Jeep Wrangler -- Photo Gallery: As part of my evaluation of the 2007 Jeep Wrangler, I spent a day on the Rubicon Trail in Northern California and got up close and personal with the SUV, expanded my limits and learned a thing or two about Jeep, the Rubicon, and life on the rocky ledge.

His eyes were brown, and they were bugging out of his head. And you could smell the fear on him, see the sweat, feel the urgency with which he spoke: This is a safety issue. There is a cliff on the other side of the Jeep, and there’s no room for error. Do not. I repeat – do not – back up. I was inclined to agree. We were on the Rubicon Trail, not at an OHV park, and here, anything goes. Stuck on the middle of a 45-degree climb up a ledge and over boulders, our only option was forward, up, to the left, and around a huge rock.

The Wrangler is perfectly suited for traversing the Rubicon, that famed off-road trail in the Sierras some call The Only Ten. On the trail, however, our Jeep Wrangler Rubicon was stuck, and given that we were driving a manual transmission, the challenge was to get that Jeep unstuck and moving forward. No room for error. No margin. I flipped my cap around – rally style – sat up on the edge of the driver’s seat and slowly began to let the clutch out, foot on the brake and eyes piercing the nose of the Jeep, watching for the peak of forward movement.

I glanced up to check my line, looked down again and let the clutch slip out a little more. The Jeep began to surge, just a little, then stronger, the motion of the engine tugging at the frame and body of the vehicle. A little more. Just a little more…

Now!
I let go of the clutch, the brake, and hit the throttle hard. The Jeep, straining to move forward, suddenly lurched, came unstuck and followed the direction of my line, around the boulder and to a relatively flat and stable section of the hill.

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