After a good ten years on the market, it's high time: the Jeep Grand Cherokee is being relaunched.
After its introduction in the United States in September, the fifth generation of the big Jeep is now also coming to Europe, initially as a fully equipped "Exclusive Launch Edition".
The price tag shows a proud 93,000 euros.
If you can wait a few more weeks, you can get the “Summit” for just under 70,000 euros.
An air-sprung luxury class SUV with a length of 4.91 meters is on offer.
That's a few millimeters more than before, which benefits the interior and the luggage compartment, which has been enlarged by 40 to 1068 liters.
The result can be seen and felt after getting into the heated and ventilated leather seats with massage function, especially on the newly designed dashboard, whose walnut and piano lacquer applications run into the side doors.
The freely configurable cockpit display is complemented by a flush-integrated, 10.1-inch interactive multimedia tablet in the center and a 10.25-inch screen reserved for the front passenger.
A 10-inch head-up display is also installed.
Everything looks very homely and not at all American-fluffy like it used to be.
Similar to the Wrangler 4xe, a turbocharged two-liter four-cylinder combustion engine from Fiat, which offers 272 hp, works together with a 108-hp electric motor in front of the eight-speed gearbox.
The system output is 380 hp, the maximum torque is 637 Newton meters.
This makes the Grand Cherokee 4xe the most powerful model in the series.
The American-only models with 3.6-liter V6 and 5.7-liter V8 units perform less.
The electric high-voltage system developed in Detroit works with 400 volts and charges the 17 kWh battery with 7.4 kW alternating current.
According to the manufacturer, a purely electric range of 51 kilometers is achieved, which is not enough to be able to access the e-subsidy money pots.
But these may be closed soon anyway.
A range of 60 kilometers would be necessary.
Three e-driving programs are available to the driver.
"Electric" means a short, very quiet journey of up to 130 km/h, in "eSave" the combustion engine charges the batteries while driving.
In “Hybrid”, the system uses electricity to support propulsion when accelerating until the battery capacity has fallen to ten percent.
It is also recuperated, but in hybrid driving the combustion engine and electric motor work together imperceptibly.
Jeep tries to refute the fact that the automatic transmission tends to act nervously under a lively gas foot, as it turned out on the first test drives, with the argument that we are running a pre-production car that still needs fine-tuning.
Even slightly accelerating while overtaking on the highway encouraged the transmission to downshift at least two stages.
The combustion engine then struggled unmistakably with around 5000 revs for decent propulsion.
On the other hand, the fact that the steering is somewhat indifferent and very smooth in the middle position can be neglected.
The air suspension chassis offers excellent driving comfort.
The first electrification steps of the brand with plug-in hybrids are to be followed in 2023 by the first purely electric Jeep, reportedly in the dress of the brand icon Wrangler.
This drive will then also be used in the Grand Cherokee.
By then, not much water will flow down the Colorado, Jeep says.
Then the profitability of Jeep in the Stellantis brand association should also recover if the expensive purchases of emission certificates from Tesla are avoided.