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What other vehicles are you cross shopping? $5-6k increase causing second thoughts on JLU

K9Jeeper

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Cross shopping the Tacoma TRD Pro now, since I’m having difficulty swallowing the fact that the JL Rubicon is priced so high, and for $43K, I can get a truck with a manual, and loaded with options. My Rubicon build is more like $50K plus, since I’d probably go with the power top when it became available, or even go with the JT down the road. So turning back full circle to a semi affordable truck for my off-road needs.
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swozey

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Cross shopping the Tacoma TRD Pro now, since I’m having difficulty swallowing the fact that the JL Rubicon is priced so high, and for $43K, I can get a truck with a manual, and loaded with options. My Rubicon build is more like $50K plus, since I’d probably go with the power top when it became available, or even go with the JT down the road. So turning back full circle to a semi affordable truck for my off-road needs.
Go give one a test drive, they seem to be pretty love it or hate it with people. Most complaints are the transmission hunting and the seating position. A lot of people can't get comfortable in one. Drum brakes, etc. But a lot of people also love them. Also look at z71/ZR2 they're all over www.cargurus.com for $38-39k. I drove the z71 diesel all over Olympic National Park and was shocked at how much I liked it. And they come with Android/Apple auto if you care about that. It's a requirement for me. My biggest complaint is the diesel is criminally underpowered stock when driving around the city, you can only get a fully black interior if you get the ZR2 (the other models the dashboard is ugly Chevy-interior blue). I kind of took both of these out of my list because I really want an SUV. I'd probably go with the v6/8spd if I went zr2. If the diesel was a v6 it'd be a no brainer. The Tacomas interior is light years better, imo, but the Toyota Entune system sucks.
 

loco

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Since the jeep dealers within a 130 mile radius of my residence are lazy, ill informed or full of BS, I have also looked at Chevy impalas. ford F150 pick ups, and caddilac cts. The Impala and F150 equipped with the way I want it is cheaper than the Sahara I have been trying with no success. I only buy US corporation made in the US by US workers cars all my life. I realize Jeep is now owned by Fiat but they are assembled in Toledo buy American workers.
 

maguro

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Cross shopping the Tacoma TRD Pro now, since I’m having difficulty swallowing the fact that the JL Rubicon is priced so high, and for $43K, I can get a truck with a manual, and loaded with options. My Rubicon build is more like $50K plus, since I’d probably go with the power top when it became available, or even go with the JT down the road. So turning back full circle to a semi affordable truck for my off-road needs.
I'm also looking seriously at the Tacoma as well. I'm looking for something I can use for overlanding and for the price of a Rubicon, I can get a Tacoma DCOR with rack and RTT. (Expedition overland had a lot to do with my decision.)

However, I'm not totally convinced with the reliability and the fuel economy isn't the greatest. Plus, it'll be my daily driver and might be a little big for daily stop and go driving downtown.

Ultimately, I'll have to drive the JL before making any decision but who knows when they'll be arriving in Canada. We can't even build them on the Jeep website yet! :facepalm:
 

Mattyp1214

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72commando - Sorry if my first post was not clear. I didn't mean to imply that there is a 5-6k markup for all JLU's. It all depends on personal preference for options. The JLU is configured in a way where sometimes entire option packages are necessary to get one item on the list, thus driving up the total cost. There are other ways to configure it where the price increase is substantially smaller or nearly nonexistent.

An example of this is that i would love to add just heated seats for the wife but it comes packaged with the cold weather group. I would much rather pay $500 for a standalone heated seat option even though I realize an extra $400 for a heated steering wheel, remote start and engine block heater is a great financial deal. However, I don't need or even want any of the other items. An engine block heater for a Los Angeles vehicle is hilarious.

Also, I do believe the improvements should be worth the money in a hypothetical Wrangler only vacuum. If you compare JKU's with JLU's it's a no brainer. The added variable in all this is that once you account for the bump in the price of entry (for some of us), there are tons of other vehicle(s) available. If someone is waiting for 2.0 and Diesel prices, this point becomes even more valid.

You can now reasonably cross shop a loaded Sahara or Rubicon JLU with something like a base model Land Rover Discovery with the 3 liter Diesel motor. The LR will still perform well enough off road for 90% of the places Wrangler owners take their vehicles while providing incomparable levels of luxury. On the other hand, the JLU will be more reliable, have better resale value and offer open top driving. Choices! Definitely first world problems though.

That makes total sense and is really the reason i went with the sport s over the rubi. For my needs the Rubi included many many things i wouldn't use and it ended up pricing out at +7k more because of all the bundled unwanted bs. There is a lot of argument about what you are getting for that 7k and what not but it was simply a waste for me. I already have a old school v8 jeep with beefy axles, overbuilt suspension, transmission, and transfer case that if i wanted to jump from 33s to 37s i could do for way less and would feel less guilty about thrashing vs a brand new jeep. I wanted a daily driver that i can take the top and doors off of in nice weather and that I can run 33s on that is comfortable enough to drive to out of state trail events, hit moderately difficult trails with, then drive home with no trailer needed. A rubi is not needed for this and that 7k will buy me a nice roof rack, fresh recovery gear, roof top tent, bumpers, winch, and a handful of other items that results in a vehicle that can do everything i need for less cash. I will also likely own this forever so once the new shiny is gone and it leaves daily driver status i wont feel bad shoving some d60s and a regear under it either.

As far as other vehicles that are worth checking out. Check out the Forester XT. It is very nice for the price point (my fully loaded 17' came in at 33,800 before ttl), has a great 4 wheel drive system (lacks ground clearance which limits where you can go), is very safe, and is well appointed in features overall. Has good resale and dependability as well. A couple of small mods gets you into a nice dependable 300hp/300tq range. We test drove it against the grand cherokee, audi, bmw, volvo, and vw small suvs and ended up coming back to it and don't regret it all. We do many long trips and camping it and avg over 27mpg too.[/QUOTE]

My wife has a 2015 forester xt, so far it has been awesome. We are going to drive it until it falls apart. Their service has been awesome with the minimal amount of things we’ve had to get warranty work on.
One thing I will say about XT is that the trim on it that looks like chrome will rust in a heartbeat. Gotta wash that thing in winter every few days or the fake chrome trim on entire car will be rusted out in one winter. I wash the cars a lot in winter but considering it is a popular “winter car” I was surprised how quick it rusted. Too fast, 15000 miles it looked 10 years old fast. They replaced all of it under warranty after pushing them pretty hard to. But every piece of trim was replaced (probably at least a few thousand after labor if not more). So they made up for it.

I looked at sq5 and fpace, if I couldn’t have an off-road ready suv then I wanted something sporty. I just couldn’t bring myself to buy one. The long term reliability on Jeep is probably about the same, but the pricing to get one of the foreign cars worked on us what changed my mind.
Had the JL not had been an upgrade I probably would’ve settled on a 4Runner
 

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JamesWyatt

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Instead of buying a JL, I bought the last of the basic, bargain-priced JKU Rubicons: 2018 with half doors, manual, and Connectivity Pkg. MSRP was around $39,800, and I walked out the door with it for just under $34,500 (no tax trade, Tread Lightly discount, $500 golden ticket, and $2K trade equity).

I didn't want to order a stripped-down JL Rubicon and not get half doors, so this was a better option for now. In a few years, I may look at ordering a diesel JL if I really want to blow that kind of money.

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Whelp, another contender for me with the new Rams coming 1st quarter of 18 - never wanted a 1500 until now, the 2019 Rebel might just cover all my bases for a smaller Power Wagon:

http://www.roadandtrack.com/car-shows/detroit-auto-show/a15159626/2019-ram-1500-this-is-it/

Also, that new interior/technology with the 12" screen blows my mind

They did a nice job with it, looks great...I really don't want/need a pickup but if I did it would be at the top of my list.
 

K9Jeeper

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Damn cross shopping too much ended up turning into this! Haha.

I’ll ride this out until I can easily get my hands on the future Scrambler.

6 speed manual though, so very fun to drive. Might not even want to trade it when the time comes. We shall see!

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maguro

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Damn cross shopping too much ended up turning into this! Haha.

I’ll ride this out until I can easily get my hands on the future Scrambler.

6 speed manual though, so very fun to drive. Might not even want to trade it when the time comes. We shall see!

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Very nice! I actually saw a 2018 TRD Pro in cement last week.

I'm torn between the 4Runner, Tacoma and JLUR but I'll decide in the early spring. Should get a fairly accurate impression of the JL by then.
 

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K9Jeeper

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Honestly, the 4Runner is dated feeling and couldn’t use another 30-50 HP to get some steam uphill. Basically, the 4Runner experience got old to me after just 20000 miles of ownership.

The Tacoma is a great option if you’re a Manual trans kinda person. The owners of the 3rd generation automatics seem to really despise the automatic trans. Some are ok with it, but auto vs auto, I am willing to bet you’re way better off with the JL.

As for the JL, haven’t gotten my paws on one, but I feel there was tons of thought put into it, from design to driving feel on and off road. Probably more so than 90% of vehicles put on the road today. That being said, it’s liekly a safe bet, if you don’t mind the cost to play.

For me,a Rubicon would go well above $45K the way I’d build it, so might as well wait until it’s exactly what’s I want, which isn’t the current JL being released. It’s the future model Scrambler with a Diesel engine. Sure, it’ll push $48-50K the way I’d build it, but at least I’d Ben getting exactly what I want in a Jeep.
 
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kromealt

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That's a nice TRD grats, I preferred the 4Runner vs the tacoma when I was shopping and I do agree it's quite dated but I also feel the new Tacoma was dated before it even went on sale. Hopefully you have better reliability with the new v6 than others. Throw a long-arm on that sucker!

For this day and age, even with differing opinions I'm surprised we don't have better options for the perfect offroader. Pretty limited cross shopping.

IMO, after seeing these new RAMs I'm thinking they could have done way better with the JL interior for the pricepoint :(
 

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Damn cross shopping too much ended up turning into this! Haha.

I’ll ride this out until I can easily get my hands on the future Scrambler.

6 speed manual though, so very fun to drive. Might not even want to trade it when the time comes. We shall see!

893DCFBD-7680-418B-B190-348EB7C1BF72.jpeg
Love that color and setup! I also looked at those but one of my biggest desires is having top and doors off offroading and daily driving. You just can't get that with anything else! Back in college, I had an '83 CJ7. Loved that thing! Being in South Florida on the beach though, it began rusting fairly quickly. The passenger side seat bolts rusted out. I was in college and didn't have the money to fix it so just put a beach chair there for occasional passengers until I could fix it! When driving to the beach with passengers, I'd get an occasional side glance from the cops but was never pulled over for it. This was 1990. Now that I'm older I'd never let anyone ever ride like that again as it was pretty unsafe /dumb but everyone survived and have great memories...
 

Niteshooter

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Well the removable top and doors plus folding windshield are the key reasons I would buy a Wrangler.

I have however considered the following,

-Ram Power Wagon (just because the wife's Rebel is such a nice truck for the $)
-Dodge Challenger R/T with shaker hood, because I grew up in the 60's/70's but missed out on an original
-Roadtrek CS Adventurous, yup you talk about sticker shock on a Wrangler, well this would certainly give you that however this I could live in on the road.....
-Jaguar F-Type convertible because my meds must have worn off....
 

72commando

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Well the removable top and doors plus folding windshield are the key reasons I would buy a Wrangler.

I have however considered the following,

-Ram Power Wagon (just because the wife's Rebel is such a nice truck for the $)
-Dodge Challenger R/T with shaker hood, because I grew up in the 60's/70's but missed out on an original
-Roadtrek CS Adventurous, yup you talk about sticker shock on a Wrangler, well this would certainly give you that however this I could live in on the road.....
-Jaguar F-Type convertible because my meds must have worn off....

If you are not shook at $100k+ and a long wait take a look at ICON (https://icon4x4.com/). You can get complete restomod broncos and FJs with all the modern amenities of a TRD Pro or Raptor and even beefier beyond that as your wallet will allow. They are very impressive in person but way above my budget.
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