First Drive Comparison: Is the Gladiator the JL Wrangler Pickup We Need?
After spending the morning driving the Gladiator Overland with the automatic transmission, I had a chance to log some miles in a Sport model with the manual transmission. From the feel of the clutch pedal to the movement of the shifter, the Gladiator’s manual transmission feels practically identical to that of the current Wrangler and the JK before it. Both the clutch and shifter have a very mechanical feel, so there is a great connection to the driver that many people are sure to enjoy and if you don’t like the feel, the automatic is a great option.
Finally, the weather was so nasty when I drove the new Gladiator that I was not able to enjoy any top-down (or top-off) cruising, but it should be noted that the truck has similar soft and hard removable top options, as well as the flip-down windshield to that of the Wrangler. With the Gladiator being the only midsized truck with a removable top, I was concerned that it would be very noisy inside at speed, but the engineers did a great job with both vehicles and every top option in terms of muffling exterior noise. Granted, any vehicle with a removable roof is going to have more interior noise than a vehicle with a fixed roof, but the Gladiator is shockingly quiet inside at highway speeds with either top in place.
Off-Road Comparison
Next, each of these two media first drive events had a pretty extreme off-road portion, but they were fairly unique due to the geographic location and weather during testing.
With the Wrangler, we were in Arizona, playing in the sand and rock-crawling between cacti, but in California, we were traversing deep, muddy trails and making our way over small mountains of wet, hail-covered stone. Had the weather been pleasant in California, the off-road drive for the Gladiator would have been similarly difficult to that of the Wrangler drive in Arizona, with the trickiest parts being the large rock hills, but the hard rain and occasional hail made the off-road course for the truck far tougher. As a result, I learned first-hand that the truck is every bit as capable as the legendary SUV, even in horrible conditions.
Some critics of the Gladiator were concerned that in transforming the Wrangler into a truck, some of the capabilities would be lost as the overall size of the vehicle was increased. The pickup is significantly bigger than the Wrangler Unlimited and that added size sometimes leads to compromises in off-roading abilities, but that is not the case with the new Jeep pickup.
The off-road course in California was so bad from days of rain that just getting to it required us to dig through muddy trenches that were two feet deep at points, and the course itself was even deeper in many places. What would have been driving through loose dirt on a warm, summer day turned into slowly spinning and digging through a foot or more of wet, loose mud, so there was no easy spot on this off-road course.
Making the situation even tougher was that all of the mud from the paths was being tracked onto the rocks, so the rocks got more slippery as the day went on, especially when it was pouring rain and hail. However, even with drivers who were clearly inexperienced with that type of off-roading situation, the Gladiator was unstoppable in the mud and on the rocks. With the locking front and rear differentials, the electronic disconnecting sway bar and the Rubicon’s high performance four-wheel-drive system, there was no obstacle that proved to be too much for the new Jeep pickup.
Of course, it was also a whole lot of fun slinging mud and climbing on the rocks, but the key takeaway from my experience with the Wrangler and the Gladiator in the two very different off-road situations is that the new midsized pickup offers the same go-anyway capabilities of the legendary SUV.
Doing Truck Stuff
Based on my on- and off-road driving experiences with the JL Wrangler and the 2020 Gladiator at the media first drive events, there is no question in my mind that this is the Wrangler-based truck that we have all wanted for so long. It looks and feels like a Wrangler in every driving situation, but what about common functions of a truck?
When properly equipped, the Gladiator will tow more than 7,600 pounds, but for the drive event, FCA had a 5,000-pound boat and a 5,500-pound travel trailer. I logged some miles with the boat, again in hard rain, and I was very impressed with how well the midsized truck handled such a large load. While the V6 engine was working hard to pull the boat from a stop up a steep incline, it pulled the extra weight without any problem around town and at highway speeds. The Gladiator was also perfectly stable when cornering with the boat hooked up and I was easily able to navigate a tight, crowded parking lot with the large trailer out back.
It should be noted that the boat trailer was equipped with surge brakes rather than electric brakes, so at many points during the towing exercise, the Gladiator was slowing down all of that weight with the standard braking system and doing so very efficiently. I would recommend that anyone pulling a 5,000-pound trailer with a midsized truck have an electric brake controller box (like the one offered for the Gladiator by Mopar), just for the sake of emergency braking situations, but the Gladiator handled the boat trailer without issue.
I regularly pull a 5,000-pound trailers to test new trucks and while the Gladiator doesn’t pack the V8 power of the half-ton trucks, it managed this load as well as the larger trucks in terms of cornering and braking. Based on my short time pulling the boat, I would recommend the new Jeep pickup to someone who is looking to regularly tow a trailer of this size and weight, or smaller.
Also, one knock against all midsized trucks is that the bed is too narrow to haul a standard sheet of plywood. Frankly, I don’t know why a sheet of plywood has become the standard measurement, as I know plenty of people who own trucks and who have likely never bought sheets of wood, but in any case, the distance between the rear wheel humps prevents the wood from laying flat. To help with that, the Gladiator’s tailgate is designed to rest at a slight angle that locates the top edge at the same height as the wheel humps. This allows you to load a sheet of plywood flat across the wheel humps, with the tailgate providing support out back, offering comparable functionality to the larger trucks, but you can also fold the tailgate all of the way down.
In other words, the new Gladiator will do everything that other midsized trucks will do while also doing some of the work of larger, half-ton pickups, so while being a proper Jeep, this is also a proper truck.
The Perfect Wrangler Pickup
The 2020 Jeep Gladiator is far more than just a Wrangler with a pickup bed conversion, but for the many people who had been pining for a Wrangler pickup, this is the truck that you have been dreaming about. It looks like a Wrangler in every way possible, inside and out, it feels like a Wrangler on paved roads and it performs like a Wrangler in the worst possible off-road conditions; all while outperforming the top trucks in the midsized segment.
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