I can’t stand Jeeps. Wranglers, to be exact. Out of all the cockamamie concepts behind a motor vehicle meant to be driven for hundreds of thousands of miles on multi-lane highways, the Jeep Wrangler is the most absurd. At least, that’s my read on the iconic Jeep, which I’ve never come around to despite trying the latest and greatest on more than one occasion.
And, yet, the Wrangler remains one of the most popular cars in America, which prompts my question: what popular car do you irrationally hate? And why?
It has to be irrational, because, as in the case of the Jeep Wrangler, I’m pretty much in the minority. People love the Wrangler; they buy it in droves. I can’t possibly know better than all those Wrangler aficionados. The Jeep ’wavin masses. The door-less, top-less horde of Jeep owners who I see cruising down main street in their breezy SUVs. Still, every time I see an angry Jeep man in my rear view mirror, I scoff. I can’t help it. I’m like a Dostoevsky character seething in a gutter underground. “I am a sick man…I am a spiteful man.”
To me, the point of a car (as opposed to a motorcycle) is to be a fast-moving vessel and vacuum — a self-contained craft hurtling through space. It has to be fit for the long road ahead. It’s all about the context of the machine. I’m talking, of course, about a highway car: something smooth, quiet, low-flying and maneuverable on the interstate.
But the modern Wrangler takes what was essentially a dune buggy and weighs it down, jacks it up and adds more doors. Don’t quiet the cabin down, Jeep. Don’t soften the suspension (much). By all means, keep on making the Jeep a rattle can on the road, and sell it to those who depend on a dense system of highways.
To this day, I can’t stand all the highway noise in a Wrangler. It’s just so loud! Even if it’s better now than in the past, it’s still no Volvo wagon. So what if that’s unfair? I said the hate had to be irrational — even though I think we can fairly compare a car that will, more often than not, be used for the same basic task of transporting people on paved roads at highway speeds. But enough of my Wrangler-hating. What popular car do you irrationally hate?