(This was one of my favorite vehicles of the year…the most old-school new vehicle I’ve ever driven. -Ed.)

We soon should be hearing more about the upcoming 2018 Jeep Wrangler that will replace the current JK series that appeared for 2007. It’s a big move for Jeep, and one that is keeping many people within FCA awake at night…Jeep is a cash cow, and the Wrangler is the food that is keeping that cow fat and happy. Ever since the days after WWII and the first Jeep CJs, every company that has owned the nameplate…Willys, Kaiser, AMC, and Chrysler in all of it’s forms…knows one mantra: Do not **** up the Wrangler. It sells. It has a worldwide appeal and a solid reputation that has been earned over decades.

We are familiar with what the JK can do off-road…thanks to the generosity of BF Goodrich, we’ve had the chance to go four-wheeling with them in Maine when it was warm, slushy and muddy (which you can read about HERE). The JK is a damn competent off-roader, one that lives up fully to the off-roading legend that is Jeep. But the Wrangler has to work well anywhere…street, trail, sun, flood, whatever you can dish out within reason. Jeep sells hundreds of thousands of these rigs a YEAR. And ever since they appeared in 2007, most of them seem to be four-door versions. I get the appeal…a member of my wife’s family was using a four-door JK as a family sedan for quite some time…but in my eyes, a true Jeep has two doors, three pedals, and shouldn’t need any work to go off-roading.

Luckily for me, Martin Dodge in Bowling Green happened to have this 2017 Wrangler Rubicon on their lot. This thing is a unicorn…it wasn’t special-ordered by anybody, this is a lot car. I didn’t check anything out about it…once I looked in the window and saw the shifter for the NSG370 6-speed manual, I was in asking for the keys. The powertrain is solid: the 3.6L Pentastar V6 is cranking out 285 horsepower and 260 ft/lbs of torque, and the six-speed manual is a sweet-shifting unit. It’s not a sporty transmission, but if you are getting into a Wrangler and are looking for sporty driving, you need your head checked. The Pentastar is a drive-by-wire engine, but you’d swear it wasn’t…unlike other vehicles that are drive-by-wire, the throttle input on this Rubicon was so intuitive that driving it felt…and I’m not joking in the least…like driving the Dodge D-50 that I learned how to row gears on. The clutch was smooth and communicative, a little light but very managable. Rowing gears was beautiful, with solid engagement and, again, communication via the shifter. The powertrain alone would be enough to sell us on this Jeep, but there’s more to it.

A look inside tells you everything you need to know: Crank windows. Manual trans shifter sticking up through the floor, next to the shifter for the transfer case. No buttons, no paddles, no switches. The Maroney sticker might say model-year 2017, but a quick glance inside says twenty years older, at least. And that’s what really endeared this Jeep to me: at no time was the radio or the air-conditioner on. I can’t tell you whether the air-conditioning could cover the open windows and humid Kentucky air, and I don’t know how good the optional Alpine system is.  At no point in time during my drive did I miss either one. In fact, if it wasn’t for the short amount of time I had with the Wrangler, I would’ve popped out the forward panels on the three-piece hard top and rode half-open. Or, if I actually owned this thing, I’d have the entire hard-top sitting in the garage and the doors off.

Are there downsides to owning a Wrangler? Eh…that depends on you. Admittedly, the rear seat room for a two-door is best suited to kids five and under, though room for the front passengers is surprisingly good. The ride, at least for this Rubicon, is still Jeep-like: there’s a bit of fluidity while driving that you need to adapt to if you aren’t used to wheeling around four-wheel-drives all the time. And don’t look at a Rubicon and think that because it’s got a V6 and a stick-shift, that you’ll get excellent fuel mileage. At best, it’s middling.

A Wrangler of any time isn’t a sound mind, sound reason type of vehicle. This is an emotional purchase. You want a Jeep for one reason or another, be it the timeless style, the history, or the capability that a Wrangler offers up. And there, we couldn’t agree more. Rip out the back seat and you have a two-seat SUV that, with the hard top on, is a very useful little cube. Ditch the top altogether and you’ve got a roadster that will go just about wherever you point the nose. It will commute all day long. A Jeep is what you make of it, that’s why people still buy these things!

So, if you somehow got lucky enough to locate one of these rare beasts, what could you expect to shell out? A two-door Wrangler Rubicon like ours base-prices at $33,645, and the vehicle we drove stickered for $37,350. Options were minimal, but pricey: the Connectivity Group, which provides a tire pressure display, Uconnect with voice command and Bluetooth, and the Electronic Vehicle Information Center (EVIC display) was $695. All-weather floor mats were $75, the “Freedom Top” three-piece hard top with rear window defroster, rear window wiper and washer, and tinted glass was $995, and the Alpine 9-speaker sound system with the all-weather subwoofer was $945. Add in a $995 destination charge and there you go.

For a lot find, this Wrangler is a score, and if you want to order one with some bits and kits switched around, you either need to hurry and put in the paperwork now, or start digging through dealership inventories. The 2018 Wrangler will soon take full priority, and if it’s as good as the 2017, Jeep will be in the clear for years to come. For all of the concern that people have about how numb new cars seem to feel, here’s your modern-day anthesis. Forget the buff books that swear that this isn’t what you want. For the hour I had this rig, I didn’t want anything else.