Here’s a Tour of a Perfect Jeep Wrangler ... From 1993

This is a 1993 Jeep Wrangler Renegade. By now, all Wranglers from this era have been turned into off-roaders and heavily modified, or they've been consumed by rust, or sidelined with some engine issue that took them off the road, or they've just been crashed, but not this one. This is a time capsule, a 93 Wrangler with only 25,000 original miles. And today, I'm going to take you on a tour of it and show you what it would have been like if you had bought a brand-new Jeep Wrangler 25 years ago. This Wrangler comes to me from Motorcars of the Main Line, a dealership here in the Philadelphia suburbs with a seemingly unending inventory of interesting and unusual cars. This is certainly one of the most interesting, simply because nobody bought these Wranglers to preserve. They bought them to drive, and off-road, and they used them up, and so there are virtually none left in this condition. So today, I'm going to take you on a tour of the 93 Wrangler, and I'm going to show you what it would have been like to walk into a Jeep dealer 25 years ago and buy one of these things new, which is interesting because I recently reviewed the all-new, redesigned 2018 Wrangler, and it'll be interesting to see just how far this thing has come. Anyway, I'm going to show you all of the quirks and features, like always, and then I'm going to get it out on the road and see how this thing drives, and then I'm going to give it a Doug score. And for more of my thoughts on the Wrangler experience, click the link below to visit autotrader.com slash oversteer. On Oversteer, I've also compiled a list of the most insane Wrangler builds currently listed for sale on Autotrader. First, a quick overview. Now, this is a YJ Wrangler. That's what the enthusiasts called it. It was the Wrangler that was sold from 1987 to 1995, and it was the first Wrangler model that Jeep actually called the Wrangler. Before that, it was called the CJ for civilian Jeep following the military Jeeps of the 1940s. Now, this is a Wrangler Renegade, which was an optional appearance package. The normal Wrangler of the time period looked like this, and that's the look you normally associate with the Wrangler, but the Renegade was a little bit different. It had sort of a more modern, sporty appearance with different fender flares, both in front and in back, and different wheels, and a couple of other upgrades, and it also had the larger engine that was available in the Wrangler at the time. The Renegade package was available for only a few years in the early 1990s, and it was an option, and Jeep didn't install it themselves. Jeep would send completed Wranglers to a company called ASC, who would install those Renegade things, and then they would send them to the dealerships. Now, the Renegade package was $4,300 extra when they offered it in the early 1990s, which may not seem like a lot by today's standards, but it's a ton when you consider that the Wrangler's base price at the time was $11,500. So basically, the Renegade package added 40% to the base price of the vehicle. Imagine, in a Wrangler today, it starts at about $27,000. Imagine paying 11 grand for some fender flares. Now, that Renegade package is the first quirk of this vehicle, and it is quite a quirk. Like I mentioned, it was an expensive option that really changed the appearance of this vehicle. The biggest change is the fenders, and specifically the front fender. Here's the front fender in this vehicle, and here's what it looked like in a normal Wrangler. Now, you can see where the front fender was bolted on by ASC to change the look of this car, and it made some changes in the front, including the placement of the fog light, which is different in the Renegade models. The Renegade also included a different rear fender. Here's the Renegade's rear fender and the normal Wrangler's rear fender, but it didn't stop with the fenders. There are quite a few other changes in this vehicle, too. For example, because the fenders are wider, they had to put something in this spot, and so there is a sidestep here, and yes, it can support your entire weight, although I find that a bit odd because this thing isn't very high off the ground. You don't need the sidestep to climb in. There were also graphics. Every Renegade model got these very 90s-looking graphics to let people know you were a Renegade. The wheels are different from the standard Wrangler. You also had a painted front bumper and a painted rear bumper. Now, the first thing you notice when you climb inside this car is just how simple and basic and bare-bones everything is. It's a lot different from modern Wranglers, which have added a lot of luxuries and features over the years. Everything in this car is as basic as possible. For example, this car doesn't have electronic chimes, ding, ding, like in your car. Instead, if you open the door with the key in the ignition, this happens. And that annoying sound just keeps sounding and sounding and sounding until you close the door, but there is one benefit to this simplicity. If you want to turn that sound off, it's actually pretty easy. Just put your finger here and it's off. Take a listen. Modern cars have all sorts of sensors to detect when the door is open and when you've left your proximity key in the car, but this thing, it's just a simple little button in the door jamb. And of course, when the door closes, it pushes that button in, and that's what ultimately turns off the annoying noise. And speaking of opening the doors, in the 93 Wrangler, you can only open the doors this far. Although, it's actually pretty easy if you want to open it more. All you have to do is just undo this little loop around the door, and that strap is the only thing that stops the door at a certain place. With the strap off, you could just open it as far as you want to your heart's content. It really is that simple. When you get into the middle of the floor of the interior, you will notice that there's no center console in here. Instead, the gear lever is sticking out of a giant plate. Just a black metal plate stuck in the floor, off-center, of course. And you can see the screws holding the plate in place. So if you don't like the plate, I guess you could always unscrew the screws and remove it. Next up, moving higher up in the interior, one of my biggest complaints with modern Chrysler vehicles is that the cheap switch gear, there's always a blank switch. Well, this old Wrangler, it doesn't have any switches, because it doesn't have any features. But, Chrysler has still managed to stick something blank in here. There are five gauges across the center. The oil temperature, the engine temperature, the fuel. One of them is blank. So this car doesn't have any blank switches, but Chrysler being Chrysler, well, there's a blank gauge. Another way you can tell this car is unbelievably Spartan, how about the fact that there are no climate vents anywhere in the middle of the dashboard? There are only two types of climate vents. They blow on the windshield, and they blow on the floor. So if you get in this car on a very cold day, like today, you turn it on, you want heat blowing on your face, you can't get it. All you can do is you get heat blowing on your feet and your shoes. That's it. Next up, for more proof that this is just a basic stripped-down Wrangler, very different from the models of today, just take a look at everything in the interior that is exposed. It is almost unbelievable just how much stuff is out in the open for you to see. Every modern car covers all that stuff, so you can't see it. And frankly, even in 1993, when this thing was new, virtually every car back then covered all that stuff too. But the Wrangler was the Wrangler. You were buying a cheap, bare-bones Jeep. You knew what you were getting into, and so you were okay with all that stuff being exposed. But it's unthinkable today, even in the modern Wrangler. Also unthinkable today is the glovebox situation in this vehicle. You have two gloveboxes, which is nice and practical, but one of them is completely open, and it's integrated with the grab handle that you grab onto when you're scared for your life in one of these. The lower glovebox is closed. It has a little latch. But it is only large enough for the owner's manual and nothing else. You can't put anything else in there if you want to keep your owner's manual in your Wrangler. Now, of course, this one being a pristine 25,000-mile Wrangler, it does have the owner's manual in there. And it isn't actually all that interesting. There's not anything particularly exciting in this owner's manual. But if you ever wanted to see the owner's manual for a 93 Wrangler, here it is. Maybe the most interesting part is just how much smaller it is than a modern owner's manual, which has to explain how to work an enormous amount of electronics that this car simply doesn't have. Now, amazingly, despite how basic it is in here, there is a rear dome light that when you open the doors, the dome light comes on, lights up the interior to let you know that the doors are open. I'm shocked at that, but then I realized as I was looking at the rear dome light, there's a rear dome light only because there isn't a front dome light. That's the only dome light you get. You don't have one in front that you can control and turn on and off at your leisure. So there's no map lights or dome lights in this vehicle. If you're driving down the road, you want to read the map. Well, that's just too bad. And speaking of things up here at the top of the windshield, no dome light, but we do have sun visors. Now, these sun visors shield you from the sun like in every other car. They do not have mirrors in them. That was simply too advanced for Jeep in 1993. But they do have a warning label on them, and the warning label lets you know how to drive a sport utility vehicle. It says this is an open-body utility vehicle. It handles and maneuvers differently from many passenger cars, blah, blah, blah. My favorite sentence is the next one. It says you must drive it safely. Oh, I must. I must drive it safely. Oh, not I should. I must. Thank you, Jeep, for that wonderful piece of information. Also, isn't that sort of an implication that because this is a utility vehicle, you must drive it safely? But if it were a car, it'd be like, eh, you should. You could drive it safely. Yeah, maybe you'd drive it safely. But because it's a Jeep, you must. Next up in that same area, moving on to the steering wheel, you will notice there's no airbag in this steering wheel. That's because Jeep didn't put airbags in the Wrangler until they were mandated to by the government. They went kicking and screaming into that mandate. Now, the steering wheel does contain the horn, and when you push the horn, you will discover that it is, well, rather pathetic. Take a listen. Honk, honk, honk. Also interesting is the hazard light control. It's one of the strangest I've seen. It's this little circle on the side of the steering wheel, and it has the little triangle on it for hazard lights, and then around the edge of it, it has a bunch of those little triangles to let you really know it was the hazard lights. Anyway, push it, and the hazard lights come on. Now, in the middle, Jeep has stuck a center console in here. They were thinking about creature comforts. Don't you worry. The front part of the center console has two cup holders. Very small. They can only fit 1990s cups. The center console part with the lid is pretty normal. It's just a standard center console. Although, when you open it, you will discover, well, even more exposed screws. Presumably, those are the only screws holding the center console in place. Now, every other automaker would have just put a little piece of felt over that to cover them up, but this was Jeep, this was the Wrangler, and you just got exposed screws. Deal with it. And people who bought this car did. They didn't care. A couple of other interesting interior details beyond how stripped down it all is. I really like these quarter windows on the front window, on the driver and passenger side. You flip this little handle forward, and then you push the window open, and then you can get extra airflow, which would have been nice. With no central vents in the middle of the dashboard for climate control, if you wanted extra air on a cool day, that was an easy way to cool down. It's a great idea, and I wish more modern cars had those things. Something I'm glad modern cars don't have? Four pedals. Because this car has a foot-mounted parking brake, it is the parking brake pedal directly next to the clutch pedal. And just note to automakers thinking about this, that's always a terrible idea. If you're driving this car for the first time, you probably won't mistake the clutch for the parking brake, but if you did, it wouldn't be good. Now, one interesting thing in this car that I gotta give Chrysler some credit for, it's kind of ingenious, is the light switch. Here's how it works. You press the upper left of the light switch, and both the headlights and the parking lights come on. When you want to turn them off, press the part that says lights off, and they go off. But, say you only want the parking lights on, press the upper right of the switch, and only the parking lights come on, leaving the regular headlight part of the switch still up, because you haven't pushed it in yet, since you didn't want to turn them on. Of course, if you do want to turn the headlights on after turning the parking lights on, you can still do that. It is a pretty smart headlight switch design, although I have to admit, the later rotary dials in most cars are probably an easier way to accomplish the same task. The final interesting quirk in the interior, that would be simply getting the key out of the ignition. This is unusual today, but it was pretty common in the 90s. You couldn't just turn off the car and pull the key out. Instead, you had to turn off the car and then push down on this little lever to unlock the key, and only then could you remove it from the ignition. I'm not exactly sure why they did that. I think it was so you didn't accidentally remove the ignition key while you were driving, but that apparently wasn't a fear that lasted beyond the 90s, because modern cars, you can pull the key out without any sort of lock. Nonetheless, that's what you had to do to get the key out of the ignition. Actually, there is one more interior quirk, and that would be climbing into the rear seats. Yes, this vehicle has rear seats. No, I do not want to climb into them, but I will for you. Now, because this car was so simple and basic, it didn't actually have a latch for you to release the front seat back. Instead, you have to sit here, and twist, and twist, and twist, and twist, and twist. Then, once it was relatively far up, you could come around and move it like this. And then, well... Oh, I can't believe it's 28 degrees. I'm climbing into the back of a Wrangler. Yeah, it's not really easy to get back here. Although, because the rear seat is basically all the way against the rear of the car, once you're back here, there's a reasonably decent amount of room. The problem is really just getting in and out. If only there was a four-door Wrangler. Anyway, to the rest of the outside, one of the interesting things you got when you got the Renegade model was instead of the base four-cylinder, you were upgraded to the four-liter six-cylinder, or the four-liter high-output six-cylinder, as it says here on this badge. What was high-output? That was all of 180 horsepower from a four-liter engine. Yeah, things were different back in the 90s. Now, up front, like I mentioned, the Renegade models included this painted bumper to match the color of the rest of the Wrangler. Now, interestingly, Wranglers from this era, they didn't say Jeep on the hood. You were just supposed to know it was a Jeep from the grille design, then it was obvious to everybody. But the Renegade added Jeep in raised painted lettering right below the grille to add to the whole Jeep effect, apparently. Now, also interesting, up front, you have the headlights up here. Those are pretty obvious. You also have over here the fog lights. And when you turn them on, it's almost humorous. By today's standards, these are the most pathetic lights in the world. They weren't going to help you see in any fog. Now, speaking of the lights, one of the other easy ways you would tell this car is just ultra simple is back here with the brake lights. You can see, if you look closely at the brake lights, that the word top is mounted on the top of them. So when you're installing them, you know which side goes up. That is not a mistake you will make with any other car's brake lights, but it's a mistake you might make with the Wranglers. Also interesting, back here, this is where you mount the license plate. And in order to access the fuel cap, you tilt it down. Now, this was common in the 1960s and 1970s with big old American cars. But by the 90s, no one was still doing this. Ah, but Jeep was still doing it. Now, something else that only Jeep was doing is back here, the tailgate. Now, in order to open the tailgate, you first had to swing the door out with the tire. That's not that weird. That's how Jeeps still are today. Then you could open this, except when you're trying to open it, it hit the rear tire. Now, in the days of JD power and everything having to be seamless for the customer, no one could ever get away with that. But that was just something you put up with if you got a Wrangler. And people who bought these things knew it. In order to actually open the rear glass, you had to swing it all the way out, meaning that there couldn't be anything directly behind you or even sort of next to you. And that was the only way you could open up the rear glass to get back into the cargo area. And by the way, another interesting thing about the tailgate opening, when you did finally swing the tailgate with the tire all the way open so that you could open the glass, there was no stop in here integrated into the handle so it wouldn't just keep swinging. Instead, the only thing that kept the tailgate from going all the way around and hitting the fender was the brake light. The tire would hit against the brake light, and that stopped it. That was just simple engineering, and it was the kind of thing that only the Wrangler carried into the 90s. And another thing only Jeep could get away with, how about the windshield wiper placement? In every modern car, in fact, in every car of the Wrangler's time period, and even in modern Wranglers, when the wipers aren't in use, they just sit down here below the windshield. But in this body style Wrangler, they just left them on the windshield when they weren't in use. This is their normal resting position. It was cheaper, it was easier, and Jeep just figured, eh, Wrangler people can handle it. And they could. And so now you've seen all the ins and outs of a pristine Jeep Wrangler from back in 1993. Just imagine driving to the dealer in your Buick Skylark and blasting achy breaky heart on a cassette tape picking up your new Wrangler. I'm so glad things have changed. Anyway, now it's time to drive it. Alright, driving the old school Wrangler. Now I gotta be honest, I've never driven one of these. The oldest Wrangler I've driven was the body style right after this. The first thing I can tell you when I get in here is it feels like peppy. It isn't fast, but you just kind of feel like you can zip around. It's little and it's light. It almost feels tossable, but it doesn't feel tossable in the way that the Miata feels tossable. It doesn't feel like it's gonna handle well or grip the road, but it just feels like I can kind of bound over stuff and leap and it's just like excited and happy to do what it does. It's actually funny, I just drove just a couple of weeks ago the brand new 2018 Wrangler, even though that video went up months ago. So this is kind of an interesting comparison. And the thing that I'm realizing is I start to understand why hardcore Jeep people sort of decry the newest models. If this is what it was, it has evolved actually pretty rapidly. It's funny because everybody says, oh, the Wrangler always looks the same with every passing model. Well, it might look the same, but this is night and day difference. 25 years, a lot, a lot, a lot has changed, even though it may look similar. There's just not that much weight to move around. So it just doesn't really require that much power. It just kind of feels like I can just happily leap over everything. I've actually kind of, I think it's kind of cool. It really feels like, you know, that scene in Jurassic Park where Newman was driving the thing and bounding over the road and whatever. And I can understand that now. With that said, the ride is incredibly crashy. The bumps, you feel every single bump about as much as you possibly can. Even little bumps, I mean, are just like transmitted directly into the cabin. It's just a nightmare. This is not a vehicle designed for comfort. Oh, man, that ride is rough. Just feel every little bit of the road. But I am surprised. I just tap the throttle a little bit and it zips up and it isn't fast. But you don't feel like you're wanting for power, which is interesting to me. I do kind of like it. It has kind of a cool feel to it. It feels like, I don't know, it feels like a little beach, fun, happy little car that I can just kind of play around with and have fun. It really has that, gives me that feeling like, oh, yeah, let's go. Let's go have fun. Let's go out there. It feels like, you know what it feels like? It feels like one of those, like a dog that's just really happy to go for a walk or go play in the snow or whatever. This is a vehicle for the beach. It's a vehicle for, obviously, off-roading, rock crawling, low speeds, because it has great off-roading capabilities, approach angle, departure angle. It is not a vehicle for repeated highway use. It's funny because the Wrangler has now evolved to the point where you can do that as sort of consumer demands wanted it more and more. In years past, people were just like, you know, I'll use this thing at low speeds. Oh, it's a third car. We'll have fun with it. But more and more people are like, oh, that's cool. I want to have that. I want to use that a lot. And as more people did that, Jeep sort of rose to the occasion and made the car more usable. And this is before all that. This is back when it was still just an off-roader car, a beach car, a weekend car for sunny days. And you could tell. I will say, driving around, now I'm going 50, it feels more comfortable than I thought, more stable than I expected. It doesn't feel like I'm bumping around or winds rushing in. The hard top is part of the reason for that. Obviously, another reason for that, this car, I've been 25,000 miles. The suspension and all these components just haven't had that much time to wear out. If I were to sum this car up right now, I would say it's just sort of a happy-go-lucky vehicle that wants to go on-road or off-road or whatever you want to do, it's ready to follow. And it's not fast, and it's not comfortable, and it doesn't have a lot of tech and creature comforts. But it's just a nice little companion. And so that's a tour of a pristine 1993 Jeep Wrangler Renegade. There are so few of these out there left in stock factory condition, it's almost hard to imagine the YJ Wrangler ever existed without giant mud tires and steel bumpers. But this is what it was like back then. And if you ever wanted to know what the Wrangler was like before it added two extra doors and got heated seats and a navigation system and a blind spot monitor, well, this is it. And now it's time to give it a Doug score. Starting with the weekend categories and styling, this Wrangler looks fine, not especially a standout. I never really loved the look of the Renegade with the odd fenders. It gets a 5 out of 10. Acceleration is decent for what it is, but slower than 7 seconds 0-to-60, which means that it gets a 1 out of 10 on the Doug score acceleration scale. Handling is nice and direct, but this is no sports car and it gets a 3 out of 10. Cool factor is decent, especially in this condition and this well-preserved, and it gets a 6 out of 10. Finally, there's importance. They made zillions of these and I just can't give it more than a 4 out of 10, bringing the total weekend score to 19 out of 50 and further proving the need for a fun factor score that takes into account more than just speed and handling. I promise I'll add it soon. Next up are the daily categories. Starting with features, this Wrangler is about as basic as you can imagine and it gets a 2 out of 10. Comfort is fine for what it is, but it's not excessively comfortable by any means and it gets a 3 out of 10. Quality is a mixed bag. The interior is atrociously cheap and basic, but the 4-liter 6-cylinders known for durability and cheap fixing when it does break combine them and it gets a 6 out of 10. Practicality is okay. It has 4 decent-sized seats, a cargo area, and good off-road capabilities, but this is a small car that can't carry much and rear seat access is really restricted, so it gets a 4 out of 10. Finally, there's value. These are surprisingly cheap to buy, they're lots of fun, and they're distinctive, and they're not losing a penny in value. I'm giving it an 8 out of 10 for a total daily score of 23 out of 50. Add it all up and the total Doug score is... 42 out of 100, which places it near the bottom of the pack, but here it is next to some relevant competitors. It ties the Isuzu Viacross. The Viacross would win if its styling score was just a little better, but the Renegade loses to the new Wrangler. They have about the same weekend score, but the latest model is just a lot better day-to-day.