Jeep Gladiator on/off-road review 2021: We take all the doors and roof off!

CarExpert

The Toyota HiLux may be the best selling vehicle in Australia, but you can't take the doors, roof and windows off a HiLux. That's why the Jeep Gladiator may be a better option if that's something you need to do in life. Paul Maric drives the 2021 Jeep Gladiator Overland to see whether this beastly Jeep is as practical as it is off-road ready.  Hardness tester results: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/121Auf6HGvaBqRToYcuAz94alin7Sw55SpOPECBDlnKE  More Jeep content: https://www.carexpert.com.au/jeep More Jeep Gladiator content: https://www.carexpert.com.au/jeep/gladiator  Skip Ahead: Intro: 00:00 Exterior: 00:47 Interior: 04:24 Infotainment: 06:21 Safety Tech: 07:32 Practicality: 08:30 On-road: 12:04 Off-road: 16:20 Verdict: 19:02  We review every new car on the market, bust car myths, cover the latest car tech and answer your burning questions.  Whether you need new car advice, purchase validation or simply love learning more about new cars and technology, we are your car experts.  Subscribe to Car Expert: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7DvMhvy3H7ntEgn9n3xQcQ?sub_confirmation=1  You'll find us dropping new video content three times a week. If you'd like to ask a question about one of our videos, simply leave us a comment. If you'd like to give us any feedback on our content, feel free to email us, or alternatively, hit us up on social media.  Finally, we want this channel to grow with your support and feedback. If there's anything you don't like or would like to see us change, we'd love to hear from you!  Follow us on social media to see what we're up to and to ask any questions!  CarExpert: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CarExpertAus Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/CarExpertAus Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carexpert.com.au  Paul Maric: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PaulMaric Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/PaulMaric Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/PaulMaric  #jeep #gladiator #review

Transcript

00:00 G'day, I'm Paul. So when it comes to utes, buckies, pickup trucks, whatever you want to call them,

00:04 size sometimes really does matter. And being the big old American ute, the new Jeep Gladiator kind

00:10 of had to be one of the biggest at 5.6 metres long. It even has a cool name, Gladiator. Now,

00:15 this here is the mid-spec. It's called the Overland. It's priced at just over $75,000.

00:21 This competes with things like the Ford Ranger Raptor, the Nissan Navara Warrior,

00:25 and the Toyota Hilux Rugged X. Now, today we're going to do a detailed review of this. If you do

00:31 want to skip ahead to other parts of the review, you can use the time codes up on the screen there,

00:34 or if you're on YouTube, just scroll down and use the chapters below. And if you haven't done so

00:39 already, just make sure you hit subscribe and press the bell icon so you can find out every

00:42 single time we drive cars with giant bumper bars. Okay, let's talk exterior. So you've got 10

00:49 exterior colours to choose from. All but black and white are an additional $1,035.

00:54 Now, on the design front, when you look at this from side on, it is absolutely gigantic. So you've

00:59 got that 5.6 odd metre length. That's big. And I find it interesting, you've got some really

01:04 fascinating design elements like this bumper bar that sticks out like that far. You have the seven

01:10 slat, cheap grille up the front here, full LED headlights, which I think really round it out.

01:15 It kind of looks a little old school in terms of the design, but then they fit modern highlights

01:19 like this. And they've even gone down the path, which I'll sort of go into a bit more depth later

01:24 on some of the customisability and things that you can do with this. But to open the bonnet,

01:28 for example, you've got latches here that you undo instead of having like a traditional

01:32 bonnet release. So I think it's great to see just little highlights like that,

01:36 that make this feel very much like a Jeep and not just any other dual cab ute on the market.

01:41 So yeah, let me know what you think about the design. I think it looks pretty good in person.

01:45 I think it'll look much better when it's dirty. It's a little too clean at the moment.

01:49 We'll whip around to the side. Okay, so down here you've got a set of 18-inch alloy wheels with that

01:54 dark sort of graphite look to them. You have a set of highway terrain tyres. I think if you're

01:59 going to be serious about your four-wheel driving, you're going to be swapping these

02:02 out for all terrains pretty quickly. But you can just see with the design here that there's plenty

02:06 of clearance. So if you do go for a bigger tyre and wheel package, you've got plenty of room to

02:12 work with, especially with these plastic mounted edges on the side. And on this side profile as

02:18 well, you can see just a lot of the exposed hinges and rivets. So you've got this for the bonnet,

02:23 you've got this here. Now that's for the windscreen, so you can fold it down.

02:27 You can see these exposed hinges. It kind of reminds me of the old Defender. Now we may,

02:33 well I'm going to try to take off the roof, the doors and fold the windscreen down later on in

02:37 the video. So stay tuned for that. Jeep badge on the side, Gladiator there as well. Got these

02:44 side steps that sort of sit nice and high, so you're not going to be hitting those on rocks

02:48 as you're driving off-road. If we come around to the rear, so before I show you the tray,

02:53 LED taillights, again another modern highlight that gives this a little bit of, I guess, tech

02:59 cred amongst some of the competitors in this segment. Overland badge here, big proudly worn

03:04 Jeep badge over here. Now this is interesting, so you've got your step to get into the car,

03:09 but you've got a tailgate that comes down nice and easily. Also lifts fairly easily as well,

03:14 so instead of just swinging down and slamming, that has a soft close to it. This has the lifestyle

03:19 adventure package, which means you get this spray-in bed liner, the cargo blind and a few

03:23 other bits and pieces, but there are Easter eggs hidden all over this car, and one of them is just

03:28 up here, 419, which is the area code for where this car is built. So it is good to see Jeep

03:34 thinking about these little things. And then in the tray as well, you've got a light off to the

03:37 side there, you've got hooks that you can tie things onto, this adjustable tray hook system

03:44 as well, so you can shift that around where you need it to. And if you look down the bottom here,

03:48 we have an exposed recovery point as well. Now in terms of dimensions, you have a load

03:52 length of a little over 1500 millimetres, a load width of a little over 1440 millimetres,

03:57 1137 between the wheel arches, and then a depth of 861 millimetres. Now the interesting thing

04:04 here is that you only have around 500 kilos of payload, so despite the size of this thing,

04:10 it actually really doesn't carry a great deal in the tray. It also comes down to towing, instead

04:15 of three and a half tonnes like a lot of the dual cab utilities in this segment, you'll only be

04:20 towing up to around 2700 kilograms with a brake trailer. Okay, we are inside the Gladiator. Let's

04:27 start with the key. So this is what it looks like. You have unlock, lock, remote start,

04:32 then on the back, Jeep, and then it's a flip out key as well for the glove box. It's a proximity

04:37 sensing key, so leave that in your pocket, and then you have a stop start button here.

04:42 Love the fact that this is rubber as well, and that kind of leads me on to the interior. You

04:47 know, the Defender that we reviewed just recently, you can click up here to watch that review,

04:51 it kind of just did everything right in terms of the interior. It had a lot of really cool

04:55 materials and it just didn't look like any other sort of luxury SUV, and I think this is very much

05:00 the same. You can see just around all these surfaces, everything is rubberized. Yes, this

05:05 all does look nice and premium, but it still has that rugged feel to it. Even down to some of these

05:09 surfaces, the textured rubber that they use just feels really cool. So they've ticked all the boxes

05:14 here in terms of giving this that sort of military style look, which I think everyone is after,

05:19 and then it's all fairly simply laid out. They've stuck with a manual lever for the four-wheel drive

05:24 controls, which I think is interesting. You can easily just go to a button system, but this kind

05:28 of makes it feel a little more traditional. So now what about your touch points? So this is nice,

05:33 and then on the door is nice as well. How soft are they? Well, we have our durometer. We've tested

05:38 all the main surfaces in this car. If you want to see how it compares to other cars we've tested

05:42 before, just scroll down and have a look at the link in the description below. Now what about

05:45 build quality? Let's see what it's like. Feels okay. Tiny bit wonky, but it's okay. You've got

05:52 to keep in mind with this, and I'll probably mention this a few times throughout the video,

05:56 but with everything that's removable, as an engineer, I know how much has to go into structural

06:02 rigidity, and there's only so much you can do when you effectively have a convertible that needs to

06:07 be rigid enough to go off-road. So imagine like a Bentley Continental convertible that can also go

06:11 off-road. That is the type of rigidity you need in this structure when you remove all the roofs and

06:16 stuff like that. So this has to be flexible to accommodate that. Well, that's my excuse anyway.

06:20 Okay, let's talk infotainment. So you have a variety of infotainment systems available with

06:25 Gladiator. This comes with a 7-inch Uconnect infotainment system. If you want to see a

06:30 detailed review of this, click up here to watch one that we have recorded previously. Today I'll

06:35 just give you a brief overview. What I like about the Uconnect system is the high resolution screen.

06:40 It just looks really sharp, and they've done a good job in terms of the functionality too. As

06:45 you flick through these menus, everything's nice and quick, and the inbuilt satellite navigation

06:50 is very easy to use as well. In terms of radio, you have AM/FM, DAB+, digital radio, and a 9-speaker

06:57 sound system. You also have smartphone mirroring built in with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.

07:02 I'll show you what Apple CarPlay looks like. Here it is here. Almost a full-screen integration,

07:05 but it keeps these shortcut buttons down the bottom. Now I'd show you Android Auto,

07:10 but I forgot the Samsung, so I'm sorry about that. Another unique feature you have here are apps that

07:15 are installed. So you can see this is a selection of them, but what I like here is if we go to

07:21 off-road pages, when you are going off-road you do have a display ahead of the driver,

07:25 but you also have the ability to flick between different menus that show you what the car is

07:29 doing off-road and what the four-wheel drive system is doing as well. Let's talk safety.

07:32 So I'm going to start by saying this has a very poor crash safety rating. So it's a three-star

07:38 safety rating. It didn't perform well during the crash test and neither did the Wrangler

07:41 that it's based on. So I think it is worth just keeping that in mind if you do want to buy one of

07:45 these, that if safety is a top priority, it's probably worth having a look at something else.

07:49 In terms of standard safety equipment, you have autonomous emergency braking,

07:53 blind spot monitoring, rear cross-traffic alert, and then a reverse view camera with front and

07:58 rear parking sensors. Let's have a look at the quality of the reverse view camera. That is

08:02 fantastic. So that is really high resolution. It's probably one of the best reverse view cameras I've

08:08 seen on a car. So it's good to see that they haven't skimped on that. Now, before we go on,

08:12 I want to ask you guys, how important is safety to you? Do you think that this being a three-star

08:18 rated car affects your impression of it? Would you still buy one anyway? Do you really care what

08:23 your off-road focused SUV is actually like in terms of safety? I'm keen to get your thoughts,

08:28 so let me know down there. Okay, let's talk about practicality and we'll start with connectivity.

08:33 So Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, they're both wired, so you'll need a cable for that. But if

08:37 we get rid of that, you can see there's a little enclosure here for your media ports. You have

08:41 auxiliary, a USB-C port, a USB-A port, a 12-volt outlet, and then if you look inside the glovebox

08:47 here, you have another USB port. This one also has that lifestyle package that I mentioned earlier

08:52 that comes with these auxiliaries. Now with these, you can hook these up to different things like

08:56 lights or fridge or whatever you want. That also has a 240 amp alternator to service those

09:01 components, but keep in mind that you'll need a second battery if you want to run those things

09:05 when the car's off, because you don't want to run the risk of draining your car's battery when you

09:09 do have some of these items running. Now while you might go muddying on the weekend, you probably

09:13 drink small lattes on weekdays. Is your coffee cup going to fit in? No dramas there. This one also has

09:21 gripped tabs on the sides when you put a bigger bottle in. That's going to stay in nicely. Now the

09:26 doors are interesting because there isn't really a bottle holder, but there is a net that you can

09:30 slide your bottle into. Then in terms of the center console, you have two tiers. A top tier

09:35 that's gripped and also there for keys and bits and pieces, and then a second tier that's nice

09:40 and deep. Show you what that looks like with the bottle in there. That closes. We have glovebox over

09:46 here. Does the water bottle fit in? Yes, no, actually it doesn't. You also have storage up the top here

09:52 for odds and ends, and then finally a phone holder over here, and then a little storage nook just

09:58 down here. Okay, let's talk about comfort. What features have you got here? So you have heated

10:03 seats, heated steering wheel, you have dual zone automatic climate control. In terms of the seats

10:08 themselves, they're comfy. They have full manual adjustment, but the thing I find really bizarre,

10:13 you look at this from the outside and it looks absolutely huge, but you get inside and it is

10:18 so cramped in here. Like I literally just feel like I'm wedged into here. The center tunnel eats

10:24 into all your space, so there's nowhere to really rest your feet. It is quite surprising how little

10:29 room there is. So look, you do get used to it when you're driving, but it is just something I wasn't

10:34 expecting. The steering wheel itself is nice to hold, and then all of your critical controls are

10:38 easy to reach. Okay, now back seat. Before we get stuck into this, I want to show you some of the

10:43 cool features here. So you have under seat storage, and it's also lockable as well. So that means

10:49 you can open this up, both sides come up, means you can pop your little bits and pieces in there.

10:54 You have a jack located there as well. If we drop this, we have storage behind here too,

11:00 but you also have a removable Bluetooth speaker. So that means you can pull that out and use that

11:06 to play your music while you're out camping and mudding. On top of that, you also have three top

11:13 tether points along the back there. Let's see how much room there is in here. Grab our handle and

11:18 hop in. Okay, so I did notice up the front there, and I didn't mention this earlier, but all your

11:23 window controls are in the centre. So you put the windows up and down from that location. In terms

11:28 of room here, it's actually a surprising amount of room. I've got a decent amount of knee room,

11:32 loads and loads of toe room, headroom is really good as well. You can see the speakers built

11:36 into the roof section there. That feels plenty wide enough. Let's have a look here. Is there a

11:41 centre armrest? Yes, I think there is. There it is there. Pop our drinks in there. That has rubber

11:48 tabs as well, so they won't be going anywhere. And then same story as the front, you have little

11:52 nets to hold your drinks in. You have rear air vents there as well, but I can't see any USB

11:57 ports down here. And you've also got map pockets there. You've also got two ISOFIX points on the

12:01 outboard seats and this handy rear window. Okay, the moment you've all been waiting for,

12:07 what is the Gladiator like to drive? And we'll start with the engine. So it's a 3.6-litre,

12:13 naturally aspirated petrol V6. It makes 209 kilowatts of power and 347 newton metres of

12:20 torque. So it doesn't sound like much because it's not supercharged or turbocharged, but it's

12:25 enough to keep it moving and that's all made into an eight-speed automatic transmission.

12:29 Now, how does all that feel? Well, look, it's actually not too bad. These V6s from Jeep are

12:34 generally pretty perky and they get up and moving. They do like to rev though, so when you get stuck

12:38 into it, they make a fair old racket and then they sort of pick up and move. So it doesn't feel slow

12:45 by any means, it's just more leisurely than quick. And the gearbox itself is pretty good as well.

12:50 You've got enough torque there to lean on the torque band and then it'll drop back through

12:53 gears when it needs to, but it's very fuss-free. It doesn't really sort of make anything too

12:58 complicated. Let's talk fuel economy. So Jeep claims 11.2 litres per 100km. We'll jump down

13:05 and see what we're sitting on at the moment. 16.1. Not even close. Jeep doesn't offer a 0-100

13:13 time for the Gladiator, but we've put it up against our stopwatch. Let's see how it went.

13:18 Up.

13:19 Now, notice while we're driving along here, I don't know if you can hear this, but there's

13:33 a fair bit of rattling going on at the back there. You'll see shortly that most of these panels come

13:39 off and as a result of that, when you put it all back together, if it's not done perfectly,

13:43 you'll have a little bit that's loose that sort of flaps about and makes a bit of noise, which

13:47 can get a little bit annoying. Let's talk about ride. So you have front and rear live axles and

13:52 at the rear you have a five-link coil spring setup with a panhard rod. Look, it's interesting.

13:58 It's fairly ponderous, so when you're driving along and hitting bumps, it sort of just moves

14:04 around all over the place. It kind of just feels like a Wrangler to drive, which I think if you've

14:08 driven a Wrangler, you'll know what I mean. This kind of isn't helped by the fact that the steering

14:12 is incredibly vague. There is just literally nothing going on about centre. It's a hydraulically

14:18 assisted steering rack, so no e-pass electric steering setup here. It's not amazing in terms

14:24 of the feel that you get behind the wheel and if you get something like a crosswind or something,

14:27 it kind of just moves the car about and you need to overcorrect with the steering to really sort of

14:32 get it back into line. But look, I don't know, you come to expect something like this because

14:37 this is a master off-road, so to get the wheel articulation that they get out of this and to

14:43 make it as good as it is off-road, you have to make massive compromises to the on-road performance.

14:48 So it's kind of the price that you pay to have something that can tow, that can sort of haul

14:54 the load, that can go off-road. You know, you have to make compromises somewhere and I think

14:58 it's the suspension where they've kind of compromised in terms of body control. Okay,

15:03 let's talk handling. So I know it's not a sports car, but we're going to assess the handling.

15:08 It's interesting, it has a fair bit of body roll. Once you load it up, it sort of, you can feel

15:13 something, but it's not very confidence inspiring. We don't have all-terrain tyres here, but there is

15:19 still a fair bit of road noise that comes into the cabin. It's a bit of wind noise as well,

15:24 so it's not a super quiet place to be seated, but it's not terrible in that same vein.

15:30 Okay, turning circle time. This is where I've got some bad news for you. 13.6 metres,

15:36 that is a huge turning circle. So if you try and do a U-turn, you'll hit those lock stops and then

15:42 you'll be doing three-point turns all the time. Now, what about visibility? Look, it's not too

15:48 bad. So the bonnet sits really high, so you can see where it drops down, but you've got to remember

15:52 that front section that sticks out heaps. You can't really account for it there, so luckily you

15:57 do get parking sensors that help with that and you need those when you're driving in and around

16:01 the city too, because it is such a whopper of a car. You've got blind spot monitor built into

16:06 the wing mirror. The wing mirror is not massive. I would have thought something a little bit bigger

16:09 would be suitable for this, and visibility out the rear isn't fantastic either, but you can open that

16:14 middle window to get your seeing out a little bit more and then you can take all of this stuff off

16:18 if you just don't want any windows in your way. Now, this is the part where we normally do a

16:22 little bit of light off-roading and it's also where I promised you that I would try and remove

16:27 the doors, fold the windscreen down and get the roof off so that we can see what that looks like.

16:31 So this is going to be a time lapse of that hopefully happening and I'm going to use my

16:36 colleague Scott to help me with some of the heavy bits. So let's give it a shot.

16:39 Okay, so this is something a little bit different. Yeah, we're just going to do a little bit of light

16:58 off-roading here with no doors, roof, etc. In terms of the off-road equipment, this is the

17:03 base model, so you don't really get some of the fancy stuff that you get in the upper spec version.

17:08 So no Fox shocks, you don't have disconnecting sway bars, you don't have differential locks or

17:14 anything like that. So it's a fairly straightforward setup. You have four-wheel drive high range,

17:17 you have two-wheel drive high range, you also have four-wheel drive low range, and what we're

17:22 going to do today is just go up our logs and down our rocks just to see how it fares. You have 40.7

17:27 degrees of approach angle, which is pretty insane, and 25.1 degrees of departure angle,

17:32 and then you have 249 millimetres of ground clearance and a little under 800 millimetres

17:38 of wading depth. Now if none of that makes any sense to you, click up here to watch our four-wheel

17:42 drive controls explained video. But let's give this a shot. I'm going to slot that down into

17:48 four high and we're going to do a climb up our logs here. Now the cool thing is I'm going to

17:53 be able to watch literally out the door here to see what our tyres are doing. Hopefully I won't

17:58 get any rocks in my eyes. No dramas there at all, parking sensors are off. It's actually a really

18:03 cool perspective because normally you're sitting in here and not able to see anything, but we can

18:08 literally see out the door there. Fantastic. This is literally walking up here, no dramas

18:15 whatsoever. So let's go down our rocks. Okay, so this has recently been regraded and there's a

18:23 pretty sharp rock about halfway down. I'll be keen to see whether this has sufficient clearance

18:28 there. Yeah, no dramas. No dramas at all. And it is incredibly comfortable down here too. I'm

18:37 really not finding any issues with it being uncomfortable. So I'm pretty sure there's a

18:43 hill descent control here as well. No, okay, so you're going to be in low range. We'll just walk

18:47 down here normally. I won't bother with that. Yeah, this is a piece of cake. This is what the

18:53 Gladiator is all about, right? Yeah, okay. It's not the most comfortable on-road, but you can

18:58 take the doors off and drive off-road. I mean, what else more could you possibly want?

19:01 Okay, so the Jeep Gladiator. I don't normally get a big smile like this on my face when I test cars,

19:09 but this has just been so much fun. Look, I understand the safety rating isn't very good,

19:13 and I'm a big advocate for safety, but at the end of the day, I mean, this is a car that you

19:19 can take the doors off, you can take the roof off. It's made for fun and getting away. So if

19:22 you look at the price point, this is pretty competitive when you look at the features and

19:26 the way that it can drive off-road. If you get yourself a Ranger Raptor, which is roughly around

19:30 the same price, you can't do any of this stuff with it. Yes, it is a safer vehicle, but at the

19:34 end of the day, Jeep is known for its off-road credentials and just being able to do cool things

19:39 like this. So let me know in the comments section, did you buy a Jeep Gladiator? What's it like? Are

19:43 you enjoying it? Are there any downsides? And let me know your thoughts on all the safety stuff as

19:48 well. I'm really keen to get everyone's feedback. Now, if you did enjoy this video, please make

19:51 sure you share it and like it, and if you haven't done so already, make sure you subscribe and press

19:55 the bell icon as well. But until next time, take it easy.

Category

Transcript

Recommended