Jeep Grand Cherokee Review 2025 | America's Range Rover Sport Rival

What is the Jeep Grand Cherokee?

America’s answer to the Range Rover Sport, that’s what. It’s a large SUV that’s designed to be comfortable, refined and sophisticated on the road, yet virtually unstoppable when you turn off the road and attempt to drive across a river and up a rocky ravine.

The Grand Cherokee has existed since 1992, and this all-new version is the fifth iteration of the formula. It’s a very popular car in its native USA, but in the UK, it’s not been such a common sight traditionally, as rivals from companies such Land Rover, Mercedes, Audi and BMW have catered better for domestic tastes. The latest version, however, is a lot more compelling than its predecessors in a variety of ways.

The new Grand Cherokee is available in the UK exclusively with a plug-in hybrid drivetrain, so there’s no purely petrol or CRD diesel engine on offer. Range Rover Sport aside, it competes with road-focussed luxury family SUVs such as the BMW X5 and Mercedes GLE, as well as slightly more rugged offerings from less premium brands, including the Toyota Highlander and Volkswagen Touareg. The styling is typically Jeep, though, with a signature seven-slot grille, a contrasting roof and huge alloy wheels.

Along with the rest of the brands that used to be part of the Fiat Chrysler alliance, Jeep now forms part of manufacturing powerhouse Stellantis, which was formed when the Fiat Group merged with Peugeot, Citroen and Opel.

How practical is it?

You’d expect a car this huge to be practical, and the Grand Cherokee doesn’t disappoint. The boot is, predictably, a whopper at 580 litres, and there’s plenty more space beyond that if you leave the fabric load cover off and keep on piling items on top. The load area has a nice square shape and the opening is massive, and there’s barely any load lip to negotiate when packing. There’s even underfloor storage for charging cables and a full-size spare wheel (which is almost unheard of these days).

The rear seats fold down in a 60/40 split for when you want to maximise cargo space, and the backrests lie perfectly flat and level when you do so. However, if you’re expecting this enormous SUV to offer the option of seven seats, you’ll be disappointed, because it doesn’t. It’s also strange that the switch to close the powered tailgate is inside the boot rather than on the tailgate like it normally is.

In the rear seats, Jeep claims class-leading legroom, and there is indeed plenty of space for long-limbed passengers to get comfortable. It’s also reasonably comfortable when carrying three in the back, thanks mostly to the width of the cabin, but also because the middle seat is almost as wide as those either side. There is a transmission tunnel running down the middle of the floor, but because it’s low and wide, it doesn’t feel too awkward for whoever is in the middle seat to sit with their feet on top of it.

What’s it like to drive?

The Jeep Grand Cherokee 4XE’s plug-in hybrid drivetrain teams a turbocharged 2.0-litre, four-cylinder petrol engine with a couple of electric motors, a lithium-ion battery pack and an eight-speed automatic transmission. All that gives you 380 metric horsepower and 462lb ft of torque.

As you’d expect, the powertrain can run in a variety of modes. Hybrid mode blends battery power and petrol power as the system sees fit for best efficiency and performance, and it’s in this mode that the car posts its maximum performance figure of 0-62mph in 6.3 seconds. Sure enough, when you pin the accelerator, it feels every bit that quick; hurtling forwards at such a rate in something quite so huge can result in excitement and nervousness in equal measure. And importantly, the gearbox does a good job of reacting to what you’re asking of the throttle pedal at any given time, so it feels like there’s always strong pace there when you need it.

On the downside, the petrol engine does get quite noisy when you want to get a wriggle-on. It’s not loud as such, but the noise sounds a little bit thrashy and unbecoming of a luxury car. All the more reason to keep your battery topped up so that you can run the car in all-electric EV mode, when it’s lovely and quiet. With more moderate throttle inputs, the Grand Cherokee 4XE will run purely on the electric motors right up to motorway speeds, and it’ll do that for up to 31 miles on a full charge, according to WLTP figures (so expect more like 25 miles of EV range in the real world).

There’s also an eSave mode, which uses the petrol engine to drive the car, saving your battery power for more efficient urban journeys later on, or there’s a regenerative braking mode for topping up your battery on the move.

There’s plenty of clever dynamic technology aside from the PHEV drivetrain, too. High-end versions of the Grand Cherokee come as standard with Quadra-lift air suspension with adaptive damping on all four corners, and this automatically adjusts according to the road conditions. There’s also a very sophisticated, multi-layered four-wheel-drive system. You choose from a selection of driving modes: Auto and Sport are the more road-biased modes, while the off-road focussed ones include Rock, Snow, and Mud and Sand. And according to which you select, the system electronically coordinates the behaviour of the four-wheel-drive torque split, the braking, the steering, the suspension, the throttle, the gearshift mapping, the active transfer case, the electric limited slip differential, the stability control, the ABS, and goodness only knows what else.

The upshot of all this is that there are two clear sides to the Grand Cherokee’s dynamic remit: on-road luxury and off-road unstoppability. And on the first score, it does a sterling job. It smothers lumps and bumps in a really smooth, fuss-free manner, and the suspension also feels quite controlled, so the body’s not still bouncing up and down halfway up the road. That makes this an impressively comfy car on most kinds of road. It should be noted, though that we've only driven high-end cars fitted with the air suspension so far, so we don't yet know how the more basic models behave on the road.

You wouldn’t expect a car like this to deliver particularly sharp handling so it’s utterly forgivable that it doesn’t, but by the same token, there’s not an undue amount of body roll in corners, either, so it doesn’t feel clumsy. That said, the sheer size of the Grand Cherokee will make you think very carefully about how you’re placing it on the road.

What might come as a pleasant surprise is the steering. It’s not the last word in feedback or sharpness, but it has a nice hefty weight to it, it’s reasonably responsive and it’s very accurate, so flinging the steering wheel about is a pleasure, not a chore.

Technology, equipment and infotainment

All versions of the Grand Cherokee come with Jeep's latest Uconnect 5 infotainment system, which supports wireless Apple Carplay/Android Auto, Amazon Alexa, and various other connected services. There’s a 10.25-inch digital instrument panel right in front of you, and a 10.1-inch central touchscreen infotainment screen in the middle of the dashboard. Go for a car in the higher trim levels, and you’ll also get a 10.25-inch head-up display that beams information onto the windscreen in front of you, while the front passenger has their own 10.25-inch screen on the dashboard, on which they can look at navigation or the various camera views around the car.

This all sounds fabulous, but it's fair to say that the infotainment system isn’t the easiest to get to grips with due to its complexity, and the graphics and the screen transitions can be a little ponderous. A least there are some dedicated air-con controls below the central screen.

When the car first went on sale, there were four trim levels offered: Limited, Trailhawk, Overland and Summit Reserve.

The Limited model had 20-inch wheels and full LED exterior lighting, while the interior had premium vinyl perforated seats with front and rear ventilation, plus most of those screens we just talked about. Standard safety equipment includes Forward Collision Warning, Traffic Sign Recognition, and Driver Attention Assist.

The Trailhawk has smaller 18-inch alloy wheels with all-terrain tyres, and a Jeep off-road accessory kit, which includes a rear tow hook, skid plates, an electronic limited slip rear differential, Quadra-lift air suspension, front disconnecting sway bars, an integrated off-road camera and hill descent control. You also have vinyl/suede seats and all-weather floor mats.

The Jeep Grand Cherokee Overland has 20-inch polished alloys, a dual-pane sunroof, premium reflector headlights, a hands-free power tailgate, nappa leather seats, ambient lighting, an upgraded McIntosh sound system, map-in-cluster display and head-up display.

At the top of the range, the Jeep Grand Cherokee Summit Reserve builds on the Overland with 21-inch alloy wheels, a rear camera washer, chrome exterior accents, a black painted roof, an electronic limited slip diff, four-zone climate control, leather upholstery, 16-way power-adjustable front seats with massage function, illuminated sill plates, walnut wood interior accents, a digital rear-view mirror, 360-degree cameras, active drive assist, wireless phone charging, night vision and the 10.25-inch digital passenger display.

Later on the trim levels were pared back to just the Limited and the Summit Reserve, and equipment levels were tinkered with. The entry-level Limited now comes with 20-inch wheels, privacy glass, automatic high-beam LED headlights, power folding door mirrors, dual-pane panoramic sunroof, perforated vinyl upholstery, ventilated front seats, heated front- and rear seats, powered seat adjustment, heated steering wheel, second-row sunblinds, automatic lights and wipers, all-round parking sensors, a reversing camera, adaptive cruise control with stop and go, a digital rear-view mirror, keyless entry and go, powered tailgate, two-zone air-conditioning, wireless phone charging, and nine-speaker audio.

To all that, the Summit Reserve adds 21-inch wheels, contrasting black roof, chrome exterior finishes, heated and ventilated front- and rear seats, leather upholstery, massaging front seats, wooden interior trim, customisable ambient lighting, 360-degree cameras, night vision, Quadra-lift air suspension, hands-free power tailgate, four-zone air-con, active noise cancelling, 19-speaker MacIntosh audio, front passenger interactive display, electronic limited slip differential at the rear, off-road camera system, and a head-up display.

Jeep Grand Cherokee running costs

The Grand Cherokee is not a cheap car to buy. Prices start from around £72,000 and rise to around £86,000. How that compares with rivals depends on what cars you see as the Grand Cherokee's rivals: it’s a fairly unique offering so direct competitors are a little tricky to pin down. You can buy a Land Rover Defender 110 for less, or about the same if you go for the P400e plug-in hybrid version, while a Range Rover Sport P400e will cost you a bit more.

It's a little difficult to predict how well the Grand Cherokee will hold on to its value, but if historical performance is anything to go by, it’s likely that it’ll suffer heavier depreciation than its Land Rover-built counterparts. Bear in mind, too, that this will likely have a detrimental effect on monthly finance payments for new car buyers.

Having said all that, the plug-in hybrid drivetrain does give you the potential to achieve very low running costs, provided you use it in the right manner. The official WLTP figures suggest returns of between 88mpg and 97mpg, but those figures will bear so little resemblance to real-world returns that they're pretty much irrelevant (the official tests are always unrealistically flattering the PHEVs).

For best effect, plug in regularly to keep the batteries topped up, keep your journeys short enough that they can be done exclusively on the electric-only range of up to 31 miles, and keep your throttle inputs gentle enough that the petrol engine doesn’t kick in. Do bear in mind that every time it does, it’ll be dragging around not only the enormous body of the Grand Cherokee, but also all that heavy hybrid and off-roading gubbins, and that will make it all the more thirsty. It’s made a little less thirsty by the fact that the four-wheel-drive system uncouples the front wheels when four-wheel drive isn’t needed, and only reconnects them when slippage is detected, but that will still only do so much to cut fuel consumption.

Jeep Grand Cherokee reliability

To say that the Jeep Grand Cherokee is a niche product in the UK is an understatement of gargantuan proportions, and that means it sells in very low numbers on these shores. As a result, that also means that there isn't the sample size needed for the model to feature in any of the usual reliability surveys we consult, and so the overall reliability performance of the Grand Cherokee remains something of a mystery.

Indeed, Jeep as a brand hasn't featured in the last few instalments of the What Car? Reliability Survey, presumably for the same reason. And that's probably a good thing from Jeep's point of view, because the last time it did feature, in the 2022 study, it finished stone-dead last of the 32 carmakers included, which is a pretty dismal showing. It should be noted, though, that this performance was based pretty much solely on the Renegade SUV, which is a very different car to the Grand Cherokee, and the biggest rival for Grand Cherokee customers, that being Land Rover, only placed one berth higher.

Jeep's warranty offering is pretty rubbish as well. You get just two years of manufacturer cover, plus a third year of retailer-supplied cover.