America's Off-Road Icons Are Both Catching Fire. 1.6 Million Recalled.

The Jeep Wrangler and Ford Bronco occupy adjacent parking spots in America's off-road imagination, each promising removable doors, trail-rated suspensions, and the kind of lifestyle branding that converts $40,000 into a personality. This summer, they share something less marketable: both are under active fire recalls, covering a combined 1.65 million vehicles.

Stellantis pulled the trigger first. On June 9, NHTSA announced that 1,076,999 model-year 2021–2025 Jeep Wranglers and Gladiators had a wiring defect in the electric hydraulic power steering pump, where a loose connection can melt and ignite nearby materials even with the ignition off, which is exactly the scenario Stellantis warned owners about when it told them to park outside, away from structures, away from other vehicles. Seventy-two fires had already been reported, and one person was injured.^[1]

Seven weeks later, Ford matched it. A recall covering 565,691 Broncos landed on the NHTSA docket July 27 because the engine compartment wiring harness rubs against surrounding components during normal driving, gradually abrading through insulation until bare copper meets bare copper in a short circuit that has so far produced fifteen confirmed fires between October 2024 and June 2026, split almost evenly between Bronco Raptors and base models.^[2]

Two competing trucks, two different ignition sources, one result: the vehicle you bought to conquer trails is a fire hazard in your garage.

The Pattern Nobody Wants to Name

Body-on-frame off-road vehicles route wiring through environments that hate wiring: engine bays that flex under articulation, underbody harnesses that trail debris hammers on every trail ride, and thermal management gaps created by removable body panels that monocoque SUVs avoid entirely by sealing everything inside a unibody shell. The Wrangler's power steering pump wiring overheats because the connector wasn't engineered for the vibration profile of a solid-axle chassis, while the Bronco's harness rubs through because nobody anchored it tightly enough to survive the independent front suspension's full range of motion.

These are not freak defects but predictable failure modes of routing sensitive electrical components through the noisiest mechanical environments in the passenger vehicle fleet, failures that every off-road engineer should have caught in validation testing because the physics of insulation abrasion against an aluminum engine block at 60,000 miles is sophomore-level materials science.

Stellantis Knew, Then Closed the File

Reuters reported that Stellantis investigated Wrangler fires in 2023 and early 2024, then closed the investigation because the fire rate was low enough to ignore.^[1] NHTSA opened its own investigation in September 2024. By June 2026, the fire count had climbed to 72 across 1.08 million U.S. vehicles, a 0.007% incidence rate that is statistically negligible right up until the moment you're the owner whose Wrangler catches fire at 2 AM in an attached garage.

For context: FARS data shows the Wrangler logged 1,842 occupant deaths across the 2014–2023 study period, with a fatality rate of 0.84 per 100 million VMT, actually below the national average of 1.10.^[3] The Wrangler's crash safety record is middling. Its fire risk is a separate, additive hazard that doesn't show up in crash-test ratings or fatality statistics until a garage fire kills someone who wasn't driving.

What You Should Do

If you own a 2021–2025 Wrangler or Gladiator, check your VIN at nhtsa.gov/recalls and park outside until your dealer replaces the power steering pump wiring harness. Stellantis says owner notification letters were mailed July 9, but if you haven't received one, call 1-800-853-1403 rather than waiting for the postal service to sort out a fire risk for you.

Bronco owners from any model year should run the same VIN check, because Ford says the recall covers vehicles whose engine harness may lack sufficient abrasion protection, and owner notification letters with repair scheduling information are expected by mail.

If you're shopping for an off-road SUV, neither platform is inherently unsafe, and both recalls address low-probability failure modes, but the fact that both share the same category of failure suggests that body-on-frame off-road wiring is an industry-wide design challenge rather than a one-brand anomaly. Ask your dealer if the recall fix has been applied before you sign anything.