We put the Jeep Grand Cherokee though the mother of all tow tests — 6000km from Sydney to Uluru return
Grand Cherokees everywhere
Have a look around in caravan parks and on highways during holiday season and you’ll find plenty of WK and WK2 Jeep Grand Cherokees out there with a big van behind them.
They are one of the few SUVs that blend a high 3500kg towing capacity with relatively nimble size and a torquey turbo-diesel engine, and still remain value for money.
Even though the WK2 Jeep Grand Cherokee is getting on, it still has a contemporary and competitive safety and convenience features list too.
Despite a number of updates, the current Grand Cherokee has been around since 2011 (although it’s not the only; while they’ve had updates since, the Toyota LandCruiser 200 has been on the market since 2007 and Prado since 2009).
The Jeep Grand Cherokee seems to be the gift that keeps on giving for FCA, and not in a good way. It has been the subject of a total of 20 recalls, including two just this year.
Cunning plan
To see if the 2018 Jeep Grand Cherokee is still a relevant – and reliable – tow tug, we subjected it to three weeks of towing an Avida 3.3-tonne, 21-foot off-road caravan.
The plan was to haul the Avida 6000km from Sydney to Uluru and back with the Jeep. Would the Grand Cherokee prove unreliable as the recalls suggest, or are the owners who tow with this American SUV onto a good thing?
Driving the Grand Cherokee for such a distance gets you pretty familiar with its seating and controls. No problems there: its multi-adjustable driver’s seat is comfortable and supportive, and its controls and instruments are there for the driver, not in spite of him or her.
The one feature that, after 6000km, was still not second nature was the foot parking brake. Sure, it saves real estate on the console but given all the other electronic convenience features Jeep has managed to wedge into the Grand Cherokee, surely there’s room to fit an electronic park brake?
It a good thing that you can cancel the rear parking sensors for when you’re towing – and for them to stay off even after restarting the vehicle – which is not always the case.
The LaneSense Lane Departure Warning Plus system, however, generated an annoying and inconsistent steering feel as it too keenly tried to correct the steering when it sensed we were about to deviate from our lane. Luckily, this feature can be switched off too, which is how it remained for most of the trip.
When towing in the bush – even if you’re not going off-road – you’ll want a full-size spare (which the Limited has, although it’s an 18-inch steel wheel, not a matching 20in alloy) and a decent fuel tank size (the Grand Cherokee has a 93.5-litre tank, which is ample).
Weights and measures
After a visit to a public weight station, we discovered that the Jeep and Avida’s Gross Combined Mass was 5900kg (190kg less than the allowed maximum of 6090kg for the Jeep) while the Jeep’s GVM was 2620kg (329kg less than the maximum 2949kg permitted).
With its water and gas tanks full and loaded with food and clothes, the Avida weighed 3280kg (just under its ATM of 3300kg).
The Jeep Grand Cherokee dropped 45mm at the rear with the Avida hitched up, but only rose 15mm at the front (the towball mass of the Avida was 300kg).
The 3.0-litre V6 give much better performance than you’d think it would with nearly 3300kg behind it. Long hill-climbs could be dispatched while still maintaining a 100km/h cruising speed.
On the long stretches of flat, straight Stuart Highway, the Grand Cherokee would get the combination past slower rigs much more quickly than you’d expect it would. It’s a great engine.
The smooth eight-speed auto’s Sport mode didn’t seem to make much difference when towing, and while the engine offers pretty good engine braking in manual mode, the transmission won’t hold gears – it’ll automatically shift up at about 4000rpm, about 500rpm shy of redline.
While the auto could be encouraged to shift up to eighth gear in manual mode when towing in flat terrain, it wouldn’t shift up past seventh gear when left in ‘D’.
For most of the journey, we towed with the transmission in ‘D’ at 100km/h with the transmission settled in either sixth gear (the tacho showing about 2500rpm) or seventh gear (about 2200rpm).
Risky figures
When you get one or maybe two fills over a 300km towing test, an incorrect fuel figure is always a risk, especially with some diesels that get air locks in the fuel tank and so are difficult to accurately refuel.
With 6000km of testing, the risk of getting an unrepresentative figure is far lower – but then, we didn’t account for damn Mother Nature.
With strong (mostly) westerly winds whipping through South Australia during much of the three-week period in which we travelled though the area, some of our fuel readings were very high.
Heading north-west between Pimba and Glendambo in South Australia, for example, the Jeep averaged 24.0L/100km. It was struggling to shift up from sixth gear and often kicking down to fifth.
Eventually dropping speed to 90km/h (for no other reason than to prevent the engine working so hard), the Grand Cherokee was happier – but not much less thirsty.
The best figure was gleaned in the Northern Territory between Erldunda and Yulara (17.5L/100km), while the average over the 6001.3km measured was 21.3L/100km.
We even tried a wind deflector, which in previous testing has consistently reduced fuel consumption by 2-3L/100km. No luck this time – fuel consumption remained much the same between sections with and without the wind deflector.
Maybe we hadn’t positioned the wind deflector far enough back, or the Avida was simply too tall and wide for the air deflector to direct enough air to make a difference.
Thirsty work
Any way you cut it, the Jeep Grand Cherokee had a grand thirst when towing – up to 18L/100km has been the norm in previous Grand Cherokee towing tests.
In its defence, this time it was towing a heavy, tall off-road caravan, which was shod with mud-terrain tyres (which create more resistance than highway tyres).
We tried cruising at 90 km/h for one leg and it reduced consumption by about 1L/100km. If you were to cruise even slower, say at 80km/h, you might do even better (although you’ll drive other travellers mad).
With long driving days necessary in remote areas, we didn’t want to extend them into the night, when the risk of animal strikes outweighed the desire to reduce fuel consumption.
On our (very high) average fuel figure, you have a 389km touring range with a 50km safety margin.
As for re-fuelling, the narrow-nozzle, capless filler on the CRD required us to avoid high-flow diesel pumps on the trip.
Because the Jeep had a heavy towball download, we tried fitting a Weight Distribution Hitch. Unfortunately, the shank of the Eaz-Lift WDH was too long, meaning that the safety chains would not reach the towbar.
There wasn’t enough time to source a shorter towbar shank (and even then there was some doubt about whether the chains would fit) so we went without any load levelling on the trip.
Stable platform
The thing is that the Jeep Grand Cherokee is a such a stable platform that it could quite easily tow without a WDH.
After all of the windy conditions, road train buffeting and poor undulating road surfaces, the rig never got even a hint of a sway up. The Avida has some part to play here too, of course – it appears to be a very well balanced caravan.
The only time that the rig felt compromised dynamically was on Silverton Road, between Broken Hill and Silverton, which has plenty of nasty dips that when taken at the 90km/h speed limit, would cause the front suspension to out and the rig to pitch a few times until it recovered. We quickly learned to slow down for the dips.
The Jeep Grand Cherokee didn’t disgrace itself in any way. Nothing failed, nothing fell off. A random rattle coming from the rear left door was the worst of it.
While it’s hard to ignore its thirst, the Jeep was operating in tough conditions with about the biggest and heaviest type of van you can throw on the back of it.
One thing is clear; the Jeep Grand Cherokee is very much just as relevant and capable as a towing vehicle now as it was in 2011. It’s a comfortable and competent long-distance load hauler, with performance and stability its core strengths.
How much does a 2018 Jeep Grand Cherokee Limited cost?
Price: $67,500 (plus on-road costs)
Engine: 3.0-litre V6 turbo-diesel
Output: 184kW/570Nm
Transmission: Eight-speed automatic
Fuel: 7.5L/100km (ADR Combined)
CO2: 198g/km (ADR Combined)
Safety
rating: Five-star ANCAP
Ford Everest v Jeep Grand Cherokee v Land Rover Discovery v Toyota Prado
How much is the facelifted Jeep Grand Cherokee
Jeep Grand Cherokee 2016 Quick Spin