UNLIMITED PASSION; Four-door Wrangler brings in buyers by the bucket load.(Auto File)

It took 65 years, but Jeep finally broke down last year and added two more doors to its venerable Wrangler. This is like waking up one morning to discover an icemaker on your fridge door: You've lived without it for years, but now that it's available, you must have it.

The 2007 Wrangler Unlimited comes with four doors and an extra 20.6 inches of overall body length (not to be confused with the 2004.5 Wrangler Unlimited, which offered a "mere'' 15-inch stretch and was still a two-door). Judging by feedback from the market-dealers reported a zero-day supply of Wrangler Unlimiteds in March-buyers had been waiting for this kind of utility in the rough-and-ready Wrangler.

That's good, because when it comes to most other measures, the Jeep often falls short of the competition. In our track testing-yes, even Jeeps get their day in court-the Unlimited was slower and less capable in the handling department than competitors such as the Toyota FJ Cruiser. Part of the reason is that while Jeep opted to make the leap from inline-six to V6 with this generation of Wrangler, the Jeep's pushrod 3.8-liter V6, rated at 205 hp and 240 lb-ft of torque, comes up far short of competitors, many of which offer 24-valve double-overhead-cam engines with higher horsepower and torque.

In straight-line performance, our test Jeep-a Wrangler Unlimited Sahara AWD-took 9.31 seconds to ramble from 0 to 60 mph, with the ...