The 2023 Gladiator Is the Worst Pickup Truck on Consumer Reports, Again

[JEEPIDON]

Here Ye! Here Ye! Another wonderful, biased, and ridiculous review article on the JL Gladiator.

If anyone who owns a Jeep Wrangler or Gladiator AND gives money to CR for a subscription, they should be burned at the stake!

The 2023 Jeep Gladiator Is the Worst Pickup Truck on Consumer Reports, Again

My favorite quote from the article: "Is the 2023 Jeep Gladiator a good truck? According to Consumer Reports, it is not. Despite its rough reliability history, as a rule, if you add a truck bed to an already stiff SUV, you aren’t likely to have a nicer vehicle. "

You shouldn't get all worked up over these guys! They will always rank any Jeep product at the bottom of the heap because that's who they are. They are biased based on who drops the largest briefcase full of money. How do I know that....I worked there a short period in my career and watched and listened to their operating principles (that's loose). They wouldn't know how to properly use a Jeep if their millennial asses depended on it.

There are other companies they also bash regardless of how good the product(s) are.

Have a beer and let's move on!

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[jdavis106]

Sure, Forbes and a few other mindless publications repeat CR’s trash year in and year out.

Garbage in, garbage out. It’s all the same garbage.

I must have missed the Forbes (who give the Wrangler a pretty good score in their review) article in this post. I just see one from motorbiscuit.com.

How do you know the Consumer Reports review is garbage? Have you actually read it or just read what sites like motorbiscuit.com have said about the CR reviews?

 

[Recoil]

I've read a few of their articles about wranglers/gladiators and my take away is that they don't really grade it for it's intended purposes. They grade it using the same criteria they'd use for a sedan. It's about noise, comfort, ease of use. The Wrangler will never excel in those categories because it's not designed for them. It's designed for crossing rivers and and climbing rocks. It's designed for Rough terrain, not asphalt. Might as well be reviewing a speedboat for it's abilities to sail.

 

[azwjowner]

The problem with CR is they claim to rank the "best" vehicles but there's really no one definition of best. If "best" means payload capacity, trucks will rank differently than "best" meaning on-road comfort, for example.

I feel that all of our concerns would go away if CR would simply say that they rate the "Best transportation appliances" (to borrow jdavis106's term), because in reality that's what they do. It's only because CR proclaims this all-encompassing, ambiguous "best" definition that we have issues.

 

[jdavis106]

You shouldn't get all worked up over these guys! They will always rank any Jeep product at the bottom of the heap because that's who they are. They are biased based on who drops the largest briefcase full of money. How do I know that....I worked there a short period in my career and watched and listened to their operating principles (that's loose). They wouldn't know how to properly use a Jeep if their millennial asses depended on it.

There are other companies they also bash regardless of how good the product(s) are.

Have a beer and let's move on!

It seems weird that their reviews are about who drops the largest briefcase full of money and the Wrangler is their lowest rated mid-sized SUV while the RAM 1500 is their highest rated full-sized truck.

 

[Mocopo]

If I were ever to get a pickup truck I would either get a Gladiator or a Maverick. Without doing any test driving or anything, those two seem to fit what I'd be looking for.

I'm curious about this. Those are two very different vehicles. Maverick is an IFS unibody crossover with a bed, excellent gas mileage and creature comforts, no more off-road capable then a Hyundai Tucson probably. Gladiator is a SFA body on frame with a bed, worse gas mileage, worse creature comforts, ability to go open air, significantly better off-road capability... the only similarity I can see is the bed. What were your criteria?

 

[aldo98229]

I must have missed the Forbes (who give the Wrangler a pretty good score in their review) article in this post. I just see one from motorbiscuit.com.

How do you know the Consumer Reports review is garbage? Have you actually read it or just read what sites like motorbiscuit.com have said about the CR reviews?

Feel free to search the forum for my posts on Consumer Reports.

The bottom line is this: the key to accurate survey results is to start from a randomly-selected sample that is representative of the target audience you are looking to study —in this case the US new vehicle market. Unfortunately, Consumer Reports uses a fundamentally flawed sampling method: it surveys its own subscribers, to whom they had already told what to buy. There’s little “random” or “representative” in this method.

Consumer Reports then repeats this process four times a year, resulting in an endless self-feeding biased loop.

Consumer Reports is the essence a biased sample. That’s why they haven’t found anything worthy of recommending in Jeeps in decades, despite sales figures to the contrary.

As the old saying goes: garbage in, garbage out.

 

[jdavis106]

Feel free to search the forum for my posts on Consumer Reports.

The bottom line is this: the key to accurate survey results is to start from a randomly-selected sample that is representative of the target audience you are looking to study —in this case the US new vehicle market. Unfortunately, Consumer Reports uses a fundamentally flawed sampling method: it surveys its own subscribers, to whom they had already told what to buy. There’s little “random” or “representative” in this method.

Consumer Reports then repeats this process four times a year, resulting in an endless self-feeding biased loop.

Consumer Reports is the essence a biased sample. That’s why they haven’t found anything worthy of recommending in Jeeps in decades, despite sales figures to the contrary.

As the old saying goes: garbage in, garbage out.

So how did the RAM 1500 end up being their highest rated full-sized pickup truck?

 

[aldo98229]

So how did the RAM 1500 end up being their highest rated full-sized pickup truck?

Who the hell knows. Perhaps because they cannot recommend a Subaru or a Honda full-size pickup...

Either way, a fluke doesn’t make their methods ”correct”, or their deep biases suddenly disappear.

 

[ALVagabond]

I have a 2020 JTR and a 2023 JLU Sahara. There are things I love about Jeeps that both of those vehicles share in common and they each have unique qualities that I love too.

The Gladiator is perfectly truckable for what I need. Most people way overbuy. It's mind boggling how many office workers around here are daily driving a 2500/3500 super duty because they haul a trailer 3 times a year.

 

[jromanmd]

@wchevron LOL. You moan and groan about CR Articles, yet took the time to reply here. Nice man. Ever heard of venting? Don't like CR posts, don't read them.

Please, give me a list of topics that you are ok with us posting.

 

[jromanmd]

I must have missed the Forbes (who give the Wrangler a pretty good score in their review) article in this post. I just see one from motorbiscuit.com.

How do you know the Consumer Reports review is garbage? Have you actually read it or just read what sites like motorbiscuit.com have said about the CR reviews?

Because I read the reviews from CR on the Gladiator and JL. They rank near dead last year after year.

 

[jdavis106]

Because I read the reviews from CR on the Gladiator and JL. They rank near dead last year after year.

You actually have a subscription or have bought the issues with the Wrangler reviews so you are reading the actual reviews or are you only looking at the rating every year? If you read the actual review I think most of the main criticisms are pretty valid:

• Stiff ride

• Lots of wind noise

• Awkward access

• Fuel economy

I don't get why everyone is so triggered by low CR ratings. The CR rating measures the suitability of a vehicle as a transportation appliance. If the Wrangler were a good transportation appliance then it wouldn't be a Wrangler. Almost everyone who decides not to buy a Wrangler because it got a low transportation appliance score would not have been happy with a Wrangler.

 

[wchevron]

@wchevron LOL. You moan and groan about CR Articles, yet took the time to reply here. Nice man. Ever heard of venting? Don't like CR posts, don't read them.

Please, give me a list of topics that you are ok with us posting.

I think you have me mixed up with someone else. I had quoted/replied to someone else's post.

 

[jdavis106]

Who the hell knows. Perhaps because they cannot recommend a Subaru or a Honda full-size pickup...

Either way, a fluke doesn’t make their methods ”correct”, or their deep biases suddenly disappear.

I don't think there is one "correct" method to rate vehicles. CR has their method. It is biased towards transportation appliances because they are in the business of ranking appliances. Why should I care that my Wrangler is poorly rated as a transportation appliance?

Subaru has two category-leading vehicles, the Forester and the Crosstrek. Honda has one, the Insight.

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