Summer road-trip season is in full swing, and there are numerous vehicles well qualified to carry you and yours on just such an excursion. But while you could always get a minivan and call it a day, what’s a family to do if, say, their destination is a little less . . . paved? That’s where the Jeep Grand Cherokee comes in. We’ve tested every powertrain available in Jeep’s classy SUV, but the best one at combining overall value and driving pleasure has to be the Hemi-powered, four-wheel-drive version. If we had to hit the road toward a wild destination tomorrow, this is the Grand Cherokee we’d take.
MODEL:
Jeep Grand Cherokee Overland 4×4 (base price: $47,190)
Jeep offers a Grand Cherokee for any budget, provided that budget starts at $30,490. But given that it was split at birth from the current Mercedes-Benz M-class crossover, we think splurging a little and heading for the upper end of the lineup makes sense. There, you’ll find way more luxury for far less money than it takes to bring home a comparably equipped Benz.
Of the Grand Cherokee’s three highest trim levels—Limited, Overland, and Summit—we’d take the Overland. It comes standard with pretty much all of the luxe gear one might need, including leather seats with piping (heated front and rear, cooled in front), a heated steering wheel, proximity key with push-button starting, dual-zone automatic climate control, a backup camera and sensors, a panoramic sunroof, Chrysler’s excellent Uconnect infotainment system with an 8.4-inch touch screen, an eight-speed automatic transmission, HID headlights, Jeep’s Quadra-Lift air suspension, and more.
OPTIONS:
Black Forest Green Pearl paint: $0
Nepal Jeep Brown Light Frost interior: $0
5.7-liter Hemi V-8 engine: $3195
Off-Road Adventure II package: $1095
Advanced Technology group: $1995
There’s nothing wrong with the standard 3.6-liter V-6, unless you’re in a hurry, which is why we’d spec the optional 5.7-liter Hemi and its 360 horsepower and 390 lb-ft of torque. (Jeep also offers a torquey 3.0-liter diesel V-6, but we found it to be too unrefined for a luxury SUV in a recent comparison test and too slow to boot.) Even though the V-8 imparts a fuel-economy penalty—the EPA rates it at 14 mpg city, 20 highway; 3 and 4 mpg fewer than the V-6—our testing showed the gap to be much closer, with the V-6 returning 17 mpg and the V-8 16 mpg. The extra power is worth the minor efficiency penalty.
Beyond the Hemi, we’d add only the $1095 Off-Road Adventure II package, which brings a bevy of skid plates, hill-descent control, and Quadra-Drive II (Jeep-speak for full-time four-wheel drive with a limited-slip rear differential). The kit also swaps the Overland’s handsome 20-inch wheels for smaller-diameter 18-inchers wearing more off-road-friendly tires that return a cushier ride. Families looking for an extra dose of safety can look forward to coughing up $1995 for the Advanced Technology group, which adds adaptive cruise control, forward-collision warning and crash mitigation, blind-spot monitoring, rear cross-traffic alert, and a brake-assist feature. We have it on ours mostly because the set-it-and-forget-it cruise control makes long highway slogs more tolerable, although the package’s inclusion here was far from a unanimous decision.
- 2014 Jeep Grand Cherokee V-6 4×4 Tested: Same GC Goodness, But Less Engine
- 2014 Jeep Grand Cherokee Hemi V-8 4×4 Tested: Smooth in the City, Ready to Get Rough
- Jeep Grand Cherokee Research: Full Pricing, Specs, Reviews, and More
Our soft spot for green-colored cars means Jeep’s snazzy Black Forest Green Pearl paint is a no-brainer, and the Nepal Jeep Brown Light Frost interior scheme (a dark chocolate brown over tan) is the perfect complement to both the exterior color and the Overland’s standard matte-finish wood trim.
Total cost? A healthy $53,475, but that’s still some $16,000 less than a base eight-cylinder BMW X5 xDrive50i and about seven grand cheaper than a base V-8 Mercedes-Benz ML550. And neither of those luxury SUVs is nearly as capable off-road.
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