MASH AND BEANS
AS you might surmise from the 392’s stats, if you mash the skinny pedal it’s got the beans to slap your head back in the seat, I kid you not! Zero to 60mph (96.5km/h) in 4.5 seconds and a 13-second quarter mile, this bad boy gets up and moves – and would beat the tailpipes off my old ’71 Challenger. However, heaps of power are of little use if you don’t have suspension to control it. How does it manage G-outs? Are the shocks tuned for high-frequency, low-amplitude input (corrugations)? Does it porpoise during hard braking? How does it manage tight cornering? What is its return-to-centre ratio? Is the suspension balanced?
Before turning on to the dirt, I engaged Off-road+. Pressing this lovely little button enhances throttle response, modifies transmission shift points, and detunes the Traction Control system. You can also permanently disengage electronic stability control (ESC), putting full control in the driver’s hands without an electronic nanny pulling the plug. It will also allow rear-locker engagement in high range and at any speed.
After a day of blasting down two-tracks, through dune fields and crawling over technical terrain, I must say Jeep did an impressive job on the suspension. The combination of spring rates, damping and traction rendered predictable results during hard drifts. Hitting a set of rollers carrying too much heat (one of those oh-crap moments) we cut through like a hot knife through butter, the shocks sucking up the bumps with impressive acumen. Damping, both compression and rebound, is critical in high-speed G-outs. Too little or too much and things can get messy. The bottoms were firm, and rebound was controlled. Dropping in to a sand wash and pressing down on the happy pedal was pure joy. As for performance in the dunes, reread 470 ponies under the bonnet. Predictable, that is the operative word. A predictable suspension set-up that builds confidence and trust.
The 392 doesn’t have the Rubicon’s iconic 4:1 transfer case, and its lowspeed crawl ratio of 48:1 doesn’t break any records. However, 637Nm of torque makes up for a lot of gearing and we navigated some fairly technical terrain without issue – we were nowhere near the capability limits of this vehicle. I will say I would have liked a bit more compression braking on steep declines – probably the only shortfall of the 2.72:1 transfer-case gearing.
Now let’s get back to that curious pair of goggles on the dash. We’ll call this the ‘annoy your neighbour button’. One touch engages the Active Dual-mode Exhaust, which has two settings: Normal is for when you don’t want to T-off the grandparents, the other is for those times that you want to relive your muscle car days. The magic resides in a vacuumoperated solenoid that opens an internal gate in the muffler. This effectively uncorks the exhaust and releases the full fury of the 6.4-litre V8 for the world to behold. Well, we enjoyed it.