The 2025 Jeep Wrangler 2-Door Sport S is like sleeping in a tent. There is no getting around the reality that it’s objectively worse than a cottage, or a camper, or a trailer, in every conceivable way. And yet, a lot of us, myself included, still do it willingly, and wouldn’t have it any other way – and anyone who disagrees just doesn’t get it.

Anyway you want it

One of the Jeep Wrangler’s strongest assets is how diverse they can be right out of the box. They can be had in 2-door or 4-door (or none at all), hard-top, soft-top, powered top, 4-cylinder, 6-cylinder, plug-in hybrid powertrains, automatic or manual transmissions, mechanically endowed with hardware to be either a fun off-road toy for playing on trails, or a purpose-built weapon for climbing mountains, and all of this can be had in just about any colour you desire. This relatively basic, manual, soft-top 2-door might be, of all those combinations, the purest Jeep, for better or worse. 

This diversity creates a slight dark side, perhaps a sense of gatekeeping as to what is the truest flavour of Wrangler. You and I probably do the same thing all the time: whenever we see a slightly interesting car in the wild, we’ll have a peek in the window and see that it’s (probably) automatic. Blegh. All of the sudden, it’s less interesting, and its owner is less credible in our eyes – whether or not this is accurate at all is a holy different subject, but it is something we do.

That’s the way you need it

No one is going to judge you with this thing, as it is about as straight-up as can be, with enough niceties to be tolerable. The updated 12.3-inch touch display running UConnect 5 is thoroughly modern and easy to use, and comes with standard wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto connectivity. The rest of the cabin is blissfully basic with manual cloth seats, but they are heated, as is the leather wrapped steering wheel. There’s enough cameras on this to easily and accurately sight a tricky trail, or ease you into a tight parking spot. The gauge cluster, complete with real gauges, is a masterful melding of old and new.

Otherwise, not unlike a tent, the cabin is snug; I believe the preferred word is intimate. The back seats are tight, and there’s hardly any room for cargo behind them, made trickier by the soft top’s rear window being in the way – it can be lifted out of the way much more easily than previous Wranglers, but it’s still much more of a process than literally every other vehicle on the market. Such is the compromise you get with the added capability of being to remove much of the top in just a couple of minutes.

Let the sun rain down

I spent most of the week with the top in the Sunrider position, with the top quickly flipped back via two clasps and quick lift, which is much easier to live with than the removable targa panels of its competitors. If the whole point of a Jeep is to enjoy the outdoors, the soft top makes that a cinch – because who wants to stay under a tent if you don’t absolutely have to?

On the road, with the top flipped back and the windows down, the experience is charming enough to override the shortcomings inherent to a short wheelbase, solid axle’d, soft-top truck. It is the opposite of a normal car, with lots of wind and ambient noise, tons of dive and squat during acceleration and braking, and generally lots of bobbing about over bumps. If you liked riding in the back of the bus as a kid, you might find this amusing. 

It’s kind of a lot

Between that, and the manual gearbox, it can feel like a lot. One of my colleagues likened it to a sensory overload, with so much going on, so much noise, so much body movement, and such exaggerated movements of the clutch and shifter. While most of enjoyed it as part of whole back-to-basics experience, and I don’t think anyone thought the manual driving experience was objectively good, as it has an awkward, long, and oddly springy clutch throw, paired with a long (but otherwise tight and satisfying) shift action. These would be fine were it not for the ponderous throttle response; slow to go, even slower to let go with brutal rev hang. 

And also not?

It makes an already awkward rhythm exceptionally slow in practice, and this all adds up to the littlest, purest Wrangler, feeling… well, slow. The 285 horsepower, 3.6-Litre Pentastar V6 is a good engine and a known quantity at this point, but it feels hamstrung behind this 6-speed manual and its intergalactic gearing. It is crying out for a shorter axle ratio than the 3.45 in this, unless you commute on the Autobahn often – and even then, you gotta rev it out to go anywhere with any urgency.

For what it’s worth, it still works well in low-range four-wheel-drive, able to trundle along comfortably in first and second gear, but it feels a little held back on the road. I’m sure this is done to improve fuel economy, but if you lack zen-like patience, you’ll probably see about the same unimpressive 14.9L/100km we did. As much as I’d like to believe I’m a manual purist, I’d have a real hard time picking this over the best-in-the-business ZF 8-Speed automatic that’s available, but I appreciate that the option is there for those that still care.

Money – but less

This relatively basic 2025 Jeep Wrangler 2-Door Sport S is about as close as you can get to the original recipe in 2025, and whereas it might have been tricky to justify before, Jeep has slashed prices on Wrangler 2-Door models by as much as $9,000, and will continue to knock prices down on volume-selling 4-door models next year. The base price now starts at $40,700, and this smartly optioned Sport S with the Preferred Package and Convenience Group (which are preferable and convenient indeed), among other niceties, rings in at $49,500. I’ll take this opportunity to remind you that the next most inexpensive manual 2-door convertible on the market is the Mazda Miata – which is also specialized niche product, and in a lot of ways, less practical than this one.

Wrap it up

In the grand scheme of things that matter to most normal, boring people, this is probably one of the worst vehicles you can buy – but you’re not most people, are you? This is not a regular commuter with some flair, no, this is first and foremost a Jeep-flavoured Jeep. It’s not quiet, it’s not the most demure thing to drive, it doesn’t have a lot of room for your kids, it has almost no room for their stuff, but it is admirable and charming because it is such a pure expression of the Jeep formula. It oozes character, and the sense of adventure baked into its ancient DNA radiates from every orifice. If you prefer camping over cottaging, the 2025 Jeep Wrangler 2-Door Sport S is probably how you should be getting to the campsite.