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2024 Jeep Overland: Luxury at its best
The Jeep Overland is a big, masculine vehicle that men of means will covet as you shoot past them. PHOTO/Tony Mushoborozi
What you need to know:
The car’s interior is covered in leather and wood. The dashboard is fully stitched with wood and aluminum outlines, while the steering, doors and seats are all stitched leather. To accentuate the interior, there is wood trim on the doors, steering wheel and dashboard.
The first thing that catches your attention about the 2024 Jeep Grand Cherokee Overland seven-seater is its sheer size. The imposing full-size SUV is 5.2 metres long compared to the former’s 4.9 metres and it is 2.1 metres wide compared to the Land Cruiser which is 1.9 metres wide.
It is a big, masculine vehicle that men of means will covet as you shoot past them. But other than its sheer size, the sleek lines that have come to be linked to Grand Cherokees make this sixth-generation Cherokee so desirable. It looks as solid and dignified as a Rolls Royce but also appears as light and agile as a Formula One car; it is a sports utility vehicle after all.
Under the hood
The Overland is a modest car, considering its imposing size. It comes with a 3.6-litre Pentastar V6 engine that is naturally aspirated. The engine has been designed to pack a punch-like turbo-charged engine minus all the baggage that comes with a turbo-charger such as complicated and expensive service. Even without a turbocharger, the engine produces 295 horsepower, which produces motor-racing kind of torque while remaining fuel efficient.
It comes with an eight-speed automatic transmission gearbox with two driving options, either to use the ultra-sleek dial (gear sticks are so yesterday) for relaxed driving, or to use the two flappy paddles behind the steering wheel for sport driving or off-roading, and other situations where you want to control when the gearbox shifts. This flappy paddle shifting, you may remember, is borrowed from the world of supercars and ultra-speed motor racing. Some other driving modes available to you on top of ‘sport’ include sand, snow, auto, and rock.
All-terrain
This SUV comes with gigantic air shocks that supplement the vehicle’s spring suspension using air-filled bladders that are adjustable to achieve different levels of ground clearance, riding height and firmness for different driving conditions. On smooth tarmac, the Overland allows you to lower it so that it rides like a limousine but out there in the rocky hills, you touch a button and the vehicle raises far above the jagged rocks, puddles and mud so that it scales the countryside like a military jeep.
On the flip side, when needed, the air shocks drop the vehicle even further down so that small children or the elderly can get into the vehicle without the need to climb in. This mode is called the entry and exit mode because driving in it would be silly, especially on our non-roads.
Handling
The Overland is a well-engineered machine and for that, it handles effortlessly and inspires feelings of confidence and safety. It feels solid and heavy on the road while it shows the agility of very light sports cars. It is designed to keep rock-steady in corners with minimal leaning, allowing it to go faster around bends when need be without risking rolling off-road. It accelerates with fury and brakes like a true sports car. You can see that they got the sports aspect of this SUV right.
Luxury
The Grand Cherokee Overland is a luxury car. The interior comes with accent lighting that you can personalise to your favourite colour, depending on the mood. The whole interior is covered in leather and wood. The dashboard is fully stitched with wood and aluminum outlines, and the steering wheel, the doors, and the seats are all stitched leather. To accentuate the interior, there is wood trim on the doors, steering wheel, and dashboard.
The multi-function steering brings controls for navigation, cruise control, and traction controls on one side and infotainment controls and phone connectivity on the other, keeping your hands in a steady position.
Spacious
The legroom in this car is simply beyond belief. It is designed not just to carry seven people but to also make them feel like they are in a stretch limo. The front passenger gets their screen (like in the plane) where they can watch movies, separate from the main entertainment system.
The AC is designed to allow the driver to set his temperature, different from the passengers on his left, and at the back. The SUV comes with a top-of-the-range McIntosh sound system comprising 19 speakers, inclusive of a subwoofer. It also comes with 14 phone charging ports in all.
Boot
The Overland will not cause you to place your shopping on the ground before opening the boot. If your hands are occupied, you approach your car and wave your foot under the back bumper, and boom, the boot opens.
If you need more space for a lot more shopping, press a button, and the two seats at the back recoil and lie flat, giving you luggage space that will leave pick-up truck owners envious. Never mind it has a lot of space even with the two seats already up.
Gizmos
Traction control, cruise control, and live navigation are a few of the perks that make this car so safe to drive. All these controls can be adjusted from the large touch screen in the centre console of the car that is as fast and as sensitive as an iPhone. The 10.1-inch Smart Touch Radio is compatible with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto so that your phone and your car merge into one large gadget.
This infotainment screen replicates itself onto the driving screen behind the steering wheel so that you do not have to keep turning your head to look at the centre console screen. However, at high speed, you will not even need to look at either screen as all the needed information is niftily projected onto the windscreen so that you see all the driving info without taking your eyes off the road. The projection is not at all affected no matter how bright the sun is. Yeah, it is pure magic.
