The CJ wedge is my favorite feat of automotive design of the last millennium. What more could you want .
Maybe I'm being nostalgic, but I could sit in my '83 CJ-7 and marvel for hours at the rugged, functional simplicity that I knew was the end of an era. I honestly loved it. Really did.
The YJ paid some tribute to that and has a Chrysler look of it's era , and the TJ Dash has been compared to Fisher-Price products.
In reality, the TJ Dash/console, design wise , gets the job done and is relatively simple for it's era , but it doesn't do much well-
The wheel blocks the gauges, the surface area needed for the controls is too large, the radio out of date (single DIN) , the middle vents feel too far away ,the tray on top is too slick , and the cupholders are too close to the seat and too much area is given to the parking brake hàndle .... But the designers were challenged with giving the public a dash that met modern safety standards in a vehicle that previously barely met any.
Overall, it's a car dash in a Jeep, and with the doors off its just too thick, mainly due to air bags, ducts and so forth.
We could go on all day about what's right and what isn't with the TJ design , but at the end if the day , it looks like a CJ, is wider , rides way better, has more advanced safety features, disc brakes, is way more comfortable and has far better interior climate control and less road noise , yet still feels like Jeeps did years ago. With 965,945 units sold and still a sought after vehicle today, the TJ will go down in the books as one of the best Jeeps ever. Because it is.