Sage Green Jeep Wrangler Rental in Los Angeles

Jeep has painted Wranglers in muted greens since the vehicle was a military one, and this pale sage is the most recent of them. It is the only colour on this shape that reads as a tool rather than as a fashion choice, and against the black hard top, the black arches and the black wheels it looks entirely deliberate.

It is the Wrangler to take when the plan involves dirt. Sage disappears against dry chaparral and carries pale dust without looking filthy, which is exactly what a week of fire roads above Malibu does to a car. It is also the one people photograph — a green Wrangler at a trailhead or on a beach track looks like it belongs there in a way a white one never quite does.

The Wrangler is the only vehicle in this fleet whose shape is a functional argument rather than a styling one. The doors come off, the roof comes off, the windscreen folds, and the reason the sides are flat and the corners are square is so that none of that is difficult. Four doors means it is a usable car the rest of the time — five seats, a square boot, and a back row adults fit in.

In Los Angeles it earns its keep twice. On the coast road with the top open it is the best-feeling car here for the money, and on a fire road above Malibu or the sand at the end of a beach track it goes where nothing else in the fleet will. Solid axles and a proper low range are not decoration.

Honest hook: it is loud on the freeway and it is not the car for a long motorway day. Everything it gives up, it gives up on purpose.