Not your average SUV
Stunning machine has world-class off-road capability
TAMWORTH, N. H. — Usually, we take off-road-capable vehicles, well, off-road to evaluate their capabilities.
As we did with the Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk.
Except in this case, it was off-road as on a race track — not the place you expect to evaluate an SUV.
Then again, the Trackhawk isn’t your average SUV. It is available for ordering now at your Jeep dealer for deliveries this fall, starting at $109,995. Yes, six figures for a Jeep. Don’t scoff; read on. The racetrack was the new Club Motorsport private facility, located in the foothills of the White Mountains of New Hampshire, about 100 kilometres west of Portland, Maine.
Fifteen turns over four kilometres with an elevation change of 76 metres (although it feels like a whole lot more than that) would be a challenge for any car, let alone a massive SUV weighing in at some 2,433 kilograms.
Fortunately, the course is more than 12 metres wide, so there’s lots of room.
Also fortunately, Trackhawk isn’t what the Texans call “all hat, no cattle” — 707 horsepower and 645 pound-feet of torque from the 6.2-litre supercharged V8 engine is plenty of cattle.
Collectively, these cattle are capable of flinging this beast from rest to 96 km/h in a mere 3.5 seconds.
To keep all that power under control, Trackhawk gets the single-speed Quadra-Trac on-demand fourwheel drive system with five modes (Auto, Sport, Track, Snow and Tow), a beefed-up eight-speed automatic transmission, revised suspension with adjustable Bilstein dampers which gives a 2.5-mil- limetre lower ride height than the SRT Grand Cherokee, 20-inch polished aluminum wheels shod with Pirelli 295/ 45ZR20 Scorpion Verde all-season tires (or, if you want to be really smart, optional P Zero three-seasons), and a brake system with massive bright yellow Brembo calipers which are capable of hauling this rig down from 96 km/h to rest in 35 metres, a distance which not too long ago was Porsche 911 territory.
To make sure your friends know you paid way more for your Grand Cherokee than they did, there’s still a bit of “hat,” although apart from the yellow calipers, it’s fairly subtle.
Trackhawk gets unique badging, a revised front end with no fog lamps (yay!), their otherwise useless space occupied by intakes for cooling and supercharger air, and a gloss black rear valence surrounding the huge 105-mm diameter four-tip exhaust system.
Never mind all these go-faster goodies, it’s still a Jeep, and people tow things with Jeeps. Trackhawk is trailer-rated at 7,200 pounds (trailering people don’t tend to talk kilograms, but for the record, that’s 3,266 kg).
Heck, with all that torque, you could tow Toronto Island around.
Inside, there’s premium materials everywhere, with lovely Nappa leather and suede upholstery standard. You can opt for an even more spectacular “Signature” leather package in Dark Ruby red. Delicious. A three-spoke steering wheel with a flattened bottom feels good to the hand.
Chrysler’s new Uconnect 4 system with an 8.4-inch display includes Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, and is one of the easier systems to work, with big, bright graphics and logical operation.
Exclusive to Trackhawk are “Performance Pages,” a series of screens that allow you to keep track of various performance parameters.
We drove the Trackhawk along some lovely country roads from Portland to Tamworth, with a bit of freeway tossed in, and I found it eminently comfortable. The ride is firm, sure, but not as harsh as I feared or would have expected, given its specification. No need to push it on these roads when we would have all afternoon at the track, and that’s where Trackhawk defies the laws of physics.
Those acceleration numbers speak for themselves, but it’s the way the suspension gets this leviathan around the corners and the Brembos bring everything back down that really impresses.
Consistent with the motorsport theme of the event, Chrysler laid on an eighthmile drag competition on the front straight for the journalists.
Modesty prevents me from telling you who went fastest at 6.5 seconds, but frankly, it was duck soup (not that I ever understood what was so easy about duck soup).
You dial up those Performance Pages, choose the drag option, select the preferred r.p.m. level for your launch, stand on the gas and brake simultaneously, let off the brake pedal, and hold on.
Vastly impressive, with again, the emphasis on “vast.”
I thought going in that the old expression about a dog conducting an orchestra — it’s not amazing that it is done poorly; it’s amazing that it is done at all — might apply to a two-tonne-plus SUV on a race track.
OK, I’m allowed to be wrong once in a while, aren’t I?