One Reviewer Called It "Terrific." Another Gave It a 5 Out of 10. Meet the Jeep Recon.

Here is a fun exercise. Open four first drive reviews of the 2026 Jeep Recon, all published on the same day — September 9 — by four outlets that got the same cars on the same roads, and try to work out whether the thing is good. The Drive's headline is "Disappointment Is a Jeep Thing Now," and Byron Hurd scored it 5 out of 10. TopSpeed's Michael Frank wrote, flatly, that "the Recon is terrific." Motor1 split the difference with "Fun, Capable, And Behind The Curve." CarBuzz's Joel Stocksdale called it the guilt-free Wrangler 392. That is not the normal spread you get on a mainstream SUV. That is four people looking at the same vehicle and seeing four different cars, and figuring out why is more interesting than any single verdict.

"Two years late and still half-baked." — Byron Hurd, The Drive

The hardware isn't in dispute, at least. Jeep showed the Recon as a concept in September 2022, originally slated it for 2024, and then went quiet for long enough that a lot of people assumed it had been shelved. It finally arrived this year, built at Stellantis' Toluca plant in Mexico, launching in Moab trim: dual 250-kW drive modules for 670 horsepower and 620 lb-ft, a 100.5-kWh nickel-manganese-cobalt pack (93.9 kWh of it usable, per CarBuzz) on a 400-volt architecture, 222 miles of range, 6,112 pounds of curb weight, and 0–60 mph in 3.6 seconds in Sport mode or 3.8 in Auto. The Drive logged DC fast charging at 5–80 percent in 28 minutes, or roughly 100 miles of range in five. It starts at $65,000, which becomes $66,995 once destination lands. A longer-range Overland trim follows.

What nobody argues with is that Jeep took the off-road part seriously, which, given how many "rugged" EVs are a soft-roader with a cladding budget, is worth saying out loud. The Recon runs 9.1 inches of ground clearance, a 33.8-degree approach angle, 33.1-degree departure, 23.3-degree breakover, an armored underbody, a push-button electronic locking rear diff, two feet of fording depth with waterproofed electricals, and a Rock mode that enables left-foot braking and a hill-holder. Motor1's framing is the right one: Jeep doesn't hand out the Trail Rated badge as a styling exercise, and the Recon earned it. Frank, at TopSpeed, reported the locking rear diff was "absolutely necessary" on the harder rock sections — not a marketing checkbox, an actually-used piece of equipment. And yes, the doors and rear windows come off, same as a Wrangler or Gladiator, which Stocksdale said "has never been easier" and Frank described as turning it into a five-seat convertible. For a certain kind of buyer that single feature is the entire argument.

So where does the 5 out of 10 come from? Pavement. This is the one place every reviewer independently found the same flaw, and the consistency is damning in a way the headlines aren't. Hurd called the Recon "a bit floaty and vague" at speed and flagged awkward bucking from the driveline. Stocksdale described the suspension as "rather underdamped" and said the body "heaved noticeably," with steering that is "extremely numb and not particularly precise." Motor1 listed "Wonky Suspension Tuning" as a con outright. Frank, the most positive of the four, still noted it "struggles in especially sharp corners" without adaptive dampers to manage the mass. Four outlets, four different overall verdicts, one identical complaint about how it rides. That isn't a reviewer having an off day. That's a damper tune.

Then there's the math problem, and it's the one that'll actually decide this car's fate. Two hundred and twenty-two miles, from a 100.5-kWh pack, on 400 volts, in 2026, for sixty-seven grand. Hurd's test car ate roughly 50 miles of indicated range on a single off-road course despite aggressive regen — a reminder that trail use and EV range have a brutally bad relationship. Frank put the comparison in the plainest terms available: the Rivian R2 does 330 miles and nearly 80 cubic feet of cargo against the Recon's 65.9, and offers 11-kW shore power where the Jeep gives you a 110-volt outlet. Motor1's verdict on the price gap was the bluntest of the lot — "Overpriced By $10K." You can argue the Recon's approach and departure angles beat the R2's and that its door-removal trick has no equivalent. You cannot argue it isn't a hundred miles short on a spec sheet shoppers will absolutely read side by side.

The 670-horsepower figure is where I'll push back on the consensus, though, because two reviewers reached opposite conclusions from the same number and I think the pessimist is right. Stocksdale's read is that the Recon "obliterates" the 470-hp Wrangler 392, nearly a second quicker to 60, without the fuel bill or the guilt — a clean, satisfying story. Hurd's read is that nobody asked for this: "The Wrang managed to go 30-plus years without a V8." Hurd's got it. Rock crawling is a game of precision at two miles an hour, and 670 horsepower contributes nothing to it — Stocksdale even noted it felt "a little too easy to give just a bit too much throttle" at low speed, which is the power surplus turning into an actual liability on the exact terrain this trim is named after. All that output buys you a drag-strip stat and a heavier car, while the thing the Recon genuinely needs — range, or a 800-volt architecture, or dampers that control six thousand pounds — goes unaddressed.

Here's the verdict. The Jeep Recon is a legitimately capable off-road vehicle that Jeep engineered properly below the belt line and then left half-finished above it, and the four-way split in the reviews maps almost perfectly onto how much the writer cares about the trail versus the commute. If you are buying this as a third vehicle to take the doors off and go crawl — if the 222 miles genuinely does not matter because the Recon never leaves the county — the people calling it terrific are telling you the truth. For everyone else, this is an SUV with a 2022 concept's ambitions, a 2026 price, and 400-volt charging hardware that was already behind when the delay started. Jeep didn't build a bad car. It built a four-year-old good idea and charged full freight for it anyway, and "it's finally here" isn't the same thing as "it was worth waiting for."