Jeep outlined its changes for the 2025 Wrangler, including the loss of a long-running powertrain option.
The Jeep Wrangler JL carries on for its seventh model year, and the second after a light refresh brought a new grille, new infotainment screens and better towing capability to the lineup. Normally coming off a refresh, the changes for the next model year or two are pretty mundane, amounting to paint options and some minor feature shuffling. We still get that here — including a new olive green ’41 paint color and standard power windows and locks (yes, that still wasn’t a thing in 2024) — but there’s one omission that has most of us in the TFL office scratching our heads. The Wrangler’s standard 3.6-liter V6 is no longer available with an automatic transmission.
Yep, if you want to stick with the base V6, which has been a mainstay throughout the Wrangler lineup for more than a decade now, you have to get it with the 6-speed manual. Usually we’re talking about cars losing their manual transmission option, but for this specific model it’s actually the only way to go moving forward. Color us puzzled.
That’s not to say you can’t get the 8-speed automatic transmission, of course. If you want to stick with an auto ‘box, though, you’ll just have to get the 270-horsepower 2.0-liter turbo powerplant, either by itself or with the 4xe plug-in hybrid (for 375 horsepower), or the 470-horsepower, 6.4-liter Hemi V8-powered Rubicon 392, at least as long as it’s still available.
The 2025 Jeep Wrangler gets more expensive to start, too.
For this new model year, the power locks and windows change strictly applies to the base Sport model, which is coincidentally a bit more expensive than its 2024 counterpart. Now, the base two-door Wrangler Sport starts at $33,990. The four-door model, for its part, starts at $38,590 (both up $100 from last year).
Keep in mind, the automatic upgrade wasn’t exactly cheap for the 3.6-liter V6, even when you could get it last year. It was a $4,500 upgrade, so by comparison, the 2.0-liter’s $2,500 upcharge over the base V6/manual transmission combination is a more affordable route, strictly speaking. Still, even with the cost factored in, the V6 paired with the 8-speed automatic has been a popular combination, though perhaps the automaker is aiming to get more people into the 2.0-liter turbo or the 4xe, whether they necessarily want to or not.
In addition to the automatic transmission delete from the V6 and the new paint color, 2025 Jeep Wrangler models also get a pre-ventilation feature that allows owners to ventilate the cabin before actually getting into their Wrangler.
