2026 Jeep Wrangler Moab 392 Off-Road Review

Today we're back at our mountain test course in Central Washington State to see if this new 2026 Jeep Wrangler Moab 392 can dominate our trails. So your first question might be, what the heck is a Moab 392? Let's get into it. This is a high-performance Wrangler that comes standard with the 6.4 liter V8 SRT HEMI MDS engine. This produces a peak 470 horsepower and 470 pound-feet of torque. It is connected to an 8-speed automatic. Prior to the Moab, if you wanted a V8, you would have to spend a small fortune to get this setup. Now it starts at just under $80,000 for a fully loaded, off-road-ready Rubicon-level trim. If you bought one of the Rubicon Final Edition 392s for more than $100,000 just last year, you're probably not going to be too stoked with this new release. On the inside, this does come with Nappa leather trim seats, premium Alpine audio, and a 12.3-inch infotainment system with navigation and a slick camera setup. Like all Wranglers, this does come standard with solid axles, both in the front and the rear. Dana 44s with a full-floating rear. This Moab Edition also comes with a disconnecting front stabilizer bar, 17-inch beadlock-capable alloy wheels wrapped in 35-inch all-terrain tires. It also has a dual-mode, dual-exhaust system, cold air intake with a water separator, underbody protection, rock rails, recovery hooks, and a color-matched top. Prices you see it here, $85,492 including destination. If you do want to compare this to the Final Edition, it actually is a tremendous value for what you're getting. There's really not a lot of difference between that Final Edition and this trim. Let's check out the second row. You know, it's been a while since I've been in the backseat of a four-door Jeep Wrangler, and I forgot just how much room there is back here. I'm 6'1", legs, torso proportionate, I got plenty of room for my legs. This is where I would be seated if I were driving, and I fit great. Down here I also get A.C. power, I get vents, and here I get a full-down armrest with integrated cupholders. And, of course, because this has the one-touch skyroof, woo, party mode. Oh, listen to that. Now we do have a variable exhaust here. I can change the tone of the exhaust, that's standard, a little purry, turn it on, now we're like, oh, urgh, angry. Nice. Well, the main crux of this review is going to cover the off-road features of it. Of course, one of the great off-road features is the convertible top. And now let's switch into four-low, use the lever over there, make sure it goes all the way down, I'm in neutral, now we are in four-low. And, you know what? This is a Wrangler. Let's see if we can just drive up here, see what this does. Who needs roads when you got a Wrangler, right? The front and rear lockers, let's turn those both on. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, physics? Who needs it? One thing I am noticing, the steering is very heavy on this, compared to even other Wranglers like standard Rubicons and stuff. At least I think. It's been a while since I've been in one, but this feels heavy. Oh man. That exhaust note is actually kind of piercing on the back of my head, so I'm just going to go to regular exhaust note here, calm things down a little bit. I'm not concerned about the approach angle here at all, since we're on 35s and this is a Wrangler. Let's be realistic here. The suspension does a good job of soaking things up, as you would kind of expect, because this is like the reason people buy Wranglers, is for off-roading. So obviously, yeah, it's pretty comfortable actually. Let's do the exit. Walk up it. Now I don't have any special features on, I'm just in 4-low. I don't have my lockers on, I don't have my sway bar disconnected. And we're going to go ahead and just walk up this. Yeah, no problem at all. I think we're going to skip Sidewinder, because that really isn't going to show us anything with this vehicle. Instead, let's jump over to Go For Run, and that means we're going to switch into 4-high. So there's two different 4-highs on this. One is 4-auto, which uses a clutch to engage and disengage the four-wheel drive system. 4-high basically locks in that transfer case to give us a constant 50-50. You don't want to drive that around town, like on pavement, that, because your outside wheels travel further distance than your inside wheels, and you need some slip. So yeah, around town, just keep it in 4-auto. That's ideal. So we have Off-Road Plus turned on, which will minimize traction control, but I'm really curious how this suspension feels at a slightly higher velocity. I happen to have been out here just yesterday with the Toyota 4Runner Trailhunter. So I have something to compare this against, even though obviously they're not exactly the same. But, you know, they kind of compete in the same space. A little bit. Actually, you know, price-wise, this isn't that much of a jump. Boop. Oof. Yeah. Even in a Jeep, that's pretty deep. Man, the 35s. I am rolling at stock factory pressures, so, you know, nothing special going on there. And mainly that's just for consistency. I try to test all vehicles with the same setup. Okay, let's see how this does. Off-Road Plus, 4-high, rear locker not on. Can't turn it on without a special key code sequence, and we're not going to do that. So let's do it. Oh! Even in normal exhaust noise, this 392 sounds epic. Throttle response very quick. Oh! Really absorbing those harsh bumps. Yeah! Yes! Oh! Oh, man! So with the 4Runner, when it bottomed out, it was really kind of harsh. This one, it was progressive. As I went through the difficult stuff, I never really felt like I hit a hard stop. And that, I think, is very important when you're dealing with this type of vehicle. That was fantastic. Well, let's move on to Python Pass and see how it does. Now I'm going to switch it back into neutral, put it down into 4-low, low range selected, go back into drive. Okay, so at this point, I'm going to keep Off-Road Plus on, and what that's going to do now is it's also going to ease my throttle input so that I'm not so aggressive. I'm not going to try any lockers yet. Let's just see how this does, and I'm going to use the select speed. Now what select speed does is it's basically an off-road cruise control. It's like a crawl control system. Right now, I'm at .6 miles per hour. My sway bar is trying to reconnect for some reason. I think probably because I did that high-speed run over there. Well, let's just see how this does with an easy crawl. Oh, yeah, this is doing great. Man, top down, arm out, crawling forward, up a hill. This is great. What a great way to spend a day. It's going to use maximum traction control around the wheels to try to keep things moving us forward here. It's feeling out the terrain. We're at a maximum of 22, 24 degrees on our climb here, but this is still not the steepest thing we have, believe it or not, but it is quite steep. If I want to, I can add more throttle to go a little quicker, and it's these tight turns as to why I did not use the lockers because it's really hard to turn when you have a locker turned on. Just let it do its thing. Now, if I want to, I can go a little faster. Let's dial it up, set that speed up to .9, full lock here. Oh, yeah, we made that corner, no problem. Nice. So, to control the speed, I use the stick in the manual mode, and we can go from .6 all the way up to like point, well, fast enough. Let's see. What did we go up to? 1.8, 2.5, yeah. All that's fast enough. Wow. This thing actually turns really well. I'm kind of surprised. For as big as it looks on the outside. Nice. Ha-ha, made it to the top. So, in a few weeks, I'll be able to just keep driving that way because we're adding a new trail there, but it's not in yet, so we'll have to wait. Right, well, now let's move on and try the ladder. Let's go ahead and turn off the select speed. So, I never said how much ground clearance we have under this. It's over a foot, so it's almost not worth mentioning because it's a lot for a stock vehicle. And, of course, the first thing most people do is they buy one of these and go out and lift it even further, throw 40s on it, and literally climb up mountains. Okay, now we're still in 4 low, so we're going to keep this, drive the slow boat down. Like before, I'm going to keep it in 4 low. I am, however, going to lock my rear diff. I'm not going to lock my front yet, though. I don't think we really need that here. Let's just see if we can just walk up it. Now, our incline here is 22, 25, oh yeah, just keep the throttle on. Traction control is working out the front wheels and that rear locker in the back pushing us forward. Now, we are running BFG KO2s, and they seem well-suited to this hill, 26 degrees right back there. Oh, now normally we just stop here. Let's go ahead and go into the hole. Okay, so we're just stopped in the hole. Let's go ahead and turn on front and rear lockers here, yes. And now I'm just going to ease on the throttle very gently, and we're just going to walk up. Now, obviously, crossovers, anything with brake vectoring tech has a real hard time with that. But, if you can go fully locked, you can just walk out. And one thing to note here is there's no trail damage happening. I'm not digging holes for the next guy. I'm just walking up. So in a way, if you buy one of these, you're also a good steward of the trails in your area. Okay, and then up here we have a steep climb out. My sway bar light is still flashing. I think it's trying to reconnect still. I don't know what its status is. Okay, now we're going to have, oh, oh, turning, turning's hard because we have that front locker on. Let's turn off all lockers. Man, turning off things sometimes is a pain. I think it needs a little differential in the wheel spin. Come on, are we going to disconnect? There we go. Lockers are finally disconnected. Now let's figure out that sway bar. I'm going to go to dashboard, off-road pages. Sway bar is disconnected. Okay, so it's just trying to reconnect it for some reason. So let's stop it from doing that. It currently says it's disconnected, so I think we're good there. Anaconda. It is a combination of pretty much everything else on the course. It is steep. It's got big holes and an epic view up at the top. Let's see how she does. The sway bar has finally agreed that it wants to stay disconnected. That's nice. I'm still in off-road plus. I am going to lock both front and rear here, and we're going to see how that does on this climb. I want to try to go as slow as possible, see how good this low crawl ratio is. Yeah, see, this is a problem with going slow up this one. There's just no traction. Is it finding traction? What? We're making it with a low, slow crawl. What? I kind of think I should probably have front camera on because I can't see where the trail is. Oh. Oh, we made it. No drama. Man, front lockers really do help. Okay, let's go back to rear only here, see if it'll switch it out for us. Okay, I'm going to continue on. Just turn off all lockers. For those of you new here, look how deep the hole is. We then have two more very deep holes, and then we have a climb to the top. You know, I got to admit, I kind of like this open air motoring. But today is, I mean, it's warm and it's sunny, but it's really not bad. It can get very, very hot out here, which point I would have air conditioning on full blast. Okay, now typically things will drag in the back. The 4Runner Trailhunter drug its rear tire a little bit. Yeah, this one has a high clearance rear bumper, so we're good. Now at this point, I have a sway bar disconnected, so we should have lots of articulation on that front and rear solid axle, and we're just, like, having no problems here. I mean, like, it just makes stuff so easy. And that's, I guess, kind of the point of buying something like this. It's fun, it makes great noises, and it makes off-roading easy. You can go places without even a second thought compared to, you know, an advanced off-road crossover or even something like, you know, a 4Runner or a LandCruiser. Put the rock there. Up and out. I wonder if this could get up that. That is very steep. Like, how far could I go on this? Now, I have some boulders halfway up there, so I can't really... Holy moly, this thing could probably make it up. That's my front and rear lockers. So I have some boulders up here that I need to clear before we actually roll up this, if we ever do. Simply because if we knock them, they'll roll all the way down and maybe into my neighbor's cabin. This is 30 degrees, by the way. Yeah, this is where we're running into physics, I think. Can we bump it? Let's see if we can bump it. So we're in drive, fully locked. No, it's just too slippery and steep. Physics is getting in our way. Yeah, 30 degrees. Okay, well, let's get more realistic here with our climb. I was just curious. This is honestly the first vehicle I've ever even considered taking up there. You know, I bet we could go a little higher, actually, now that I think about it. We'll do front and rear locker, and we'll give it a little bit of speed. I have enough clearance, so I feel pretty comfortable on this. Yes! We made it to the staging! Woo! I'm not gonna go any higher because it actually gets even steeper, but I've never even considered doing this with anything else. And back we go, no rubbing, yay, for high clearance rear bumpers. Okay, let's turn off those lockers, if we can. Come on, lockers, shut off. Okay, let's get staged for the real climb out. Okay, so this one we're gonna do with no lockers because there's a tight turn up at the top, and I just want to see how well this does. I mean, it's really just stress testing, really. Let's get that front camera on, because this shelf road is about the width of this Wrangler. Okay, a couple feet extra, but it feels pretty tight from behind the wheel. Got 20 degrees there. Okay, now this one, I gotta put a wheel a little off because I don't want to scratch it on the brush on the inside there. Hello. Oh yeah, break over. We're not rubbing on anything here. It's nuts. And I'd say we just march all the way to the top. Easy, easy. I mean, does it get easier than that? This is not an easy trail. It just isn't. Yet, the Wrangler Moab 392 makes it look easy, and that is really what makes this vehicle so special. It takes the idea of a go-anywhere off-roader, and it really just, it makes it comfortable, it makes it sound awesome. It kind of excites all the senses, because you can do this while you're making sounds like this. What's not to love? Now, obviously, the price is a big issue, and I think they way overcharge on these 392s. For Driving Sports TV, I'm Ryan Douthit. Thanks for watching. Be sure to like, subscribe, share videos. We make them for you. I hope you enjoy them, and I hope you enjoyed this look at the 2026 Jeep Wrangler Moab Edition 392.