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Road Test: 2014 Jeep Grand Cherokee
Car Reviews

Road Test: 2014 Jeep Grand Cherokee

·
July 15,2013
·
7 min read

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Ever since I can remember, I have never been a fan of large 4x4’s. Sure, they may be able to seat more people and offer a better view of the road ahead but they’ve never really been my cup of tea. Even at home, I make a conscious effort not to get stuck driving our Pajero around. However, when manufacturers like Jeep throw a mighty V8 under the hood of their legendary Grand Cherokee, I find myself waiting to drive one. It was time to see if the 2014 Grand Cherokee Summit could change my opinion on 4x4’s after all.

Style

Back in 2011 when Jeep introduced the redesigned Grand Cherokee, its premium design really made it stand out, and year after year minimalistic changes have been the way Jeep have played their cards. Although the Grand Cherokee still wears its classic seven-slot grille and trapezoidal wheel arches, new for the 2014 model are slimmer headlights, larger LED taillights, a re-sculpted tailgate and a more aerodynamic rear spoiler. 

Interior Features, Safety and Comfort

Our test car was the Summit which is the full options version. The interior is capacious and filled right to the top with premium materials – literally. Unique to the Summit model is suede covering the mighty A-pillars and headliner. Tilt your head back and the Grand Cherokee offers both front and rear passengers a view of the beautiful sky through its massive dual-pane sunroof. The dashboard is neat, uncluttered and is home to ample leather, some open-pore wood trim and barely any hard plastics. 

Premium Natura-Plus leather is what Jeep has decided to cover the large and very comfortable front and rear seats with. The driver and front seat passenger benefit from heated and cooled seats with memory settings, however rear seat passengers will have to make do with only seat heaters.

I was amused to discover the Grand Cherokee Summit offered only steering wheel heating and no cooling! Though this feature may be loved by people in colder climates, I don’t think anybody in Middle East will ever need to switch that on! If anything, steering wheel cooling is something we’d all love out here Jeep. Two impressive inclusions are worth mentioning, the Audi-esque T-shaped electronic shifter (replacing the clunky 2011 knob shifter) and the sleek terrain select system. 

The massive 8.4” infotainment touch screen is integrated with Chrysler's Uconnect platform. Once you spend some time with it you realize how easy it is to use. Everything from radio channels to the GPS to the phone and vehicle settings are all controlled from this touch screen. I personally loved the “tune” button which allowed me to directly type in the frequency for the radio station I wished to listen to rather than scrolling through a whole list. 

In terms of safety and security, the Grand Cherokee Summit packs in an impressive 63 features. For starters, it boasts front-row active head restraints, full-length side-curtain air bags and standard seat-mounted side thorax air bags. It also offers Electronic Roll Mitigation which applies the brakes in an emergency situation and a rather annoying forward collision warning system. The collision warning system switches your music off, sends out an extremely loud sound through the speakers and flashes BRAKE in red letters across the multi-cluster display. It works. It’s so in-your-face, even an alien from Mars will know what needs to be done.

Though I got used to the collision warning system over time, the outward visibility from the Grand Cherokee Summit was something I couldn’t adjust to. The side mirrors are much too small and for safety reasons offer an overly magnified view of reality. Take a look at your side mirror and it looks like the car beside you is right on your tail, when in reality it’s actually a good one to two car lengths away. The blind spot monitoring system is way more enthusiastic than it should be since the small yellow triangle is perpetually always on when driving in traffic. 

I was also dissatisfied with the performance of the A/C. In the afternoon, running the A/C on anything below full power just won’t do unless you wish to be drenched in sweat and in the evenings, it still has to be cranked up to a good 80% of its power. Rear passengers have it the worst though, with vents so low that don’t do a whole lot more than keep their knees cool. 

On practicality and comfort, the new Grand Cherokee has a family friendly boot space of 1,028 liters behind second row, with grocery hooks on each side for shopping bags. There is ample rear leg room and the rear seats can decline or incline by 12 degrees for added comfort. Front passenger seat can also fold flat if required to make extra room. 

Driving Performance

Moving on to the performance front, the Grand Cherokee Summit is fitted with a 5.7 litre HEMI V8 engine that packs in 360 horsepower and an impressive 520 Nm of torque. This translates to a top speed of 180 km/h and a 0 – 100 km/h time of 7.8 seconds. 

Despite being fitted with Variable Valve Timing and Fuel Saver cylinder-deactivation technology, the Grand Cherokee Summit manages to achieve a slightly disappointing average of 17 litres / 100km on our test drives. Even when cruising at a constant speed on the highway, I did find the Grand Cherokee sipping a lot more fuel than I had anticipated.

The all new leather wrapped E-shifter is connected to an 8 speed transmission. For the most part, it offers smooth shifts however when driving in slow moving traffic, the drive and shifts are very jerky. I noticed this happened the most when shifting into 2nd gear and travelling in the 20 km/h range. On the open road though, the paddle shifts are fun to use and offer quick and precise gear changes. 

The adaptive cruise control is also very simple to operate and works rather well. Even when another car merges into your lane, the Grand Cherokee Summit responds accordingly. The only issue I encountered with the system was that even though I had set the distance between my car and the car ahead to the minimum, the Grand Cherokee would start reducing speed from 3 car lengths away which in turn would require me to continuously override the system. 

The Grand Cherokee Summit isn’t “all show and no go” though. The class-exclusive Quadra-Lift air suspension system offers five ride height settings for optimum performance. This feature electronically coordinates up to 12 different powertrain, braking and suspension systems, including throttle control, transmission shift, transfer case, Hill-descent Control and Selec-Speed Control.

Switch into sport mode and automatically the Grand Cherokee adjusts to “Aero” ride height. This lowers the vehicle clearance by 15mm from normal ride height for optimal performance and fuel economy.  However, select off-road 2 and the Cherokee lifts to its maximum height offering a whopping 287mm of ground clearance! This may not sound like a lot but without the help of a side step, it is quite a task to get into the Grand Cherokee when raised.

The Selec-Terrain system offers five different driving conditions as well; Sand, Mud, Auto, Snow and Rock. Under each mode, traction and torque are tuned to offer the best possible driving experience in the selected mode. 

Note for the off-roaders: This SUV will go pretty much everywhere on gravel. For desert excursions however make sure you request for an off-road pack to be installed for optimum experience. 

Verdict

So...end of the day what is the Grand Cherokee Summit? It's a good looking family 4x4 that seats 5 passengers comfortably in a premium interior and can handle any terrain you throw at it. Priced over AED 200,000 though it feels a bit overpriced and didn’t cause a revolution in changing my perspective on large 4x4’s. Hopefully its bigger brother the Grand Cherokee SRT can! 

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