Stellantis Found the Fires and Closed the File. A Million Wranglers Kept Burning.
In 2023, Stellantis engineers started getting field reports of Jeep Wranglers catching fire. Wiring for the electric hydraulic power steering pump was overheating, melting nearby materials, and igniting vehicles that were parked with the ignition off. Engineers investigated. Then Stellantis did what automakers do when the numbers look small: it closed the file.[1]
By August 2024, the fire rate had climbed high enough that Stellantis reopened its internal investigation. NHTSA opened its own probe a month later, covering roughly 800,000 MY 2021–2023 Wranglers and Gladiators.[2] The recall finally landed on June 9, 2026, covering 1,076,999 vehicles across the 2021–2025 model years. Stellantis told owners to park outside and away from structures. No remedy was ready at the time of the recall announcement.
GM tracked faulty ignition switches for over a decade before recalling 2.6 million cars in 2014, after at least 124 deaths.[3] Same logic: the failure rate was "low." A denominator that large makes any numerator look small. Stellantis ran that arithmetic in 2023 and decided a few burning Wranglers were acceptable.
FARS data frames a wider problem. Over 2014–2023, Wranglers were involved in 3,718 fatal crashes that killed 1,842 of their own occupants.[4] A 0.495 lethality ratio means Wrangler occupants die in fewer than half those crashes. Everyone else absorbs the rest. Model years 2018–2022 contributed 215 of those deaths, overlapping almost entirely with the recalled fleet now flagged as a fire hazard.
Fire is not even the Wrangler's only active safety crisis. Stellantis recalled 419,000 vehicles for side airbag failures in May 2026 and 17,277 more for battery fires.[2] Plug-in hybrid 4xes were recalled multiple times for fire and explosion risks before Stellantis killed the entire PHEV lineup.[5] IIHS spent seven years documenting the Wrangler's rollover tendency; a frame fix arrived for models built after October 2025, leaving every earlier Wrangler with the original architecture.[6] A 2021 owner may have received six distinct recall notices in five years of ownership.
Most damning is the gap. Stellantis found fires in 2023. Closed the investigation. Fires continued. Reopened August 2024. NHTSA probed September 2024. Recall day: June 2026. Two and a half years between knowing and acting, with every garage-parked Wrangler a risk Stellantis had already catalogued.
What to Do
Own a 2021–2025 Wrangler or Gladiator? Check your VIN at nhtsa.gov/recalls. Park outside until repairs are done. Dealers replace the wiring harness and steering pump at no cost. A "Service Power Steering" warning is not routine. Seventy-two vehicles already burned.
Limitations
FARS captures fatal crashes only. A 0.84 fatality rate per 100M VMT is below the dataset average (1.29), partly because Wrangler weight protects occupants in multi-vehicle crashes. NHTSA estimates 0.1% of the recalled fleet has the defect. Stellantis's investigation timeline comes from its own filing; internal documents may tell a different story.
Counterargument
At 72 fires in a million-vehicle fleet, the observed failure rate was 0.007%. Automakers investigate hundreds of field reports annually. Most turn out to be isolated manufacturing variances, not systemic defects. Not every early signal warrants a million-unit recall. Counter-counter: GM said the same thing about ignition switches for a decade. A denominator does not comfort the numerator's victims.
Sources & References
- Reuters, “Stellantis tells owners of 1.3 million Jeeps to park outside over fire concerns,” June 9, 2026. reuters.com
- Reuters, “Stellantis recalls over 1 million US vehicles over power steering defect, NHTSA says,” June 9, 2026. reuters.com
- Wikipedia, “General Motors ignition switch recalls.” wikipedia.org
- NHTSA, Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS), 2014–2023. nhtsa.gov
- USA Today, “Jeep to recall 1 million Wranglers, Gladiators over fire risk,” June 8, 2026. usatoday.com
- CarBuzz, “2026 Jeep Wrangler Gets Frame Fix, Doesn’t Roll Over in Latest IIHS Crash Test,” 2026. carbuzz.com