Test driving Grand Cherokee: Why I'd prefer a Defender over the Jeep

One of the letdowns is seeing the engine bay half empty to the front. The Wrangler has the same engine & it fills up the space quite well.

BHPian Tutenkhamen recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

Test drove the GC today. Its first impressions are indeed extravagant with a complete butch look and those massive allows with 265 width tyres. They look apt and give a very muscular stance.

One of the letdowns was seeing the bonnet half empty to the front! It needs a straight six or a V8 to fill all that space. The 4-pot looks puny. For comparison, Wrangler has the same engine and it fills up the bonnet space quite well.

Onto the drive now. It does drive rather well. The stance is high, comparable to the Defender and the HUD is quite nice. Ventilated and heated seats are super welcome in our extreme weather spectrum.

Overtaking is a breeze, after all, 270HP is enough firepower and triple digits come in rather quickly. I think it must be doing lower 7s to 100kmph but after 130, the engine seemed to not have top-end grunt and felt strained.

Overall, without air suspension and a bit let down interiors, I would personally prefer a Defender P400 or D300 over this but of course, the latter options are 1.5x OTR than GC so there’s clearly a class difference here and tbh GC doesn’t have any competitors in its price range (77 ex-showroom) barring F-Pace P250 and it’ll be a tough call to choose between GC and F-Pace.

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