The Chevrolet Corvette and Ford Mustang are both iconic, but I would actually argue the Jeep Wrangler is probably the most iconic American car. If you look at the sales figures from last year, Americans seem to agree, since the Wrangler completely buried both the Corvette and the Mustang. Most of the people who buy them won't actually use their Jeep's legendary off-road capability, but they also usually don't pretend they will. They just like the vibe. The question is, though, are Jeeps actually reliable enough to be worth buying?
Sadly, there's no national reliability database that tracks every single vehicle ever sold, but thanks to its massive annual owner survey, Consumer Reports might have the next-closest thing. You can argue with how it weighs the importance of each category, but with reliability data from hundreds of thousands of readers, it's probably the most, well, reliable source available if you want a better idea of how fraught a car's ownership experience will be.
So what does the latest Consumer Reports data say about Jeep reliability? As a brand, it's not great. Jeep ranked 19th out of the 22 automakers included in its latest reliability list, putting it slightly ahead of GMC and Cadillac but slightly behind Volkswagen and Tesla. That doesn't mean you'd be wrong to still buy a Jeep, but it's important to at least know what you're getting yourself into before you do, so you hopefully get fewer nasty surprises as a new owner.