Jeep Grand Cherokee review

Who invented the luxury SUV? You’ll get a different answer depending on who you ask, but Jeep certainly believes it was first to market. Not with the Jeep Grand Cherokee we’re reviewing here, but with the Wagoneer back in the early 1960s.

The Grand Cherokee is, though, the natural successor to the Wagoneer, which was on sale in the US more than five years before the Range Rover was launched in Britain. It’s a near five-metre-long SUV designed to cosset you when driving on the road, but also get you to places a mountain goat might think twice about venturing. In essence, it's America’s answer to the Range Rover Sport.

In some countries, the Jeep Grand Cherokee is available with V6 and V8 petrol engines, but in the UK it’s sold exclusively as a plug-in hybrid (PHEV) called the 4xe, which pairs a 2.0-litre petrol engine with an electric motor. Assuming you’ve fully charged the battery, you’ll officially be able to do 30 miles without burning a drop of petrol. And when you’re less bothered about efficiency, it's pretty quick.

At present, you can only buy the Grand Cherokee in lavish Summit Reserve guise, but cheaper versions will be offered in the near future.

Assuming you plan to drive your SUV primarily on the road (which, let’s face it, the majority of us do), the Jeep Grand Cherokee's rivals also include the Audi Q7, the BMW X5 and the Lexus RX. In this review, we’ll be finding out how the Jeep flagship squares up against those peers in all the areas that matter most to buyers – from performance and handling to boot space and running costs.

Once you’ve decided on your next new car, find out how much you could save off the brochure price by searching our free What Car? New Car Deals pages. They list lots of the best new luxury SUV deals.

If you’ve fully charged the battery and switch to EV mode, the Jeep Grand Cherokee can theoretically do 30 miles on pure battery power. In the real world, 20-25 miles is more realistic – and that’s assuming you're not barrelling down a motorway (it can do 80mph without any help from the petrol engine).

If you choose Hybrid mode instead, the car will decide for itself when to deploy the petrol engine and when to run on the electric motor. Assuming there’s charge in the battery, that largely means electric power in urban environments, with the petrol engine firing up to assist on faster roads – especially uphill ones.

It's very noticeable when the switch happens, because the four-cylinder petrol engine is decidedly buzzy – not silky like the six-cylinder engines in rival plug-in hybrids (PHEVs), including the BMW X5 and the Range Rover Sport.  

The Grand Cherokee isn’t as quick as those rivals when you floor the accelerator pedal, although it can do 0-62mph in a very respectable 6.3 seconds.

So far, we’ve driven it on smooth roads in southern Spain, and ride comfort was fairly impressive. There’s a bit more shimmy at motorway speeds than in the best rivals, but bigger obstacles, including speed bumps, are dealt with impressively. The UK’s potholed roads will prove more of a challenge.

You wouldn’t expect a luxury SUV to corner like a hot hatch but even by class standards it feels quite heavy and doesn’t like being asked to change direction quickly. It certainly prefers munching miles on a long, straight road to meandering along a country lane.

It's seriously impressive off road, though. Thanks to standard air suspension with five-stage adjustable ride height, it has up to 275mm of ground clearance. That’s almost an exact match for the Range Rover Sport P440e and significantly more than most other rivals.

A short front overhang means it has a higher maximum approach angle than the Sport, although its maximum wading depth is lower (600mm vs 900mm).

The interior of the Jeep Grand Cherokee has all the right ingredients, including acres of leather, open-grain wood and piano-black finishes. However, it doesn’t have the upmarket ambience of a Range Rover Sport or the rock-solid build quality of an Audi Q7 or BMW X5. It is, on the whole, a little disappointing for a luxury SUV.

The driving position is good, though, thanks to a comfortable, supportive seat and lots of electric adjustment. You don’t feel quite as far from the road as you do in some rivals (you’ll either like that or you won’t) but otherwise there’s little to grumble about when it comes to the fundamental seating position. 

The air-con controls are set fairly low down on the dashboard, meaning you have to cast your gaze a long way from the road to see them. At least they’re physical (rather than touch-sensitive) so you soon learn to find them by feel.

Less impressive is the infotainment system – especially given the model's price and the competition it’s up against. The 10.1in touchscreen is small by modern standards, which in turn means some of the icons are quite dinky. The definition of the screen could also be better.

There's another 10in touchscreen on the passenger side of the car, which is polarised so the driver can't see what's displayed on it. That means whoever you’re ferrying around can help input sat-nav directions or even plug a PlayStation into the HDMI port and play Gran Turismo.

You get Android Auto and Apple CarPlay as standard, along with a punchy McIntosh sound system, but overall the infotainment set-up is one of the least impressive in the class.

At almost five metres long, the Jeep Grand Cherokee is, unsurprisingly, a practical car compared with, say, a Ford Fiesta or VW Golf. However, compared with other luxury SUVs it doesn’t really excel.

For starters, like the Range Rover Sport it’s only offered in five-seat form in the UK. The Audi Q7 and the Volvo XC90 are available as seven-seaters – as is the slightly pricier BMW X7.

And while there’s plenty of leg room in the back, head room is restricted by the standard panoramic glass roof. A six-footer will probably find their head touching the ceiling if they sit upright. You can get around that to an extent by reclining the rear seatbacks for a more laid back seating position.

The floor is rather high relative to the seat bases, so taller rear passenger will feel as though their knees are being pushed up towards their chins, with minimal under-thigh support as a result. Foot space under the front seats could be more generous too.

Front space is more impressive, and two six-footers won’t feel remotely cramped. There are also loads of storage areas dotted around the interior.

The boot certainly isn’t small – it’s bigger than in the Lexus RX – but the Range Rover Sport and Audi Q7 can carry significantly more clobber. The rear seats can be folded down in a 60/40 split when you need to carry more.

The biggest issue with the Jeep Grand Cherokee is that it's not really designed for the European market. In the UK, plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) only really make sense if you’re looking to save money on company car tax and rivals offer drastically lower bills because of their lower CO2 emissions and longer electric ranges.

For context, a Range Rover Sport P440e will cost company car drivers less than half the amount in salary sacrifices, despite having a slightly higher list price.

The Grand Cherokee doesn’t make a whole heap of sense if you’re buying privately, either, mainly because it’s predicted to depreciate more quickly than its luxury SUV rivals – not just the Range Rover Sport, but also the BMW X5 and the Lexus RX.

Cheaper trim levels will soon be offered, which will at least make the asking price a little more palatable. And the Summit Reserve version that’s on sale right now is incredibly well equipped, with 21in alloys, four-zone climate control, massaging front seats, a digital rear-view mirror and a head-up display included.

The model was awarded a five-star safety rating by Euro NCAP and scored particularly high marks for crash protection of children in the back. You also get lots of aids to prevent you from having an accident in the first place, including automatic emergency braking (AEB), Intersection Collision Assist and traffic-sign recognition. 

Rather less impressive is the Jeep reliability record. It finished bottom out of 32 brands in the 2022 What Car? Reliability Survey (below even Land Rover). The Grand Cherokee wasn’t on sale at the time of the survey, so could potentially be much more dependable – but it seems unlikely.

Unlike the Range Rover Sport, the Grand Cherokee doesn’t have a CCS port for quick charging of the battery. It can accept a maximum of 7.4kW, meaning a full (0-100%) charge using a regular home wallbox will take around three hours.

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