Jeep Wrangler Rubicon - long-term review

There are many ways to tell the world you own a Jeep. Visually is one, and given ours is bright green, on lifted suspension with huge wheels and a winch dangling from its chin, that’s not hard. But there is another way: a small rubber duck.

Jeep Ducking – or simply “ducking” – is a peculiarly wholesome trend that began in the US during the pandemic. The rules are simple. You see another Jeep, usually a Wrangler. You leave a rubber duck on it. No note is strictly required, but many ducks come with a message: Nice Jeep. Spread the love. You’ve been ducked. And that’s it. No contact. No conversation. Just a duck, quietly sitting on a door handle, bonnet, side step, or tucked into the cowl like a cheerful little warning light. It is, in short, community-building by stealth. Which is no bad thing, given the general mood of the nation is currently far from prosperous.

Jeep has always traded on the idea of belonging to something. From Willys onwards, the brand has sold more than four-wheel drive – it has sold identity. In America, where last year Jeep shifted roughly 155,000 Wranglers (down from a peak nearer 240,000 in 2018, as tastes, prices and electrification begin to nibble at the edges), ducking is essentially shooting fish in a barrel. Park anywhere vaguely outdoorsy and you’ll hit your daily duck quota before lunch.

Britain, however, is a different matter.

Here, the Wrangler is an exotic creature. Jeep only sells a few hundred a year, constrained not by demand but by the blunt instrument of CO₂ fleet averages. Spotting another Wrangler can feel like seeing a panda in Tesco. And ducking one? That feels like a public service.

In a country drowning in bad news – the economy, the cost of living, the future of cars feeling increasingly joyless and spreadsheet-led – it turns out a big green Jeep is an unlikely source of happiness. People point. They smile. Children tug sleeves. Grown adults say things like “fair play” as if I’ve completed some sort of endurance test.

So I decided to spread the duck love here.

Cue 100 bright green rubber duckies arriving at the Top Gear office. They are currently nesting in the under-floor storage area of the JL Wrangler – an area so surprisingly vast it makes the old JK’s effort look like a biscuit tin. You open the tailgate, lift the cargo floor, and there it is: deep, discreet and brilliantly hidden.

With no parcel shelf in the Rubicon – a genuine frustration in London, where vehicle break-ins are now so routine they barely make the news – it is also the safest place in the car. Police figures suggest tens of thousands of vehicles are broken into in London each year, often opportunistically, often by smashing a window and grabbing whatever’s visible. Under there, out of sight, is where you stash valuables. Or a gaggle of green ducks.

Each duck carries a small message around its neck explaining the deal. The rule is simple: every Wrangler I see gets one. In America, this would be a lifestyle choice. Here, it’s a calling.

And where, you may ask, did I start my ducking adventure? Where I could most easily get rid of them. Not the Peak District. Not the Highlands. Tempting though it is to imagine locking diffs, sway-bar disconnects and mud up to the headlights, the real answer is West London. Specifically, Kensington and Chelsea – a place where four-wheel drive is mostly used to mount kerbs outside artisan bakeries, but probably also the highest concentration of Jeeps per square mile in the UK.

I have been tramping these streets like a lunatic, quietly depositing ducks during my day-to-day travels. It feels faintly illicit. You get looks. You wait for someone to shout. You scuttle away like a spy. I’ve ticked off every generation – from early Willys survivors to modern JL Wranglers, some bone-stock, some clearly loved.

What do the owners think when they find them? No idea. Perhaps they tut, flick it onto the pavement and mutter about nonsense. Perhaps they smile. Perhaps one day they’ll buy a duck of their own.

But that’s not really the point.

The point is that in a country not famed for welcoming random human interaction, a Jeep – absurd, impractical, faintly ridiculous – has become a quiet ambassador for joy. And if that joy comes in the form of a small green duck, left anonymously on a door seal, then so be it. I will keep ducking people up. Jeep owners of Britain, consider this fair warning.