Jeep Wrangler (YJ)

The Jeep Wrangler (YJ) is one of 51 Jeep models in the MotorJury library, the catalogue that sets out to hold every car ever made — production, prototype and concept alike. The record places its introduction in 1986. The photography on this page is hotlinked from Wikimedia Commons under an open licence, with the photographer credited on every frame.

The era it was born into

To read the Jeep Wrangler (YJ) properly it helps to place it in its decade. The 1980s were the decade of turbocharging, electronic fuel injection and the first mass digital engine management — Group B rallying and hot hatches defined its performance culture. Any car launched into that world was shaped by it — by what materials, engineering and regulation allowed, and by what buyers of the day demanded. Its direct contemporaries in this catalogue, introduced within three years of it, include the Ferrari Ferrari F40, the Ferrari Ferrari Testarossa, the Renault Renault Espace — the cars a buyer of the period would actually have cross-shopped.

The numbers, read closely

On paper, the Jeep Wrangler (YJ) reads like this: the record lists its engine as 2.5 L AMC 150 I4 4.0 L AMC 242 I6 4.2 L AMC 258 I6; kerb weight is recorded at 2,855–3,241 lb (1,295–1,470 kg); drive goes through 3-speed TorqueFlite TF904 automatic / 3-speed TorqueFlite TF999 automatic / 5-speed Aisin AX-5 manual / 5-speed Aisin AX-15 manual / 5-speed Peugeot BA-10/5 manual / Transfer case:. Every figure above is a manufacturer specification carried by the Wikipedia infobox or the open Wikidata record for this model — nothing on this page is estimated, and where a source is silent the row simply does not appear.

Its place in the Jeep story

Within Jeep's own catalogue the Jeep Wrangler (YJ) sits alongside the Jeep Wrangler (JK), the Jeep Wrangler (TJ), the Jeep Gladiator (2005), the Jeep Wrangler (JL). The record names the Jeep CJ-7 as its predecessor and the Jeep Wrangler (TJ) as its successor, fixing its place in the model line's chronology. Design is credited to Chuck Mashigan (1983). Assembly is recorded at United States: Toledo, Ohio (Toledo Complex) / Canada: Brampton, Ontario (Brampton Assembly Plant) / Iran: Tehran (Pars Khodro) / Venezuela: Carabobo (Ensambladora Carabobo).

How this catalogue works

This library is generated, verified and rebuilt from the open record on every deploy. The catalogue skeleton comes from Wikidata, specifications from Wikipedia's infoboxes under CC BY-SA, photography from Wikimedia Commons under each file's own licence, and the ownership data from United States federal safety records. Nothing is written by hand and nothing is invented: every fact on this page traces to a public source, and every page is rebuilt nightly as those sources improve. Errors in the source record will appear here too — and disappear the night the source is corrected.

From catalogue to ownership

What this page cannot yet tell you is what the Jeep Wrangler (YJ) costs to live with — that is a different dataset. MotorJury's ownership verdicts are computed from federal complaint and recall records plus EPA economy data, published per model year as the nightly ingest reaches each car. If this model was sold in the United States, its years will surface in the ownership database; browse it live or price any car yourself with the true-cost calculator.