Can The Baller-Spec Jeep Grand Cherokee Cut It As A Proper Off-Roader?

The Jeep Grand Cherokee is massive. I know ‘Muricans will read that line and scoff, citing examples such as the Cadillac Escalade as evidence that the Jeep is nothing more than a mildly obese crossover masquerading as an SUV, but that’s not the case here in England.

My local pub is twice as old as America, and the roads that lead towards it were already old when it was built. These byways were designed for nought more than a horse-drawn carriage, and are therefore barely wide enough for two cars. Everyone owns a small car here, largely out of necessity. In this environment, the Jeep Grand Cherokee is a behemoth.

I’ve discovered just how much of a behemoth it is, five minutes after leaving my house. Having literally climbed into the massive leather armchair that sits behind the driver’s wheel, I drove immediately into the centre of the village I call home. The road gets very narrow very quickly, and there is a long stream of traffic heading towards me.

I am stationary, sitting here pondering why I didn’t just take the four-lane bypass, but hindsight’s a wonderful thing. Instead I’m waiting for a gap in traffic because I cannot fit between the historic antique shop to my left and endless stream of beige commuter traffic pootling towards me on the right. Someone behind me is beeping their horn.

At least it gives me time to take in the interior, which is an incredibly high spec thanks to the fact I’m testing the Overland model, which loosely translates as the one with all the goodies. We’re talking £45,695 as standard, but our car gets a £2400 safety pack (adaptive cruise control, brake assist and blind spot monitoring) and £670 Brilliant Black paintjob to bring the price up to £48,765. First impressions of the aesthetic aren’t overly positive; the centre console is rather flat and plain. But there are ample buttons to fiddle with that do a wide variety of things.

The aforementioned seats wouldn’t be out of place in the VIP box of a cinema, wide and comfy as they are, and a few taps on the centrally-mounted touch screen will ensure they keep your bottom toasty. There’s also a heated steering wheel, which will always feel like a rather lavish opulence but is no less welcome during these chilly evenings.

On the subject of that touch screen, it’s actually one of the better systems I’ve used. A pet peeve of mine is the way manufacturers clearly consider their operating system’s ease of use to be of minor importance, but since you use it so often a bad one can poison an otherwise decent driving experience. No worries about that here; navigating menus is intuitive, the satellite navigation is clear, and everything works quickly and smoothly.

Having employed the ‘I’m bigger than you’ bullying tactic, I’ve managed to escape the long jam. Out on the motorway the GC is a superbly comfortable car to chew through miles, and although cornering is as unbearably wallowy and rolly as you’d expect, nothing about this car urges you to hustle it, so it’s never an issue.

The ZF eight-speed automatic gearbox is quite uninspiring, but it does shift smoothly, even dropping cogs quickly when you floor the accelerator. The noise from the 3.0-litre CRD is coarse, but with 247bhp on tap it shifts its hefty frame with surprising urgency when required.

But I have an overwhelming urge to go off road. Partly due to the mud-plugging history of the Jeep brand, partly because getting dirty while soft leather lightly toasts my buttocks is a little bit hilarious.

So with the tarmac ending and the dirt road beginning, I engage four-wheel drive mode and head out in search of awkward terrain. The long-travel suspension causes dips and bumps to be amplified in the cabin, but it handles the main path with ease.

Time for the tricky stuff. A sharp rising bank to my right has clearly been tackled by 4x4s before me, so I swing the wheel round and slowly drive up it. The clay-based mud makes finding traction a tricky prospect, but unsurprisingly the Jeep shrugs it off and pulls me up with ease. Over the next half an hour the route gets trickier, but even when a wheel is left hanging uselessly above the ground, power is simply transferred to the other wheels and you’re pulled through without fuss.

If you’re going to do this kind of driving regularly, the Grand Cherokee is probably not the obvious choice, especially in Overland spec. That being said, it’s reassuring to know that even when it’s pandering to the posh mums on the school run, Jeep is still making cars capable of pulling you through the rough stuff.