Do I Regret Buying My Brand New Jeep Wrangler After Living With The New Ford Bronco For a Week?

a couple of weeks ago i went out and bought my first new car a jeep wrangler and i was very excited about it but then about a week ago the company that i work for tfl studios here went out and bought this the new ford bronco now here's a question what are the pros and cons of each and do i regret buying a jeep wrangler should i have waited for a bronco that's we're going to find out today here's the background this is my personal 2021 jeep wrangler willys sport i've spent years saving up for this car and it was a really big financial commitment i paid 31 800 for it with taxes 35 000 and this is the company bronco like i said we bought it a week ago it was 63 000 with license and title fees and taxes it came to 70 000 so twice as expensive as my wrangler now you're probably thinking at this time well tommy if you knew that the company was going to buy a first edition bronco in a four-door configuration why didn't you buy a more apples to apples wrangler because i couldn't afford it i didn't want a car payment and quite honestly buying a new car for an msrp of 33 000 just blew my mind in the first place let alone a 70 000 bronco but the deal is i've driven every configuration of the new wrangler i've driven a bunch of configurations of the bronco i've spent now over a week behind the wheel of this bronco driven it both on and off road thoroughly tested it and well should i regret buying a wrangler over a bronco let's dive into the pros and the cons of each this bronco video series is in support of the ronald mcdonald house and this is a great charity that helps out families of children that are going through procedures for example at a hospital and it's a really really really great organization so if you want to help out a great cause be sure to check out the fine folks at the ronald mcdonald house the first pro of the bronco the magnificent seats compared to the wrangler specifically related to road trip ability i'm so much more comfortable driving the bronco than the wrangler primarily because i'm kind of a tall string bean dude i'm 6'1 and i have a lot more room to spread out lengthwise in the bronco than the wrangler both two and four door broncos by the way plus you can get the bronco with lumbar support on both the driver and the passenger side plus you can get power seats in the bronco and regardless of the trim i strongly believe that the ford has far superior seats let's check out the wrangler to compare now the first thing i do in a two-door wrangler a four-door wrangler or a jeep gladiator is get in and put the driver seat all the way back this is the only new car i've ever been in where i sit at the very end of the seat travel stop which is a problem because i'm kind of tall but really not all that tall compared to some so put the seat all the way back and the next issue you might notice is the shortness of the base cushion i do not have enough thigh support in this jeep to really be comfortable on drips longer than about two hours and if i drive any wrangler regardless of the trim or the configuration after about two two and a half hours i start to feel some pain in the lower portion of my thigh which is not really all that great plus you can only get the wrangler with lumbar support on the driver's side plus there are no power seat options on the jeep wrangler and i do have to say i prefer the cloth interior to that of the leather because the leather is even firmer in my opinion in terms of seat comfort so overall the jeep has far worse seats than the new bronco regardless of the trim now one major pro when it came to deciding between the wrangler and the bronco for me was the fact that you can get the jeep in a two-door configuration with the soft top i could only afford the two-door of both the wrangler or the bronco i don't need the rear seat capabilities and the soft top on this jeep is awesome i love being able to just flip it back pull out the windows if i need to it's a well made top i just drove this jeep through a massive massive rainstorm for several hours it didn't leak it's easy to use it's well assembled if you want a two-door bronco you can only get that in a hard top and that was a big deal for me i like having this option now i realize i am probably in the minority wanting that two-door soft top configuration i think a lot of folks are gonna buy the wrangler or bronco in this configuration four doors with the hard top and that is a pro of the bronco this modular hard top is really very very cool so not only can you remove these front panels like you can on a wrangler with freedom tops but you can also simply remove this rear panel without getting the tool kit out and that's a really cool thing especially for rear passengers pull out that middle it's kind of like a target top panel and they've got a wide open area without actually removing the rear section that's a pretty cool feature as cool as this modular top is on the ford it actually brings me to a pro on the jeep that wrangler has been around for three or so years and most of the kinks have been worked out this bronco is a first year production vehicle and it was a concern of mine when deciding between the ford and the wrangler now actually we can see some of those production concerns up here on this top this has been one of the biggest disappointments with this entire vehicle the quality on this top in my opinion is very very poor this felting material is pulling up it's starting to flake in several areas the material itself is actually quite loose and does allow particles to enter the vehicle and then if you look at the other side for example i mean check this out the glue is just leaking everywhere outside of this little rubber material this top rattles constantly i have thoroughly siliconed the joints i've siliconed the seals and it rattles and pops as you drive down the road constantly now the fanboys are going to tell me that well this isn't ford's fault because the hardtop on this vehicle is manufactured by a company called wabasto the average consumer is not going to know that and quite honestly it doesn't matter because this is not a ford bronco by wabasto this is a ford bronco and these problems with the top do not exist on the wrangler jail at least from my experience and from the folks i've talked to now from my initial quality assessment i have to say in my opinion the wrangler is a more sordid vehicle and i like to talk to folks out on the trail i have actually talked to a huge number of folks that own these wrangler jails and pretty much everyone says that they have been very reliable for them i know oftentimes jeep has a reputation for unreliability but it seems like apart from maybe some of the earliest jails the wrangler is a very sordid vehicle i'm hoping the bronco is too i hope they fix the top issues really quickly i hope that it turns out to be a super long live dependable vehicle but as of right now we just don't know with that ford a pro the bronco over the wrangler is the on-road driving experience with the caveat now back in texas i had a chance to drive a four-door bronco with the smaller tires this one is the 35 inch tires that one was closer to like a 33 inch tall tire and i was amazed at its steering composure compared to the jeep and how it handled bumps in the road at speed specifically expansion joints around a turn i felt that it was a much more composed as it took those bumps while making a turn it didn't get quite as unsettled as a wrangler now the caveat is if you step up to a bronco with what they call the sasquatch package which gives you these really big tires a lot of the advantage in the steering feel and the confidence in the suspension and ride is lost because you've got a bigger sidewall a more tire deflection and of course more unsprung weight so yeah a bronco on 35s still might drive better than a wrangler on like 33s but honestly not much better it does now get a lot more upset over bumps um especially at speed and that kind of precision steering that you got on the other broncos is a a little bit muted driving my wrangler uh well first things first the steering is a little bit what i would call guess and check so you go ahead and you turn on in and you realize oh not quite enough to add a little bit more then oh that's a little too much so yeah there is some lack of precision in the steering of the wrangler but quite honestly i think most commenters have last driven a wrangler in about 1988 uh powered by a four-cylinder engine making 19 horsepower strung up by leaf springs and def leppard playing out of one broken speaker on the sports bar because honestly the wrangler nowadays is pretty refined if you come out of a sports car you're gonna be you know pretty disappointed but if you come out of a normal car yeah sure it's a little bit more top-heavy and the steering is a little loose and the suspension is a little bit maybe wobblier than you'd expect out of a camry but it's a safe and composed driving experience for the most part and if you get one like this that is some what is it 1400 pounds lighter than that bronco over a thousand pounds lighter than that bronco i mean i would argue that it drives better it's more zippy in a lot of ways i think that the suspension's a little bit more crisp than that four-door on 35s just because of the weight difference and another good thing about the wrangler is if you get the 3.6 it doesn't sound all that bad at least compared to the 2.7 v6 and that bronco now i think ford is doing some pretty serious engine augmentation on the inside changing the sound of it because on the outside it sounds like a cuisinart now the 3.6 isn't exactly a lexus lfa v10 but when you get on it especially above 5000 rpm it's got kind of a little bit of a roar to it honestly i think one of the only engines that sounds worse than a modern-day ecoboost is the wrangler four-cylinder turbo which and i don't know what that sounds like of air is what that sounds like but yeah the v6 in the jeep it's a good engine one major pro with the ford the headlights every version of the full-size bronco comes standard with led headlights there's a couple of different designs but they are all leds the jeep comes standard with these halogens and these halogens are well they're glow worms wearing sunglasses they are just not effective at night i wish the jeep came standard with the optional leds that you can get on this vehicle one major pro of the wrangler are the rear seat vents which are standard located here in the middle console the center console now i have a bernese mountain dog puppy and he is um what i would describe as a very heat sensitive especially in the summer this dog needs to be cool or he'll be very unhappy and these are a big deal for him he much prefers riding in the back seat of the wrangler than the bronco because of these vents and as an animal lover and of course as you know someone who may end up sitting in the back seat of either two or four door these are a really nice thing to have let's check out what the bronco does now regardless of two or four door bronco regardless of whether or not you spend over 60 thousand dollars like we did on this vehicle you can't get rear seat air vents located in the console now ford's solution to this problem is actually locating vents down here underneath the seat and actually this floor mat is warped a little bit and covers up the vents all together i'm not really sure that is a good enough solution to keep rear seat occupants and of course rear seat animals cool because in the summer if you've got ac going cool air is going to fall if you're already delivering the air on the ground it just doesn't seem to do a good job of keeping back seat occupants all that cool now my pro the wrangler is that the quality of materials and the fit and the finish on the inside are better than that of the ford okay the steering wheel and the wrangler this plastic one not very good but apart from that i think jeep has done a better job of including higher quality materials even in a 33 000 vehicle than a 63 000 ford so for example the dash top feels to be a much higher quality of plastic moving down to the middle of the center console this material by the shifter much more finished than that of the ford and a big deal for me i like to listen to music when driving along the jeep has a better audio system even the very basic jeep system is better because the speakers are right above your head and that's before you get to the upgraded alpine unit now let's take a look at the four to compare the interior fit and finish in the bronco is not bad i don't want to make this seem like it's a 20 year old ford escort but there are things in here that just aren't very nice for example like down here this kind of coarse gray plastic almost looks pre-production in the center console it doesn't really match anything else on the interior this grab handle for example just a little bit flimsy and of course i'm going to get the comments saying well it's an off-road or what you expect i kind of think that there is this perception going on online that high quality materials and 4x4 are two mutually exclusive things but in my opinion they should and can exist in the same vehicle for example look at a land cruiser from australia 70 series very basic but very well executed with fit and finish look at even like an fj cruiser once again not luxurious but all the materials feel quite high quality and then we come to the sound system in the ford now this is the upgraded b o system you got speakers up here in the dash but nothing in the doors because they come off and the next speakers are all the way at the back behind the second row headrests not a big deal for some folks it is a big deal for me especially at 63k i expect a better quality sound system um i look forward to see what people are going to do and upgrade that system but it'll be interesting to see of course the advantage of having the speakers back there is no crossbar on the sports bar here so you get kind of a big wide open view but it's just going to come down to what do you value in your vehicle now size wise i think this is a pro for the ford for most people this is a much larger vehicle obviously yeah four-door with 35s to two-door on these smaller tires but even apples to apples if you look at the same configuration the bronco feels significantly bigger on both the inside and the outside for example when i was looking at the two-door wrangler i looked at the two-door bronco that is seven inches longer and that is a great thing for most people but not necessarily for me if it were up to me every car would be like 40 smaller than it currently is but um i will say the the narrowness of this jeep the shortness of this jeep makes it far more usable for my life out on the colorado trails which can be really really narrow it saves my paint from pinstriping and my parking situation is really tight and seven inches of length is a big deal where i park let alone going to that yellow bronco i tried to park that yellow bronco at my spot at home and i killed like three plants in the process of trying to make this turn so the sizing i think is going to be an advantage for most in regards to the ford but for me i like the compact nature of the jeep now from an off-road standpoint i'm going to give them a tie i mean folks are going to argue about this until the crows come home but they both have their advantages the wrangler has that solid front axle which is great for rock crawling the bronco has the independent front suspension which is better for desert running but both can be had with lockers and sway bar disconnects and skid plates and all sorts of cool options i do like that the ford can have a rear locker pretty much across the board where you have to get a rubicon to get lockers on the wrangler but apart from that i'm going to call that a tie because they're both amazing now from an engine standpoint um well i'm going to give that a tie as well here's why so you can get the bronco in the 2.3 turbo 4 cylinder or the 2.7 twin turbo v6 they're both ecoboost engines both i think are quite potent both have plenty of power for an off-roader both are some of the worst sounding new engines money can buy they just they sound like dysons now jeep on the other hand has many many more options from this the 3.6 liter v6 to the 2-liter turbo to a v8 to a plug-in hybrid to a diesel so you've got a lot more options on the jeep um they also have the pros and cons certainly my favorite engine of all the choices in all these vehicles is this engine the 3.6 liter v6 because it's an off-roader and i want it to be as simple as humanly possible so no turbos no direct injection on paper this is a really dull engine in person it's a really good engine so it's all about what you want for at altitude the turbos and the bronco are amazing but from simplicity durability standpoint in my opinion 3.6 pentastar v6 manual trans go for that one and from a transmission standpoint you can get a seven speed manual the bronco which i love i think it's really really cool and it's really really fun to drive but actually i like the 8-speed auto more than the speed the jeep offers so manual trans better in the ford automatic trans i think that eight speed box i use in the jeep is just a little bit more refined a little bit better calibrated and a little bit less hunty for gears now from a value standpoint i think ford offers more bang for your buck than jeep they both start you know 28 summon change within a few hundred dollars of each other but the ford offers standard power windows it offers a standard eight 8-inch screen it offers standard air conditioning so value-wise i think the ford wins now i do like the manual windows and manual door locks in my jeep but that's just because i'm weird and i like simple things to be honest i still own a car that has a crank start on the front of it so let's keep that in perspective here but yeah i think that the ford offers more value dollar for dollar than the wrangler now from a technology standpoint i think it's pretty fair to say the bronco wins because the bronco has a standard 8 inch screen this is the standard screen in the wrangler it's like nine postage stamps but now just to stir up the nest a little bit i'm going to say that this is actually the single best radio available on the market in 2021 it's better than any mercedes systems or bmw systems and you know why because it just works it does absolutely everything i needed to do and not a single thing more it's got presets it's got a volume knob it's got a two knob and it has a button there for bluetooth they even threw in a compass get rid of the compass i don't even need that but uh it's just perfect it's better than the 8.4 inch screen in the jeep it's better than the seven inch screen in the jeep but that's just because i'm weird for most folks they're going to like to tech more in the bronco and that 12 inch screen in that ford is amazing it really does look great quite honestly a big pro for the jeep is you can actually go out and buy one you can go out and order one and receive it before the the next james bond comes out or maybe the one after that because i placed an order for this jeep in april took about eight weeks to build and then i've been cruising around in it this summer it's been awesome top off enjoying the trails with my friends taking puppy blaze out in it and the fact of the matter is to order one i could afford of this configuration back in april if i wanted the bronco i think realistically it would have shown up in 2022 maybe even as a 2023 model year um and i've been very plugged in with the bronco community looking at the forums looking at the way ford has been communicating with folks that are committing to paying a huge amount of money for this product and i just i wasn't going to put up with it that's before dealer markets and the hassle of competing for a small number of vehicles it just isn't worth it for me yes there are things that are better on the ford but it's not better enough to wait a year a year and a half for it to show up jeep has built an excellent vehicle with this jail i think it has proven itself to be very reliable extremely capable um i like the size of it i like the two-door soft top so for me i mean that's really what went out and i'm driving it it's great i love it it's really fun we're very lucky that we were able to get this first edition but it took a lot of finagling um of you know working with the ronald mcdonald house to actually make this vehicle happen and you know get it in a timely manner um and yeah as a private buyer i'm just not sure that i i could you know accept the fact that it'd be a year wait from now the jeep is good it's great i love it so i had no regrets um let me know what you think in the comment section below of these two vehicles which one you prefer which one you own and we'll see you guys next time on the next episode of the fastlane car i almost forgot they have some exciting news actually so i understand we have a lot of youtube channels and it can be hard to keep up with what we're doing and in fact sometimes i miss a few videos here and there as well so we have gone ahead and started a really cool app the tfl studios app linked below and it's a great convenience source to see all the cool videos you want to see in one easy to find spot

Channel: The Fast Lane Car

Views: 406,762

Rating: 4.8500791 out of 5

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Id: Zbz91LTLtiM

Length: 21min 13sec (1273 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 03 2021