2011 Jeep Grand Cherokee 3.0 CRD First Drive

This entry is archived in Jeep category. Posted at May 4th 2011

We’re all suitably bowled over by the chest-hair enhancing Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT8, with its compression-ratio gulping 6.4-liter Hemi V8 booming out 465 horsepower and 465 pound-feet of torque. Love it all, but we have trouble seeing anyone on Earth actually realizing its promised 13 percent improvement in fuel efficiency, much less its pie-in-sky 450-mile range. Give us a break, Jeep. Tell us anything, but don’t tell us to embrace this new raging V8 as the ecologists’ super SUV. It has Track mode, for the love of Pete. Say hello to $5+ fun every 10 or so miles when the SRT8 is driven as Jeep’s engineers have clearly intended. Then we dare you to tow anything and afford it. We’re by no means damning the utterly awesome SRT8, just saying…

So, where’s the common-rail direct-injected turbo diesel?

The Europeans have just been shown their next-generation Jeep turbo diesels and we had a chance to sample these latest and greatest oil-burners at the Fiat Auto proving grounds in Balocco, Italy. We grabbed the ones we like the most: the Grand Cherokee 4×4 Laredo with 3.0-liter CRD V6 and gnarly-yet-comfortable Wrangler Unlimited Sahara with 2.8-liter four-cylinder CRD and wondrous six-speed manual. Word has it that the Grand Cherokee CRD is set to hit the States by late 2013. The Wrangler in Trail-Rated Rubicon guise with a 3.0 CRD V6 and six-speed manual is many off-roaders’ dream chariot, but there is currently no talk of this happy-hour cocktail coming our way or even ever exiting from Jeep’s Toledo, Ohio plant. That’d be a pity.