The firetruck-red 2019 Jeep Wrangler Unlimited Rubicon that sits in the MotorTrend garage is arguably the most off-road-capable factory vehicle in the world, and I’ve finally gotten the opportunity to break free from the pavement and start to get it properly filthy.
A couple months back we decided to spruce up our New Car Buyer’s Guide content with “What Should I Buy” pieces focusing on cars, trucks, and SUVs. After agonizing over which SUV I’d “buy” for a couple weeks, I landed on the 2019 Jeep Wrangler Unlimited Rubicon because of my penchant for spur-of-the-moment exploration.
We don’t always get to choose our assigned long-term vehicle—let alone spec one—but our long-term Wrangler is a near-perfect match for the one I’d buy. That’s lucky for me because the itch for a spontaneous road trip (and the free time) cropped up again the other weekend.
Our plan was simple: with a day to burn, go north and hopefully find a water source for our dogs to play in. We rolled out of town just as the sun spilled into the L.A. basin and the Jeep’s right windows.
Wranglers may not be your traditional road-trip vehicle, but when you don’t know what your road trip is going to entail, they’re tough to beat. On the highway, our Jeep’s mild hybrid 2.0-liter turbo I-4 is punchy but efficient, and thanks to the Unlimited model’s long wheelbase, its ride is surprisingly agreeable over SoCal’s freeway expansion joints.
Northeast of Santa Barbara a few hours later on some no-name back road, we stumbled upon our first trail, a narrow, twisting, hard-packed dirt two-track that eventually dumped us out near an intermittently flowing stream. As my one of my hockey teammates back in high school used to say, “light work.”
Dogs soaked and satisfied, we found our way back to asphalt and continued north, looking for something that’d challenge the Jeep a bit more. Eventually we found our way back to the ocean and into the coastal town of Oceano, home of Oceano Dunes State Vehicular Recreation Area.
Just south of the better-known Pismo Beach, Oceano’s beach is unique among the 840 miles of California coastline in that its 6-mile allotment is one of only a few beaches in California open to vehicles (it’s also the only one south of San Francisco). It may not be long for this world, either—local groups have been lobbying the state government hard to shut it down due to environmental concerns, such as harm to local wildlife (fair), and kicked-up sand that blows into town (the origins of which have proven inconclusive, according to a state-sponsored study).
Despite the threats of closure, the beach was packed with every sort of vehicle you could imagine—from side-by-sides and Priuses, to Raptors and supercarrier-sized campers. Many of the vehicles in front of us at the gate pulled aside once clear to air down their tires, but we were confident in our Wrangler Rubicon’s oversized BF Goodrich KO2 rubber. I simply yanked the transfer case into four-high and plowed onto the beach. As far as terrain diversity goes, Oceano Dunes ranges from hard-packed but wet sand near the coastline, to super soft and deceptively deep stuff more inland. No matter what we motored over, the Wrangler unsurprisingly hardly noticed the terrain.
After exploring the dunes and watering the pups in the ocean, we turned back south and got back home just as the sun was disappearing over the Pacific Ocean. I’d been wondering if the Wrangler Rubicon really was the SUV I’d buy for my family. This little trip proved to me that I’d made the right choice.
Read more about our long-term 2019 Jeep Wrangler Unlimited Rubicon:
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Source: WORLD NEWS
