Jeep Grand Cherokee not so great - discuss

The new Jeep Grand Cherokee got reviewed in the UK Sunday Times today:

http://driving.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,12529-1772795,00.html

The reviewer was not very impressed. Justified?


Jeep Grand Cherokee
By Jeremy Clarkson of The Sunday Times
Big chief scalped by little wonder



The all-terrain capability of the Jeep Grand
Cherokee is outclassed by the Argocat Avenger

Nearly all four-wheel-drive cars are capable of amazing their
owners by scaling lumps of seemingly insurmountable geology. That said,
nearly all four-wheel-drive cars are equally capable of amazing their owners
by getting stuck on little more than a mildly sloping croquet lawn.
I have driven a Jeep Wrangler over the Sierra Nevada mountains
in California, climbing boulders so vast that they would not even fit inside
the foyer of a large National Health Service hospital, and yet I've been
stranded in exactly the same car on a small hill in Gloucestershire.

It's the same story with the Range Rover. This is a car that
once took me in Hannibal's footsteps from Val d'Isère to Italy, so I figured
it would make mincemeat of the Yorkshire Dales. Wrong. After 500 yards it
sank up to its door handles and the locals (who were laughing a lot, for
Yorkshirists) said I wouldn't get it free until June. You know the Toyota
Land Cruiser. Built to take Wilbur Smith through the vast heat that is
Africa, designed to fight the good fight for the United Nations in the
world's
troublespots. And utterly defeated by a small mound of earth built by my
local farmer to keep gypsy caravans off her land.



The problem is that while a big off-road car may have 9in of
ground clearance, it will become beached when asked to tackle an obstacle
that is 10in tall. Look at it this way. I can amaze old ladies with my
ability to get things down from 7ft shelves in a supermarket. But if the
product they want is more than 7ft 1in from the ground, I'm just as useless
as they are.

And then there's the tyres. Unless they're knobblier than a
teenager's face they're going to spin like a washing machine on its final
cycle if you ask them to get you up a sloping lawn. Wet grass in off-road
circles is known as "green ice".

Which brings me neatly on to the Argocat I've just bought. This
is a small Canadian bathtub with headlamps. But it has eight-wheel drive and
this means its off-road ability is simply incredible.

When three of its wheels are in mid-air or flailing around in
the mud for grip, it still has five to keep you moving. And of course, as an
added benefit, an eight-wheel-drive vehicle is twice as irritating for the
environmentalists as one with only four-wheel drive.

So far I've spent a couple of weeks playing around with it and
as yet haven't discovered a single obstacle that it can't beat. You arrive
at a slope so severe that it would stump Chris Bonington and you think:
"Well, there isn't a hope in hell of getting up that." Not in a vehicle that
has only 25 horsepower under the bonnet. That's like asking a food blender
to get a satellite into orbit. But up it goes. Nothing stops it. I bet it
could even manage some of the speed humps in Kensington and Chelsea.

And if you really don't like the look of the terrain ahead, you
just turn the handlebars, which locks up all four wheels on one side, and
the little eight-foot 'Cat spins round in its own length, like a tank.



So, I'd been assured, I'd be able to potter
along at speeds of up to one knot. Which is great in a lake. But not so good
in the Irish Sea, on the eve of a full moon with the tide racing out at 9
knots. This is a good way of arriving, backwards, and quite fast, in the
harbour at Belfast




The only time I had a moment's worry was when I inadvertently
drove into the sea while on the Isle of Man. I'd been told not to worry
because it floats and because the chunky tyres act like paddles on a
Mississippi steamer. So, I'd been assured, I'd be able to potter along at
speeds of up to one knot. Which is great in a lake. But not so good in the
Irish Sea, on the eve of a full moon with the tide racing out at 9 knots.
This is a good way of arriving, backwards, and quite fast, in the harbour at
Belfast.

Happily, one of the Argocat's tyres brushed up against a piece
of seaweed and this provided enough traction to give it forward momentum
again and make it back to shore.

Drawbacks? Well if you peel away the floor to reveal the
workings of the beast, you find what looks like a mad secret dungeon shared
by Mr Suzuki, James Watt and Zed from Pulp Fiction. It's a world of chains
in there and I'm sorry but I find this to be very unsatisfactory technology.
Chains, as any eight-year-old boy knows, come off a lot, causing your
testicles to slam into the saddle and become pancake-shaped. Chains make you
go cross-eyed.

Then there's the question of noise. The Kohler engine may be
small but my God it makes a din. It's so loud you can't even hear what the
environmentalists are saying as you bumble by. This means you can convince
yourself they are waving their walking sticks in a gesture of countryside
camaraderie.

I love my Argocat. It does 22mph, which means it's faster and
more comfortable than walking, it seats six and it costs around £14,000.
Which means it's about £16,000 less than the new Jeep Grand Cherokee.


Jeep pioneered this whole off-road business back in the 1930s and like all
American organisations with 15 minutes of history under their belts,
tradition runs deep in the company's veins.
Strange to report then that with its new car it has made no effort
whatsoever to ape the rather appealing styling of the last one. It's just
16ft of car. A lump of what could well be some Hyundai. Inside, however,
there is one piece of Jeep tradition that has not been lost. No space at
all. The new Grand Cherokee may be 5in longer and a wee bit wider than the
old model, but climbing inside is like climbing into the wrong end of a pair
of binoculars. You'd need to be legless to fit in the back and the only dog
that would fit in the boot is one that had been run over.

What's more, everything in the cabin feels like it's come from Matalan.
Except for the handbrake, which has the texture of a Far Eastern vibrator.
And then there's the leather, which seems to have come from those
polyurethane synthetic cows that provide America with its UHT milk.



Like the new Discovery, the big Jeep has a monocoque chassis, which proves
the Mercedes influence at Chrysler is beginning to filter through. But
there's
still some way to go because the damn thing has a live rear axle, which
means any imperfection in the road shakes your hair out.

This wouldn't be so bad if the seats were up to scratch. But they are
useless. The only good thing is that due to a lack of side support you spend
more time falling out of them than sitting there being shaken to bits by
America's idea of modern rear suspension.

So it's uncomfortable, cramped and feels like it's made entirely from melted
Lego. And it costs more than £30,000. Admittedly, you get lots of standard
equipment for that, including a heater that works like American foreign
policy, blowing either very hot or very cold but incapable of getting the
temperature just right. You also get three headrests for your deformed rear
passengers, the middle one of which obliterates all traffic in the rear-view
mirror.

There are some good things, though. The headlamps are very bright, which is
good for spotting bears, and the Mercedes V6 diesel engine is quiet,
refined, frugal and remarkably powerful.

Sadly, however, to discover this means you would have to be driving the
thing, and that would mark you out as being mad. Because apart from the
engine and the brightness of the headlamps, every single thing about this
car is wrong.

Even the underside technology is from the Stone Age. Yes, you get three
electronic differentials that send the power back and forth depending on
which wheel has the most traction. But the suspension can't be raised and
lowered, so when you're beached that's it. And it won't self-level either.
Perhaps that's why they've made the boot so small - to stop you putting
anything heavy in there.

As an off-roader then, the Grand Cherokee is beaten by my little Argocat. As
a car, it's beaten by just about everything.

VITAL STATISTICS

Model Jeep Grand Cherokee 3.0 CRD
Engine 2987cc, six cylinders
Power 215bhp @ 4000rpm
Torque 376 lb ft @ 1600rpm
Transmission Five-speed automatic 4x4
Fuel 27.7mpg (combined cycle)
CO2 270g/km
Acceleration 0-62mph: 9sec
Top speed 124mph
Price £32,895
Verdict Outclassed and outplayed
Rating 2/5

Model Argocat Avenger 8x8
Engine 674cc, two cylinders
Power 25bhp @ 3600rpm
Torque 40 lb ft @ 2200rpm
Transmission Two forward, one reverse, auto
Fuel One gallon petrol per two hours
CO2 N/A
Acceleration 0-62mph: N/A
Top speed 22mph
Price £14,682
Verdict The more wheels the better
Rating 3/5

 

Dori:

I have no opinion on the Jeep Grand Cherokee, but your subject line
reminds me of the difference between British-type examinations and
US-type examinations. British and Australian exam. questions were often
just like your subject line: examinees were supposed to write
intelligent and intelligible arguments for or against a particular point
of view. A US-type exam question will be multiple-choice, looking
something like:

"Choose the best answer from the following:

(a) The Jeep Grand Cherokee is great
(b) The Jeep Grand Cherokee is a dog
(c) both of the above
(d) none of the above"

Perce

<snip>

 

Strange how the Brits fell for that WMD claptrap, despite their
vaunted educational system . ;-) Perhaps if they got more bullshit
fed to them in grammer school they might learn to recognize it
as adults?

Ted

 

Two points:

1. I recently heard on the radio that in fact there were massive street
protests in UK against Blair's backing of Bush's Iraq War -- but the US
press did not report the protests. Blair's majority was far lower at the
most recent election.

2. The standard line of the Bush administration (and his party) is that
those who oppose the war are liberals/lefties/socialists. I've never
heard anybody point out that UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, one of Bush's
most servile supporters is leader of the "Labor Party" (i.e.,
"socialist," "left wing" -- in as far as the terms are meaningful at all
-- although it has moved closer to the "center" over the past few
years). The Conservative Party is far more cautious about, if not
downright opposed to, Britain's involvement.

Perce

 

Unfortunately, the problem is that since Britian is involved at all, Bush
used that as "proof" that the Iraq invasion was a "multinational force
from many countries" and that was one of the lies used to convince the
folks here to continue to support the Iraq war long after the need for
troops in Iraq disappeared.

Ted

 

Point of order: the country is called United Kingdom of Great Britain and
Northern Ireland, commonly abbreviated to Britain (or UK, but not Britian)

;-)
DAS

For direct contact replace nospam with schmetterling
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[...]

 

Interesting point on which you picked up, Perce (Percy!). In my youth (long
ago) it was certainly considered un-English to have multiple-choice
answers - far too easy. But we have many more now. We are going down the
drain...(violins in distance).

DAS

For direct contact replace nospam with schmetterling
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