My ruby has been dealer maintained the whole time, and I keep a book with all the receipts that detail the work done since 2010. I might add I had one recall done for the rotors awhile back. No biggie. I had an oil leak from the oil pan deal that was covered under warranty as well. Those are the only two issues that came to mind since I bought it. After 100,000 miles, it still drives the same, tight steering, no rattles (which may be a component of me never taking the top off), and actually still smells a bit new since I am freak about keeping the interior clean. And no one eats in my jeep lol.
My only complaint about the wrangler is the motor just because it's pretty weak as far as highway driving. But, it has 4.10 gearing and with the lockers engaged and in 4 low, it doesn't matter when off road. I have been in the rock garden at Grand Lake a few times and it's like an electric motor going up hills. I just sit there and it does its thing lol. Crawls up anything that doesn't require monster tires. So the extra horsepower that the new jeeps have is nice on the highway but unnecessary when using it for what it was built for. I have a 53 CJ2A with a 60 horse 4 banger that does the same thing, jeeps traditionally didn't need much under the hood to do what was asked of them.
The other thing that keeps me from pulling the trigger on the new Rubicon is the wheels. Those things they have on them stock on the lot are atrocious. I would consider getting a 2012 model with the 3.6 Pentastar motor and wheels like mine (5 star rubicon wheels) if I could find one with minimal mileage.
Back to maintenance...I have had my dealer perform everything the Rubicon needed at the recommend intervals...transfer case, tranny, front and rear diffs...everything. If that has saved me some money to get this far, then good deal.
I have heard good things about the FJs. They have always been Toyotas answer to the Wrangler/CJ. I was going to get one for my wife at one time, but since we had my jeep it just seemed superfluous. I think about parts though when I buy a car anymore....I try to do repairs myself, and if I can get parts cheap then it makes it cost effective for me. Just fixed my stepsons Chrysler 300 (the Charger was mentioned above by Bville), those cars have a failure in the transmission lockout mechanism that was the subject of a recall. But, as I found out, Chrysler won't honor that recall with all cars. It's VIN specific. I bought an aluminum piece (20 bucks online) to replace the plastic lockout part and pulled the shifter myself. It's about an hour to fix, but it's worth doing even before the failure, it will leave you stranded unless you have a screwdriver to override lol.
