The Jeep Grand Cherokee is one capable vehicle. We’re expecting it to launch sometime in the Indian market, too, to compete with the likes of the Mercedes M-Class – on whose platform, incidentally, it is based. However, one of the few chinks in the Grand Cherokee’s armour has been its powertrain options. The American market prefers petrol, even for giant pickup trucks, but India prefers diesel even for its small cars. And we value efficiency over performance, so a relatively efficient diesel was required.
That has been addressed for the 2014 model year with the addition of a 3.0-litre diesel V6 that will churn out 241bhp and a very impressive 544Nm. There is also a likelihood of an eight-speed automatic sourced from ZF for the petrol engines that will give it appreciable fuel economy. We’d love to see the two put together before it goes on sale here.
The update along with other improvements has Jeep excited so much that they are going to shorten the 2013 model year’s life to introduce the 2014 model as soon as possible. The new model should debut in January 2014, so we can expect that model to lead the Jeep offensive in India since the current model offers only V6 and V8 petrol engines.
