick no forced induction uh no special direct injection nothing like that just a standard uh reliable v6 engine so if you want if you're coming out of a car and you expect it to be you know zippy from a stop the forerunner is not going to be as good as some of the other options on the route you know you know what the worst con is this is a huge one i'm not talking about the lack of a convertible but by far the infotainment in the current gen is is at least a generation maybe even two behind what's in the ring it works well what do you need enough what do you need in your forerunner it's got bluetooth audio it's got a radio it's like i'm doing my little hand thing here guys it's like it's like me like a postage stamp compared to the broncos and while the wrangler isn't you know bigger it's certainly uconnect much more functional much more functional yeah it's got the old lexus slash toyota system which most people will agree uh is um uh cumbersome at best and adequate and it was adequate antiquated at worst i don't think that's a way to i mean upset toyota folks coming your way dad well you know people will use such words as garbage to describe it no oh yeah tech people will use that word i've heard that word used how big do you think the screen is uh let's see what size the postage stamp like a quarter of an inch no no seriously how big do you think the screen is i don't know is it like uh it's either gonna be seven or nine inches it's eight inches oh i was worried which is only point four of an inch smaller than the biggest screen you can get on a wrangler so it's about the same size what's the size of the screen on the bronco well the stock one i think is eight inches two that's what's the what uh that one is the board ten inches fourteen no oh yeah no way yeah i don't believe it it is it is i think it's a tenner it's a fourteener maybe a uh-huh i think it's a 14er let's see here he's going to have 12 trick me 12 inches it's not a 14er i actually did so they updated the the screen in the 4runner pretty recently i think it's pretty good by the way there's it's so good that they created an entirely different system toyota has you know that right it was in the tundra i just drove so toyota in fact created an entire separate group that's made up of hundreds of employees to create an entire new you can well i think they call it is it in tune's the old one i think uh an entire new system because they even they realized that their uh system was not very good so that's that's gonna be in the tundra i think first and foremost if you are not 95 years old like my dad you'll just plug in apple carplay and just use it like everybody else and then that doesn't matter how easy it is that that doesn't mean anything you can plug an apple carplay into any of these no you use apple carplay and you just forget the rest of it until you run out of cell service and then you have no navigation well no it'll still go as long as you're still is if you're using if i guess if you're using our friends and onyx i actually said when you download the map i am actually the 95 year old here and i think that being 95 the buttons and the uh the simplicity of having the shortcuts on the side of the screen and the freaking volume knob makes this one of the best systems it's so bad the functionality is like like turn of the century compared to some of the newer centuries it's an off-roader what do you need a big screen for all right anyway i'm just saying you know infotainment's becoming more and more important because we spent all of our time staring into our devices staring into that thing certainly makes you want to not stare into it just look out the window how many colors does it have like two no it's like blue and gray i think so that i think you're thinking of the old display no i'm thinking of the current one the new one is really pretty good it's got 15 speakers by the way if you get the the jbl audio system which is pretty amazing it's an 8 inch screen apple carplay android auto xm capability like it's fine the best thing i can say about it is it's boxy did it did it like offend you in some way was there like a message that's just like it's just cumbersome unintuitive and boxy compared to the new one which you haven't seen which i have right you have not i've driven does it have buttons on the side of it i i can't talk about its embargo so i can't look to be brutally honest that i actually it's going to be in the nx too i much prefer having these old systems with physical hard touches you like the original you connect two right the one that was like green and had like you know four boxes i like the original toyota system too that was like something out of 1990 because it just worked all right like it doesn't need to be fancy just make it work we've beat that dog beyond beating let's move on to the next vehicle and this is going to be a little bit trickier because with soda you basically get one engine choice and two transmissions with the wrangler one transmission in the toyota oh that's right yeah no more yeah one track so one engine one transmission with the with the wrangler you get two transmissions you've got the manual i should point out and an automatic and how many engine choices are there can you can you read them off the top of your are there five yes well six i've got the configurator in front of me because i don't want to mess it up but there's a number of them so at the base end of the spectrum you've got a choice of either a 3.6 liter v6 or a 2 liter turbocharged engine so those are going to be more of your two entry-level ones there's also a 3.6 liter v6 with something called etorque which is a mild hybrid system then there's the option for a 3 liter diesel engine which is pretty cool on top of that there's also a plug-in hybrid which is called the 4 by e so that's 2 liter and a big battery and then at the top end of the spectrum is a 6.4 liter hemi v8 all right i'm going to cut to the chase here i'll give you guys roman's quick guide to which wrangler you want if you want a reliable basic transportation wrangler get the one that tommy got by far with the 360 the willys that gets you as much of the off-road goodies as you can with a cool kind of raccoon blacked out grill and it's affordable i think you paid what 33 for years yep all right then let's go up if you want to be um green uh and you want to go off-roading without any motor sound actually engine sound and you want probably what used to be the most affordable one in a way because you got the biggest rebate definitely go by the go get the four by e uh it's also the most complicated so it's probably the one that's going to cause you the most grief if things go wrong if you are going to build your vehicle up uh and you want to roll on like i don't know 40s probably get the diesel because it's just got astounding amounts of torque it's also probably the one that if you're going to road trip it it's going to be the most efficient uh and then if you want the coolest badass boy of the bunch get yourself uh the hemi there you go that's my take on which engine very well done i think that i'd make it even simpler and that's a vehicle by the way the hemi yeah the v8 is the 6.4 yeah um i think most people should probably just get the standard pentastar v6 if you want the manual transmission by the way you have to get the standard pen star v6 um i think it does once again it's not very snappy so if you're looking for sports car like experience get the hybrid or the diesel or the v8 but if you're looking for a wrangler like experience just get the v6 it's been around for nine years now it's proven itself to be pretty darn solid actually even though people are gonna throw things at me in the comments section it's true i was just talking to some master techs and they said that they see him consistently with i agree i think people don't give that penis star enough credit i think given give it another five years and people are going to look back on that like that four liter straight six that was in the old wranglers right uh as one of the most reliable one of the best uh engines that well let's let's not get too crazy here let's not let's not make too big of an assumption there all right so if you want the jack of all trades this is how go get the forwarder it's you know it's good going to the grocery store it's good going off-road if you want the one that's going to scream in a very loud way i am a very active cool person that loves driving around with the top down and that maybe goes off-road occasionally or goes off-road all the time get the wrangler it's certainly much more to the off-road side of the equation it's out of the even even out of the three while the bronco is also very off-roady uh the wrangler for some unbeknownst reason is the most popular wrangler ever they sell like a quarter million units a year right which is a lot 250 000 but at the same time it is the most singly focused off-roader of the bunch there's no compromises in the wrangler to on-road performance be it aerodynamics it's like pushing a brick into the wind be it the tires uh be it you know the design language this is a hundred percent off-road focused vehicle you know the fact that people don't take it off-road all the time doesn't matter it still is the one that like i say makes no compromises so i can't disagree with you because people in the comment section say i disagree too much okay so i'm gonna say i appreciate that feedback um i mean i get there's a sahara version which is supposed to be the city slicker version of a rainbow maybe what it'll do rather than disagree it still has solid axles it still has i'll add to that discussion by saying a low range transfer case i'll add to that discussion by saying that even though you are right that it does have you know a lot of traditional off-road gear it is not the wheelbarrow on the road that a lot of people will have you i'm not saying it's a wheelbarrow i i never said that i said it's the most uncompromising off-roader right i didn't say was there is one there's one aspect in which it's a wheel barrel and that is of course the seating position in the seats and they are just downright um pretty miserable you can't get far enough away from the upright windscreen and there's no lumbar support and the seat in general provide less than zero support for your lower back so the jl wrangler which is the current generation of wranglers called jl was introduced a few years ago for the 2018 model year and it brought pretty significant improvements over previous generations of jeep for on-road comfort so i think a lot of folks are still thinking of jeeps as they were built in like the 1980s or 1990s which is to say with leaf springs and like the square headlights yeah like short wheelbase very very very firm like a yj like a yj yeah but the new ones especially with four doors and if you don't get a rubicon like if you get a sahara or a sport they're really not terrible on the road i do agree that of the three it still is the most compromised and the areas where it's most compromised from a dynamic standpoint is the steering very kind of primitive and very i mean it's just not very precise i think it's still recirculating ball and there's a lot of kind of deadness you said compromise i said uncompromised off-roader but i'm saying i'm saying on the road you flipped it to the other side of the coin on the road it is but the issue is i think is you you can't talk about the wrangler um as being an off-roader because while it is incredible off-road the vast majority of time is spent on the road right and i think this podcast is going to appeal to people that also want to like take their kids to school and not just go hit the trail so i think we need to talk about the flip side of the coin too and yes it is an amazing four-wheel drive off-roader easily one of the best in the world i mean there's another vehicle that manages to pull off the same feed as well you know what that is what is that that's a g wagon that's also pretty much an uncompromising off-roader you know with three locking divs and you know a design language that yells uh i'm a military vehicle and yet it's the most popular for a certain set of people who will drive it down you know hollywood boulevard never take it anywhere near some place where there's no pavement yeah and yet that's also i think at the same time at one point that was the case but i think that the g wagon has gone in a very different direction i think that it is now an extremely compromised off-roader with all of the cladding on the side with 22-inch wheels i mean it even comes it even comes from the factory with a roll not a roll bar uh like a push bar on the front but i think a lot of that is just visual aid i don't think you'd actually want to run that into a tree and on 22-inch wheels and side pipes it's really is not like a wrangler in a lot of ways the wrangler has rocker protection it's got high profile tires for off-road driving so all of that adds to its you know relatively compromised on-road ability but i will say if you can get past the steering the ride is pretty good the hard top is pretty darn quiet um the brakes are very confidence expiring it has you know more modern safety gear it's got airbags and traction control and abs and that kind of thing it's not like it's the 1980s i also think it's got the nicest interior of the three yeah i completely agree it really stepped it up i think by far the nicest in terms of the design the style the materials you know anything you use to design to kind of review what an interior should be the wrangler by far is the nicest not the most comfortable the nicest i also think that it's potentially the worst value in a lot of ways so the starting msrp is low it's under 30 000 right around 29 000 starting but keep in mind for 29 grand you don't get power windows or power mirrors or power locks or any of that kind of standards well there is a thing called the jeep tax tommy right and that's what you're whether it's wrangler which it's the highest of but you know it's also in every jeep what you're paying for is the name right right and so yeah value-wise you know if you value the name then you're probably willing to pay for the jeep tax and that's probably realistically a couple thousand dollars or more keep in mind i mean it's not a real number but you know if you compare like three similar spec vehicles the jeep is going to be more expensive just because it's a jeep rubicon 392 if you get the top dog 6.4 that starts at nearly 75 000 so what i think you'll find is that most jeeps that you've seen a lot are going to fall between like 45 and 55 000 so right around the 50 000 territory be it sahara rubicon that seems to be kind of where most of them fall into nowadays now for 50 45 000 you you get leather which is good you do get 8.4 inches of touchscreen display typically you do get the amazing four-wheel drive system and rubicons do have locking diffs and sway bar disconnects and all that kind of stuff a lot of the times these do not come equipped with the same level of safety gear that the toyota include which is a big deal so it is possible to get like adaptive cruise control but you're gonna have to pay quite a bit for that depending on the trim whereas it would be standard and toyota same thing with like blind spot alert and that kind of deal yeah you know and look here's the let me let me kind of sum up again what a jeep wrangler is like on-road all right uh so it's it's it's it's highly uncompromising off-road which means by definition it's like you said it's compromised on-road but all of that doesn't really i think matter because when you pull up next to the guy or gal in your wrangler with the top down that's sitting below you which they are in a 70 000 7 series or 90 000 s-class you will always be the cooler of the two and i think that's what matters to a lot of people right they know that you can bring this maybe another way that you can you could you could say this is you could take a wrangler to the beach or you could take it to the most exclusive of of clubs golf clubs beach clubs whatever kind of club you want and that wrangler will be at home there and it will never be out of its element uh and that is something uh that is a very difficult trick to achieve because it's what it says about you is uh that you're active and cool and you know at the same time not snooty and not you know what i mean not not like uh trying to live above your station and once again i think that is what is magical about that vehicle in terms of kind of public image and in terms of the image that you're putting out and the other thing about it is it's kind of lovable right i've known a lot of people who have at some point gotten tired of wranglers which you will do right it's not the most comfortable it's not the quietest it's certainly not the most performing and then when you ask them what's the vehicle you regret selling inevitably it's always oh that wrangler i had back when i was whatever yes as long as it was not a wrangler from the 1980s in which it was always broken but yeah maybe not all right let's go let's go like tj jk and jl i think the the yj with the square headlight one maybe not so much and the cj's uh i don't know those are tractors so the other speaking of reliability too i know that people the first impression is to go give it hell because yes in the past jeep jeep has done some vehicles which are less than uh high quality but i talked to a lot of wrangler owners in this job and i mean a lot of them with fifty hundred hundred fifty thousand miles even on the jl wranglers and people are very impressed with its long term capability especially with that base v6 that we were talking about there just really isn't all that much to go wrong in the grand scheme of things they're very durable very kind of simple in their overall design and people really rag on them with pretty good results there's not a huge amount that will go wrong so for example like the early ones people always point to the the frame welds right which had some issues but that was like an early production thing i think a lot of those issues have been sorted now that were a few model years in and people for the most part that i talked to super pleased with the long term capability and longevity now talking about technology and infotainment there are three different screens and you want to talk about postage stamp you should see the screen that i have in my wrangler it is about the size of a finger um it's a five inch display i think officially but uh most of them are going to have a seven inch or an 8.4 inch display yeah and i think uconnect is one of the better systems in the business it's intuitive especially the newest i think the 5.0 version that's not in the jeep unfortunately that's in like the new pacifica uh is mind-blowingly good uh but even the current system in the jeep actually works really well i have no issues the only issue we ever had with it was if you have satellite radio and you have a soft top convertible and you fold the soft top down right that front part it covers up the antenna sometimes and you lose you lose satellite radio and speaking of tops there's a number of different options there's a soft top there's a premium soft top there's a hard top and there's a power top as well and it seems like a lot of people are going for the power top which is interesting because it's very expensive but the power top 4k or four and a half k the power top you just push a button and this whole fabric section slides back you don't have to get out and undo latches and that kind of thing just to put it down push a button and it's all automatic yeah yeah once again most customizable upgradable modifiable vehicle in maybe the entire automotive world parts are very gettable tons and tons of manufacturing can you think of anything that is easily modifiable as a wrangler um and has as many like aftermarket i can't i think it might be like a mustang they've got a pretty pretty good following yeah but this is just like bolt and play right with the wrangler you just unbolt the rear and front bumper and bolt on a new one it's it's super easy and then because it's solid axles lifting it is super easy too right people do love that and um you know you've got not tens of choices of lift manufacturers but hundreds and they range from all sorts of different price points from you know under a grand all the way up to tens of thousands of dollars so what's it like to live with you just drove years to the airport and back well is that the new standard now the uh the airport test yeah it's a good standard because that's kind of that's the uh ultimate of living with something when you're driving a car to the airport and using it as a as an airport commuter that is that is way outside of its comfort zone no it's been great i've had it for a few months now the headlights are very bad and the seats are very bad so if you're going to get one make sure to get the led headlights but apart from that like it's fine it's pretty quick especially the two-door with the manual transmission is actually really kind of a hot rod super fun to drive the manual transmission is awesome surprisingly quiet even with the soft top the radio is excellent even in the very base configuration like i have i mean i think power locks would have been a good option to get but apart from that it does absolutely everything i needed to my friends love it um they're young enough to get into the back seat i love folding oh thanks now you're making it an age thing it is an age thing it's not an age thing it's an age thing no it's like keeping your private parts uh not on display thing you have to contort yourself into like a pretzel to get in the backseat it's not about age it's about like dude this is like very weird getting back well their joints and their private parts are young enough to contort themselves to get back there but uh the trunk is pretty small that's kind of another complaint with the two-door and the headlights if you get the leds easily stolen i think there's like three screws people do steal front and rear ones unfortunately but like it's fantastic i'm getting good mileage in mine because it's small and lightweight i'm getting 21 miles per gallon which is really pretty decent and how do you like the manual compared to the auto that's great um the automatic is an eight speed and that's what most people should get but the manual transmission is a great option six-speed gearing is a little too tall so i'm never really in sixth gear but uh four-wheel drive system is excellent there's no reason to get a rubicon if you're gonna get um a wrangler for off-roading i strongly recommend just get the willies or the willy sport people people get the rubicon for the name yeah they do but you really don't need the lockers because the lsd and the brake lock differential system just phenomenal they work so incredibly well like you've mentioned earlier it is it is just a no compromise off-road machine even in the very base model configurations um but yeah i'm really really pleased with that uh seats aren't very good um and the headlights like we talked about but the ride is pretty good uh believe it or not i can take highway turns at 75.80 without rolling over without rolling over and crashing into a bush that's never happened to me once and i have usb ports which i use uh even with my little postage damp screen plug it in listen to the radio and it's the other thing about a wrangler is it's you know this word is way overused especially in press releases but it's not precious it's rugged so you know if it rains inside of the thing it's not going to hurt it yeah exactly it's got class seats and you can get tan cloth seats which is good and yeah i'm super happy with it and i'm glad like it's it's not uncommon to see wranglers especially in the press fleets that are 63 65 grand don't do that just get one for 35 grand you're going to have 95 of the experience sure you're not gonna have a heated steering wheel but it will uh still put a big smile on your face and yeah it's good all right now let's skip to the one that people have been probably most curious about and that is the bronco not this bronco sport mind you right that's the one that's uh based on the escape i said escape yeah escape you're good yeah uh but the bronco uh so keep in mind that ours is the first edition so it's got all the bells and whistles 63k 35s from the factory uh ford calls it orange we call it yellow or gold uh came with the hard top that sounded like there were little elves mining for treasure above my head which ford has now recalled and hopefully they'll send us a new one so we swapped out the soft top on it which will solve that problem even though it is a little louder on the highway you can really you always you know what when i get in the thing i love the best stuff the quality is great but because it's such a large area to cover for a soft top every time you get in and you start driving you kind of feel like there's a window open you know you know that feeling you know what i mean you're like looking around like is there a window open and it turns out it's just you know a very big soft top it is a big soft top you're spot on with that so bronco just like the wrangler can be had in so many different configurations only two engine choices only two engine choices but pricing wise that we're talking you know like high 20s all the way up to the 60 000 range so just like the the jeep you can go just crazy with the options depending on how you want to speculate so ours has the 2.7 twin turbo out of the f-150 puts out just over 300 horsepower uh it's a good engine you know i've always loved that engine it's uh because of the way this bronco is geared with 35s in the f-150 it's super quick it's like the dragster of the f-150 range here not so much but that's okay if you're buying a bronco to be a dragster you're probably buying the wrong vehicle it does spin those tires really well it doesn't suffer at highways for lack of power or speed and off-road it's certainly very powerful i don't know about the four-cylinder i would think if you try to like upgrade the four-cylinder with a lift and bigger wheels and tires you might find it to be a little bit anemic so i drove the four-cylinder actually yeah and you can get both transmissions with the 10-speed automatic but if you want the manual you have to get the four-cylinder and it's a seven-speed manual which is very very cool it's got a crawler gear yeah it's like a porsche 911 i think the manual transmission in the broncos even better than the one in the ford but the only way i would get a bronco is better than the ford do you mean right sorry the bronco is better than the one in the jeep exactly um i just it's a little crisper and it's uh i do like that yeah but um if you're going to get the four-cylinder the only reason to get the four-cylinder my opinion is for the manual because otherwise i think the v6 is going to be better for most folks in just about every configuration so um biggest difference between the two is independent front suspension as opposed to a solid axle on the bronco yep and i think that does make it better on the road especially expansion joints at speed it is much more composed and not quite as good as the forerunner in my opinion it's not quite as uh well damped i agree with that so and there seems to be more body role in the toyota so if you want strictly from an on-road driving standpoint the toyota is going to be the best but the ford is better than the jeep yeah i agree with that but let's face it none of these are you know razor-sharp canyon carvers if you're looking for that you're probably looking at the wrong market segment right i think the value is better on the four than the jeep so it starts at 28.5 but you get standard power windows agreed except that dealers are just you know a lot of them are being greedy and are if you can get one so last the numbers are pretty interesting last month ford uh i think they built 3 900 uh broncos and they sold like 3 900 of them just short of a few uh so there's not a lot of them out there and they're still very hard to get and i think dealers are taking advantage of that and you can see them being resold for like 20 25k over sticker right but standard power windows uh power locks that kind of thing that's nice to have um and you get native screen as standard too with the optional 12 inch screen and that 12 inch screen is pretty phenomenal so if you're into technology especially when you've got the front facing camera going it does look really really good so that is a big pro with the ford i think a big con with the ford is uh the interior is just kind of jitsy it just does not feel good i don't think it looks very good the materials you touch uh feel kind of bargain basement apart from the seats there is cost cutting on the interior especially you know what the one the one that really always gets me when you open up that center armrest yeah there's that little like tray that tray looks like a piece of throwaway plastic that you would get in a piece of packaging for like you know i don't know like a like a hard drive yeah and i think like the material down by the shifter is just terrible and i know people are going to comment well it's an off-roader why do you care about the interior i care about the interior because i think like having quality and having off-road ability are not mutually exclusive you should be able to have both in one and i'm not convinced that that thing's going to hold up long term from an interior standpoint now from an engineering standpoint and a capability standpoint uh ford has done something pretty cool they offer something called the sasquatch package which allows you to get the big tires and the locking differentials cheap does that now too across the board what are they called the recon the uh yeah they've got the the the new 35 inch tall tire package yeah ultimate restraint extreme recon but i think ford forced them to do that yeah but they're not quite going all enchilada because for example on the bronco you can get a very base model and still get it with lockers and the big tires whereas on the jeep to get lockers you got to go to the rubicon so what's it like to live with a bronco well there's good and bad let's do the bad first uh the the the top debacle is um you know not grand uh you know you're getting a brand new vehicle and then finding out that you've got a you've got a colony of dwarfs living above your head was not ideal and we're very lucky in that we have connections so we were able to quickly swap out the top four soft top but if you didn't have those connections i think that would get very annoying the other very annoying thing about the bronco uh and this is really annoying is we haven't fixed this yet is when you're commuting with it at some point uh the hvac system will turn on full like completely and you will no longer be able to control the fan speed it just with air conditioner or heater it just goes to number 10 uh and then you try to control the and this could be specific to our bronco or it could be something that other broncos have had let us know in the comments below and the only way to stop it is to completely turn off the ac or the heater just you know turn off and then if you turn it back on it goes once again to full and then hopefully if you recycle it if you actually but if you're on the highway you don't want to pull over and stop but if you're like you know going to grocery shopping when you come back it's fixed itself but it's pretty freaking annoying yeah but i think part of this two dad is what we talked about like with the jeep where it's a first year thing right i think there's going to be some kinks that need to be worked out over time i've seen like people having leaking a pillars broncos and there's also a recall right now on the bronco for the airbag they were packed wrong apparently so you know ford is having its teething issues right but speaking of airbags i think you get more standard safety equipment in the bronco than the four or then the jeep which is a nice touch um and uh they've done a really good job with this forward look for me the bronco is just much more comfortable uh as a daily driver well the seats are so much better the legroom's better it's got electric seats right there electric whoa for a 63 000 vehicle i'm saying that but you know and it has lumbar support you know those are the you know like there's this saying like japanese designers say what's the most important part of the vehicle and the answer is the door handle because it's your first impression the first thing you touch for me it's a seat because it's where i spend most of the time if the seat's not comfortable we just had this conversation with breakfast this morning we i would love to get a miata but i i have to like like curl myself into an armored little sized ball to get in the thing so as much as i love the vehicle i could never drive it i agree as a road tripper the the ford is far superior than the jeep and i mean it's i would say in the rock crawling situation it's just as capable if not just as capable i don't know they're they're like neck and neck with each other when you talk about lockers and sway bar disconnects it becomes about like like size right like like the jeep might be a little bit more agile because it feels a little bit narrower whereas the broncos a little bit wider but in terms of just pure capability they're both exceptional so one thing i don't like about the ford is you can't get it with rear ac vents which is a problem if you have kids or really fuzzy dogs like me who's always hot so that's kind of a bummer other weird thing is you can't get the soft top and the two-door currently which was a big buying decision for me um you can't get a power top in the ford either so in the jeep you can get a power top you can't get a diesel can't get a diesel you can't get electric can't get a plug-in hybrid um towing capacity is the same between the ford and the jeep both 3 500 um yeah ford has really done a lot of good stuff with the bronco the tech is good the seat comfort is good fuel economy we're getting what mid to high teens yeah but it's got the 35 inch tall tires it's not grand i think it's a little bit better than trx but not much oh headlights are way better standard led headlights on the ford as well which is even the base model even on the very base model yeah so i like i like those little controls for the lockers i think they're actually easier to use so with the jeep you gotta shift it into four low and then you gotta shift it into uh uh well it's four automatic then four low uh with the bronco it's just a little round thing that you and i was using it i just went up uh oh not the lockers you mean just the shift selector okay i gotcha yeah i just went up uh argentine pass with it compared to the trx and a side by side i actually found that goat mode greatest of all goes over any terrain actually really easy to use right so if you if you put it in like rock crawl mode it automatically shifts into four low right it allows you to lock the rear diff and i think it i think it locks the rear diff for you so it does all this and i got to tell you that turn assist tummy is really good so we were going up argentine pass and that you've been up there right the very last serpentine where you make it like a left turn it's a really tight turn and then there's like a cliff there and it's a very hard turn to make and with that uh you know the rear wheel uh drag it just it just pirouetted around that turn like it was nothing and it made it so much easier to pick my line going up over that shelf than if i had to like normally if you didn't have that you'd have to kind of make the turn as tight as possible then back up then go forward back up and it would be just much more difficult to pick your line other things to keep in mind which is good and the bad is interior volume feels a lot bigger it does feel i'm not sure it is bigger but it feels bigger feels i think it's bigger i want to get that exact number and i'm sorry i should have looked it up but um that the the negative of of that is that it does feel like almost a class bigger than the jeep and it's it's much harder to maneuver in smaller spaces and especially like garages if you get the 35s you're going to want to make sure that it fits in your garage not only height but kind of width and length it's a it's a very very large vehicle so it's also a much heavier vehicle than the jeep so i looked at like my comparative jeep to a bronco and it's several hundred pounds heavier uh which is not necessarily a good thing off-road as as i mean weight is the enemy of everything in every situation so that is definitely worth taking into consideration as well and then as you mentioned dad you just even though they they've been on the market for months and months and months they're still very difficult to find so if you do see them at dealers they're typically going to have a big markup people are still waiting even a year later or a year and a half later to get their hands on the one that they they placed way back when so uh yeah it's a tough time to be in the market for a full-size bronco uh and a couple other things which you know uh you know we're always transparent uh so we've we had to actually get an extension and this could be covert related i don't know or it could be the dealership we had to get an extension at our temporary place because a dealer in two months was unable to get us the paperwork to actually register it was that from there or was that with ford was that an issue with that was the deal with the issue okay well that's not ford's fault that that's the dealer's fault right yeah i'm just being transparent i'm not blaming anybody i'm just stating a fact uh you know to get a registration here in colorado is very hard at this moment in time you can you know that better than i do you can spend hours at the dmv trying to do it uh and then to go there twice uh because the dealer is unable to actually get the right paperwork to the dmv is is a huge waste of time and very frustrating we're all you know we're all we're all struggling with covid and you know then to have to go through that bureaucratic mess twice and not have the plates yet just to get an extension is is not not grand dude uh the other thing i would say is after market support is not there yet of course although it's coming in a big way it's coming back huge amounts of companies working hard on and but i think realistically you're probably gonna be at least a year before um it's gonna be like like as easy as a jeep or a forerunner at least a year if not more but keep it well there's i mean if you wanna make if you wanna make it your own right right because i've been actually trying you know with ours the next step probably is to build it up and i've been looking around for parts and they're not out there yet maybe with zima coming up they'll announce them but the other problem is even if they if the company says they've they've designed them getting them is a whole different ball of wax so in terms of specs and options the one to get in my opinion is called the black diamond that's basically the equivalent of the jeep wrangler willys but it's all the off-road gear cool steel wheels it's got rubberized floors by the way big pro of the ford which you can't do in jeep is the rubber floors love that um there's also the luxury one which is called the outer banks and then you've got like the rubicon competition one of the badlands the ones i see everywhere are badlands for some reason that seems to be like the like the sr5 in the tundra it's the one that's kind of the middle i disagree either one i see everywhere is called the um uh out uh the the big bend which is kind of the sr5 oh okay so the so the big bend is near the base model that's the one that dealers for some reason are being allocated um but the wild track and the badlands are more of the rubicon competitors so they've got the big tires and all the metal bumpers and offered gear but they did a phenomenal job with the ford and uh if you want to wait for one great if not the jeep and the forerunner are great options as well um you can take the doors off of the bronco just like the wrangler the biggest thing right now to having a bronco is it's still pretty cool right so when we take ours out you feel special driving it because you don't see a lot of them out there and people still come up to you and ask about it uh and that's really you know a big fun factor i think because you've got the newest coolest you know toy on the block if you've got a wrangler it's just you know it's been around forever and people don't notice it it's just part of the scenery but the bronco does stand out a lot that'll change obviously as ford builds more of them that shine will wear off but right now that that's a big part of it i think for a lot of people so maybe that's why people are willing to pay so much over sticker to get them it could be that i think that people do want the latest and the greatest so uh let us know what you guys think in the comment section below which one would you get that if you had to go buy one right now okay it depends what part of my life i was in right well your current part of your life [Music] that's that's a that's a tough one because look i i i i have this weird job as as to you right so my perspective is going to be very skewed uh it's not going to be a typical person's perspective right i don't look at this thing in the tip so it's i i almost feel like if i were to give you an answer it would be it would not be typical because most people in my position don't have the opportunity to drive any car that they want uh um so because we get them from the denver press lead i'll i'll give you an answer though i think if i i wouldn't get the forerunner sorry toyota love it but it's old and it's not i'm not in that part of my life if i had a young family we had a foreigner when you were a baby we had a foreigner a perfect vehicle for that it was you know you could use it to commute to work to me right now vehicles obviously are more uh for kind of toy use than they are for for living use so if you want something you want to live with uh definitely i would get the foreigner that's the one now then it becomes what what toy do i want do i want if you want one to live with definitely get the foreign like like live and use it as a daily driver every day it's your only you know it's the one you're going to take you know i have a choice of all these vehicles i can drive so if i need to go to the if i feel like i need to go to the airport i've got a vehicle if i want to drive around town not using energy i've got a vehicle riding electric vehicle so but if i was so for me at my point in my life i'm looking for like a fun toy right something that's going to be uh as used not as a daily driver but as like a fifth car which is weird so that's why i didn't want to go down this road and if i wanna if i wanted to use it as a fifth car i'll give you two answers if i wanted the one that's gonna get the most attention and it's gonna be uh the one that you know i'm not gonna touch because i think the value is in the originality of it i would do the bronco but if i wanted to get one that i'm going to use off-road as a toy and then i want to make it my own i would get the wrangler there you go okay if i was going to build it up i get the wrangler if i was going to keep it stock i'd get the ford wow what a long response yeah sorry dude i'm a bad person to ask i'm gonna keep it much more simple um if you are looking for a fun offered vehicle that you want to use every day uh maybe you have uh you know uh a partner or spouse and maybe a kid um the forerunner is is my number one choice i've realized that i think yeah but i know a roundabout way yeah but i would put the forerunner well on the top of my list okay just as a general-purpose off-roader that that's going to last it's going to be reliable that you're going to be able to sell i still think the toyota's number one and see the problem for me with that is i've got an fj parked right there as well and and that's basically just a cooler looking forerunner yeah but not as practical and the tech is even worse in the fg cruiser yeah but it's basically the same chassis so i think the forerunner for just a general vehicle is the one i would get if you're like me and you are single and just have a dog and just want to go have fun with the top down i would probably get the wrangler because you can get wranglers and they're proven the chassis has been around for three years and i do not want to deal with the headache that is trying to get a bronco and then the headache that is potentially first-year production problems like we're starting to see with the airbag in the top i just i don't think that the bronco is better enough than a wrangler to warrant all the headaches that that comes with because the jeep is very good off-road um for me it's good enough on-road to be livable the ford is amazing they did a great job but uh i would put 400 number one for most folks in the general category and then if you just want an off-road thing to have fun with the top down get yourself a wrangler yeah i would say you know the pragmatic part of me would say whichever one you can get seriously whichever one you can get and hopefully not pay a buff sticker for because we're at that part of the uh a year right now where every time i drive by a dealership uh you know we just bought a car for my mom your grandma and the only reason we're able to buy a car by the way it was a venue was because basically they were unloading it off the truck and we were able to get the vehicle as it was being unloaded because it was going to be sold the next day so you know whichever one you can actually buy if you've got the budget and they don't do any you know deal or trickery where you have to pay over budget or some other silliness yeah they're they're all great it's just right they're all it's a bit off it's you know it's it's a it's a we're blessed with all these riches right now uh and hopefully if competition comes back we'll actually have affordable choices now for me so if i if i said general get the 400 i'm also in a unique position right like i had a small budget i don't need four doors and i wanted a convertible and i wanted a manual transmission that was as small and lightweight as possible so like the jeep was the obvious choice there but that's kind of a once again just like you that's a weird set of buying criteria that that a lot of people aren't going to fall into well guys thank you for joining us i hope that we didn't confuse you more than we helped you uh i hope that this was enlightening to some respect uh and like i said you know we're living through some weird times but we're also living through some good times you know all three of these will take you well beyond where you probably are um comfortable going for sure yeah absolutely so get out there have some fun in the dirt and let us know what you chose in the comment section below if you're watching on youtube or if you're listening on one of the podcast streaming platforms be sure to leave us a review and a like yeah and then if you want all tfl content in one place go to tfl-studios.com where we put everything in one place so you can keep track of the podcasts the videos and even the news stories ciao

Channel: TFLtalk

Views: 127,992

Keywords: tfl, tfltruck, tflcar, podcast, bronco vs wrangler, ford bronco vs jeep wrangler, 2021 ford bronco vs jeep wrangler, wrangler vs bronco, new jeep wrangler vs bronco, jeep wrangler vs ford bronco, 2021 ford bronco vs jeep wranger, ford bronco, jeep wrangler, 2021 ford bronco, bronco, toyota 4runner vs jeep wrangler rubicon, ford bronco 2021, 2021 bronco, 4runner vs wrangler, bronco vs 4runner, new ford bronco, jeep vs bronco, ford bronco vs toyota 4runner

Id: 9bh8AIoT918

Length: 62min 1sec (3721 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 21 2021