Jeep Cherokee : SQUARE BASHER

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Jeep's latest Cherokee offers a decent combination of off-road ability and everyday versatility. Andy Enright reports.

Look at any mainstream range of cars and you'll notice an ongoing theme. The adventurous models tend to be the ones at the fringes of the line up; the niche models that can be gambled with. The true bread and butter models are a whole lot more conservative because they're not something the company can afford to get wrong. Exactly such a model is Jeep's Cherokee. This model and its Grand Cherokee sibling are the cars that bring home the bacon for Jeep. The company can afford to experiment with the Patriot, the Compass and, to a certain extent, the Commander, but the Cherokees have to be bang on target in terms of price and market positioning. Is the current model a safe enough pair of hands?

The old Cherokee was an honest and capable campaigner but found itself overtaken in terms of sophistication, road manners and build quality by the best of the rest. With today's Cherokee, Jeep is determined to fight back. Only one engine is offered to UK buyers but it's the most relevant one available to Jeep; a 174bhp 2.8-litre four-cylinder diesel. It's not the most refined powerplant in the world but it suits the rugged feel of the Cherokee very well and leaves you under no illusions that this is a vehicle that's not been designed purely to perambulate outside city centre shopping arcades. The live rear axle is also another reminder that the Cherokee is built extremely tough. While the ride on road isn't as composed as something like a Honda CR-V or even a Land Rover Freelander, the Jeep feels better able to withstand some abuse than both. With decent ground clearance and a proper low range transfer box, Hill Descent Control (with the automatic gearbox option) and a revised Selec-Trac II four-wheel-drive system which helps anticipate and prevent wheel slip before it occurs (making it ideal for road driving and towing), the Cherokee comes well equipped for off-road work. The hill descent system is very interesting in the way it operates. A tilt switch detects whether the car is on a slope and HDC will only cut in if an incline is detected, preventing the frustrating lurching that many such systems generate as soon as you try to accelerate across a short flat section. If the car is pointing uphill, HDC will even operate in reverse.

"â€¦you'll have little cause for complaint with the no-nonsense Cherokee."

The bluff front end with its square headlamps and the steroidal wheel arches are distinctly reminiscent of the Dodge Nitro and the similarity is not accidental, the two cars running on a common platform. The Cherokee is a degree bigger than its predecessor, with a wheelbase that's around 50mm longer and the wheels have been pushed wider by around 25mm front and rear. It's also lower by around 75mm but the load height of the luggage bay is higher by the same amount. Jeep compensates by extending the length of the cargo bay by 75mm. It's still not that big for full-sized rear seat occupants but it makes use of its space more intelligently. Build quality can best be described as functional. The American domestic market doesn't seem to place too much store on materials quality and the Cherokee feels built down to a price. The plus side of this is that it's very rugged and doesn't take much recourse to the manual to establish how the controls function. The feel is a good deal more masculine than its rather rounded predecessor, a car that gained 60 per cent of its sales from women. This time round the target demographic is a little more hairy of chest. The increasingly fiercely fought battleground that is the compact 4x4 market has fragmented in recent years. Whereas once it was fairly homogenous, now it has separated into the properly premium end with the BMW X3 and Audi Q5, the hefty and rather pricy contenders like the Land Rover Freelander, Honda CR-V and Toyota RAV4, a solid middle ground that includes the Nissan X-TRAIL, Jeep Patriot, Chevrolet Captiva and CitroÃ«n C-Crosser, and then the true budget compacts like the Suzuki Grand Vitara and the Daihatsu Terios. The Cherokee doesn't really sit comfortably in any of these groups, being more capable than comparably priced X-TRAILs and CR-Vs and larger than Grand Vitaras and Daihatsus. It's offered only in well-appointed Limited trim, a specification that includes features such as leather seats and a leather-trimmed steering wheel and gear knob, big alloy wheels, stability control and air conditioning. So for your money, you're getting a serious car with a decent level of equipment. Compare that to an equivalently trimmed Freelander and the Jeep weighs in at around £4,000 less which seems competitive given that the Freelander feels a more polished product. If the Freelander's price tag renders it out of reach, the Cherokee is a very capable fall back option. Jeep has wisely chosen to ditch its usual policy of offering its wares with a massively unpopular and desperately thirsty petrol engine just so it can advertise the range with an attractive base price, instead sticking to the vastly more sensible diesel option. With a combined fuel economy figure of 32.8mpg, the Cherokee isn't as economical as a diesel Freelander but it's a good deal more powerful so perhaps this shouldn't come as a huge surprise. Emissions are pegged at 222g/km which is no great shakes but it's worth remembering that the Cherokee tips the scales at 1,980kg, so it's a serious piece of automotive real estate. Residual values of the old Cherokee were always fairly good, hovering at around 45 per cent and there's no reason to expect this model to be a great deal different. The Jeep Cherokee is a car that divides opinion. There will be those who take a pragmatic view and recognise that it's one of the rare compact 4x4s that can really do the business off-road and does so at a very competitive price. Then there will be a contingent of potential buyers who won't buy American in the first instance and don't like the interior ambience anyway. The question you need to ask yourself is whether you are buying the car for your own needs or whether you're buying it to project a perceived lifestyle to others. From a personal perspective, I refuse to be taken in by the perceived quality game; a tactic Volkswagen, most notably, has profited from down the years by expecting customers to pay well over the odds for a warm and fuzzy feeling. If you prefer to spend your money on the bits that really matter, you'll have little cause for complaint with the no-nonsense Cherokee.

Facts At A Glance
CAR: Jeep Cherokee 2.8 CRD Limited
PRICE: £24,295 on the road
INSURANCE GROUP: 13
CO2 EMISSIONS: 222g/km
PERFORMANCE: Max Speed 110mph / 0-60mph 12.9s [est]
FUEL CONSUMPTION: 32.8mpg (combined)
STANDARD SAFETY FEATURES: twin front and side airbags, ABS, ESP, HDC
WILL IT FIT IN YOUR GARAGE?: Length/Width/Height mm 4493/1840/1780