Driving the Jeep Grand Cherokee L
Jun. 14th, 2024 06:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerOn our recent 5-day trip to Wisconsin our rental car was a Jeep Grand Cherokee L. The "L" stands for long, as it's stretched nearly 11 inches from the standard Grand Cherokee. The extra space is used to wedge in a third row of seating in the back.
We drove the JGC-L a few hundred miles in both city and highway traffic on this trip. As I drove it I thought about it compared to other cars I've driven recently, including the shorter-wheelbase, non-L Jeep Grand Cherokee I rented last November.
First Impressions: My first impression was, "This thing is a boat." There's no way to ignore its size. The long, flat hood sticks out in front and it's like staring across a bed from the foot of the mattress to see what's in front of the car.
My second first impression was frustration at the flaky Apple CarPlay connection. It mysteriously dropped the connection to my iPhone while I was using CarPlay to navigate through downtown Chicago traffic on Friday night. And then it failed on multiple tries to reconnect. Fortunately I had a lot of the route in my head so I wasn't lost without it... though I did seriously consider pulling over to the side of the road and parking the damn vehicle to wrestle with its stupid menus so I could get the nav back. The system did reconnect to my phone after about 10 minutes and at least 7 tries. After that it was fairly stable for the rest of the 5 day trip, so I'm not sure what the issue was.
Performance: As with the previous-generation JGC I rented last November, performance of this newer JGC-L is best described as "Nothing surprising." The base 3.6-L V6 engine delivers adequate power for the vehicle to get out of its own way. I never felt like a lack of power left me in a dangerous situation, whether accelerating to merge into highway traffic or to squirt through a gap in city traffic.
Electronics. You really can't rate a vehicle anymore without giving significant consideration to its digital systems, as these impact everything from primary controls to entertainment to comfort and safety. The JGC-L is frankly a mess when it comes to electronics. The standard Apple CarPlay was annoyingly flaky, leading to me almost wanting to pull the car over in heavy traffic to get it working. In addition the digital dashboard controls were overly fussy. There were way too many configuration options to be able to hop in the car and say, "Okay, I want to drive, show me the critical info." And trying to find the critical info one time led down a blind alley where the car switched into manual-transmission-shifting mode. I had to guess at how to use the controls to switch out of that. And as is increasingly common in newer vehicles, too many comfort features like climate control route through on-screen controls.
The third row. A car with three rows of seating is something I doubt I'd ever buy. We don't need the space, and dealing with the size of the car required to accommodate it is something we really don't need. Plus, these third row seats are almost always useless to all but adolescents— kids big enough not to need car seats and small enough not to be adult sized yet. That said we found the third row surprisingly useful. On the day we took a trip out to Lake Geneva with my sister, her husband, and their daughter, the five of us fit in the car well. My sister and her 5'11" daughter both fit in the third row seats (they wanted to sit together). Plus, my 6'5" brother-in-law fit comfortably in the second row. One caveat to using the third row is that it leaves very little luggage space. This isn't a vehicle you'd want to use to take 6 people on a long trip... or even on a ride to the airport.
Comfort. As with performance the keywords here are "Nothing surprising". The front seats were comfortable but nothing special. The vehicle overall was comfortable to drive, but nothing special. I note that it didn't have some of the nice creature-comfort options of the JGC we rented in November, such as seat heaters and a heated steering wheel. This was a base-model vehicle, and while it was overall comfortable it felt very... basic.
About the size.... While the car's mattress-like hood was a galling reminder of its size every time I climbed behind the wheel, the overall size rarely felt like a hindrance to driving and parking. Partly that was due to us spending most of our time in the large-car-friendly suburban Midwest. With roads and parking lots sized for people tooling around in their lifted Ford F-250s this vehicle felt almost svelte.
Bottom line: The JGC-L is not a vehicle I'd ever see myself buying. I'm just not the target market. I don't need the space and I don't like the size. Plus, the fidgety electronics really turn me off. Even for a rental car, if I needed a vehicle able to transport 5+ people— or even 4 with lots of luggage— I'd prefer a minivan. What about the offroad capability, you might ask. Well, in this stretched and bloated Jeep it wasn't obvious there's much offroad capability.
We drove the JGC-L a few hundred miles in both city and highway traffic on this trip. As I drove it I thought about it compared to other cars I've driven recently, including the shorter-wheelbase, non-L Jeep Grand Cherokee I rented last November.
First Impressions: My first impression was, "This thing is a boat." There's no way to ignore its size. The long, flat hood sticks out in front and it's like staring across a bed from the foot of the mattress to see what's in front of the car.
My second first impression was frustration at the flaky Apple CarPlay connection. It mysteriously dropped the connection to my iPhone while I was using CarPlay to navigate through downtown Chicago traffic on Friday night. And then it failed on multiple tries to reconnect. Fortunately I had a lot of the route in my head so I wasn't lost without it... though I did seriously consider pulling over to the side of the road and parking the damn vehicle to wrestle with its stupid menus so I could get the nav back. The system did reconnect to my phone after about 10 minutes and at least 7 tries. After that it was fairly stable for the rest of the 5 day trip, so I'm not sure what the issue was.
Performance: As with the previous-generation JGC I rented last November, performance of this newer JGC-L is best described as "Nothing surprising." The base 3.6-L V6 engine delivers adequate power for the vehicle to get out of its own way. I never felt like a lack of power left me in a dangerous situation, whether accelerating to merge into highway traffic or to squirt through a gap in city traffic.
Electronics. You really can't rate a vehicle anymore without giving significant consideration to its digital systems, as these impact everything from primary controls to entertainment to comfort and safety. The JGC-L is frankly a mess when it comes to electronics. The standard Apple CarPlay was annoyingly flaky, leading to me almost wanting to pull the car over in heavy traffic to get it working. In addition the digital dashboard controls were overly fussy. There were way too many configuration options to be able to hop in the car and say, "Okay, I want to drive, show me the critical info." And trying to find the critical info one time led down a blind alley where the car switched into manual-transmission-shifting mode. I had to guess at how to use the controls to switch out of that. And as is increasingly common in newer vehicles, too many comfort features like climate control route through on-screen controls.
The third row. A car with three rows of seating is something I doubt I'd ever buy. We don't need the space, and dealing with the size of the car required to accommodate it is something we really don't need. Plus, these third row seats are almost always useless to all but adolescents— kids big enough not to need car seats and small enough not to be adult sized yet. That said we found the third row surprisingly useful. On the day we took a trip out to Lake Geneva with my sister, her husband, and their daughter, the five of us fit in the car well. My sister and her 5'11" daughter both fit in the third row seats (they wanted to sit together). Plus, my 6'5" brother-in-law fit comfortably in the second row. One caveat to using the third row is that it leaves very little luggage space. This isn't a vehicle you'd want to use to take 6 people on a long trip... or even on a ride to the airport.
Comfort. As with performance the keywords here are "Nothing surprising". The front seats were comfortable but nothing special. The vehicle overall was comfortable to drive, but nothing special. I note that it didn't have some of the nice creature-comfort options of the JGC we rented in November, such as seat heaters and a heated steering wheel. This was a base-model vehicle, and while it was overall comfortable it felt very... basic.
About the size.... While the car's mattress-like hood was a galling reminder of its size every time I climbed behind the wheel, the overall size rarely felt like a hindrance to driving and parking. Partly that was due to us spending most of our time in the large-car-friendly suburban Midwest. With roads and parking lots sized for people tooling around in their lifted Ford F-250s this vehicle felt almost svelte.
Bottom line: The JGC-L is not a vehicle I'd ever see myself buying. I'm just not the target market. I don't need the space and I don't like the size. Plus, the fidgety electronics really turn me off. Even for a rental car, if I needed a vehicle able to transport 5+ people— or even 4 with lots of luggage— I'd prefer a minivan. What about the offroad capability, you might ask. Well, in this stretched and bloated Jeep it wasn't obvious there's much offroad capability.
