We’ve known for ages the new Wrangler will be available with a boosted inline-four. Now, we have learned of its price and it’s not a bargain bin item.

The engine itself, a turbocharged 2.0-liter inline-four making 268 horsepower and 295 lb-ft of twist, is a $1000 option. Not bad, until one discovers that it’s only available with Jeep’s eight-speed automatic.

That the 2018 Jeep Wrangler Turbo will only be available with a slushbox, at least for now, has been common knowledge for some time. Thanks to internet sleuths at the JL Wrangler forum, we now also know the automatic is a separate – yet required – $2000 option, pushing the total bill for turbo fun to a not insignificant $3000.

Further, if the screencap in the post is to be taken at face value, the invoice price of the turbo/auto combination is $2670, leaving about $300 dealer profit on that single option. Not a lot of wiggle room for cutting a deal, then, although we don’t expect Jeep stores to be peeling off $100 bills anytime soon. High initial demand will keep transaction prices close to MSRP for the foreseeable future.

There are plenty of good reasons for choosing Jeep’s new turbo engine in the Wrangler JL, not the least of which is fuel economy. Despite the EPA not yet releasing its ratings, there’s an excellent chance the turbo will drink less fuel than its 3.6-liter naturally-aspirated V6 brother.

How long it’ll take a JL owner to recoup the initial $3000 investment won’t be known until official fuel economy numbers are released. Assuming an average improvement of 4 mpg, and an average of 15000 driven miles per year, it would take more than ten years to pay off the investment at a fuel price of $2.50 per gallon. We’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions there.

The turbo will probably be faster on pavement and, as the man said, you can’t put a price on speed. Alert readers will also recall there is a 3.0-liter diesel engine in the hopper, set to make 442 lb.-ft of oil-burning torque. This would also be an opportune time to remind everyone about FCA’s current legal troubles with the EcoDiesel installed in past versions of the Ram 1500 and Grand Cherokee.

A polar bear friendly plug-in hybrid Wrangler with an “eTorque” system, perhaps similar to the one that’s in the new Ram pickup, will likely show up in 2020.