Jeep Grand Cherokee Review

Jeep Grand Cherokee Review

Jeep pretty much pioneered the four wheel drive market when under the name of Willys-Overland they produced Willys Quad for the American Army at beginning of the Second World War. The Army’s specification was for a four-wheel drive vehicle with a wheelbase of 80 inches which had to be light enough (1300lb) to be lifted by four soldiers.

There is fierce debated about how the name ‘JEEP’ came about with many people saying that it comes from the slurring of the acronym G.P. or General Purpose, the designation the Army gave the car. Another story about the source of the name is that a test driver referred to the MB as a ‘Jeep’, in reference to the cartoon character ‘Eugene the Jeep’. Eugene was a small, impish-looking animal in a 1936 Popeye comic strip that had the power to travel back and forth between dimensions and could solve all sorts of problems.

It was not really until the early 1960’s that Jeep thought about the domestic market with the introduction of the Jeep Wagoneer, the pre-cursor of the very popular Cherokee model. Officially we did not see the Cherokee in the UK until the early 1990’s and it soon became very popular with the lifestyle conscious and has always been considered as serious 4x4 contender. The Grand Cherokee was introduced in 1994, replaced in 1999 and then in June 2005 the all new Jeep Grand Cherokee was released in the UK.

For the British/European market the Grand Jeep Cherokee is built at the Magna Steyr manufacturing plant at Graz in Austria, which also produces the Jeep Commander model, which shares the same platform.

How It Drove - Performance

Unless you are totally mad there is only one engine choice the Mercedes-Benz sourced 3.0 litre (2987cc) V6 diesel. If you are mad there is also the high performance 6.1 litre, V8 petrol, which propels the Grand Cherokee from 0-62 mph in just 5 seconds. The reason for the mad tag is that unless you own an oil well it is going to be very expensive to refuel.

Jeep Grand Cherokee