Driving a 2021 Jeep Grand Cherokee
On our trip to the East Coast over Thanksgiving we drove a Jeep Grand Cherokee as our rental car. It's not what we chose; it's just what we got, a nominal upgrade over the Toyota Camry I reserved. It was interesting to drive it for 8 days and about 500 miles as the Grand Cherokee is a vehicle I considered buying a long time ago. Though the one I would've bought was several generations earlier, it's interesting to see how it stacks up now.
Our rentals was not the latest Grand Cherokee, though. It was a 2021 model. Why does that matter? Well, the vehicle was redesigned for 2022. And the 2021 model we drove is based on a design launched all the way back in 2011. Yeah, it's pretty old design at this point. But Jeep has kept it decently updated, with modern features like Apple CarPlay.
Along with being an older model of the Grand Cherokee, this vehicle also had 63,000 miles on the odometer. That is a lot for a rental car. That's an example of how rental companies have changed their business practices since before the Coronavirus pandemic. Instead of trading away cars after 1 year/15,000 miles and replacing them with new vehicles, they held on to their older vehicles because it was cheap at a time when business was down. Then as the pandemic lifted newer cars got crazy expensive, so rental companies kept hanging on to the older vehicles they had. Now it seems like Business As Usual to get a rental with 35k or more miles. This is probably the most-used rental I've ever had, at 63k.
Here are another Five Things above the Grand Cherokee:
Still Tight. The age of this particular vehicle made it interesting. One things Jeep has always had trouble with, through its ownership by various parent companies from American Motors to Chrysler to Daimler to Fiat to Stellantis, is things coming loose and rattling, squeaking, grinding, etc. after a few tens of thousands of miles. Or sometimes way sooner. This particular vehicle was surprising in that, at 63k miles, it only had one rattle that I could hear- and that one could have been a rear seatbelt that just needed to be threaded back through the tether correctly.
Performance. The performance of this Grand Cherokee was... adequate. With the base 3.6L V6 engine it's not setting any speed records. The rated 0-60mph time is 8.0s. It didn't feel slow, though. It's fine for tooling around town and it holds speed well on highway hills. Steering and braking are fine, too. Nothing about the performance is surprising- either good or bad.
Comfort. We found it a comfortable vehicle for 8 days of travel. The front seats are room, they have decent adjustment, and the seat heaters in our vehicle worked well. (These heaters are an option in the base Laredo trim and standard in the Limited and above.) The vehicle was also easy to get in and out of. That's largely due to the Grand Cherokee's unibody design. Unlike the body-on-frame structure of the Wrangler, the GC's body sits lower to the ground. One surprising comfort feature was the heated steering wheel. Until now I've always thought of this is a frivolous luxury... for people outside of arctic weather, anyway. But this trip both Hawk and I tried it in moderately cool Fall weather and we were both like, "OMG, this feels so good, have my hands always been this cold?!?!' 🤣
Technology. It was satisfying that this car has Apple CarPlay standard. Connecting our phones was easy. And the system was reliable- unlike some other CarPlay equipped cars we've rented recently, where sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't and there's no rhyme or reason why. One bothersome issue with car designers moving controls into the touch screen that's part of CarPlay, though, is that too many controls no long have easy, direct access. Like, when I wanted to change how the vents were blowing, I had to navigate through an on-screen menu. When we wanted to turn the seat heaters on- and they had to be turned back on every time the car started again- that was a menu navigation, too. Yes, designers can get carried away with putting too many buttons and knobs on the dashboard. But having too few is a problem, too.
Fuel economy. I was surprised by how well this vehicle did with gas. It hit 24 mpg on long highway stretches and seemed like it was still getting about 21 mpg around town. That's noticeably better than our 2011 Nissan Xterra. Of course, our Xterra is taller and has 4wd and chunky all-terrain tires. All those factors sap fuel economy. I wonder what mileage an offroad-ready Grand Cherokee gets nowadays.
Our rentals was not the latest Grand Cherokee, though. It was a 2021 model. Why does that matter? Well, the vehicle was redesigned for 2022. And the 2021 model we drove is based on a design launched all the way back in 2011. Yeah, it's pretty old design at this point. But Jeep has kept it decently updated, with modern features like Apple CarPlay.
Along with being an older model of the Grand Cherokee, this vehicle also had 63,000 miles on the odometer. That is a lot for a rental car. That's an example of how rental companies have changed their business practices since before the Coronavirus pandemic. Instead of trading away cars after 1 year/15,000 miles and replacing them with new vehicles, they held on to their older vehicles because it was cheap at a time when business was down. Then as the pandemic lifted newer cars got crazy expensive, so rental companies kept hanging on to the older vehicles they had. Now it seems like Business As Usual to get a rental with 35k or more miles. This is probably the most-used rental I've ever had, at 63k.
Here are another Five Things above the Grand Cherokee:
Still Tight. The age of this particular vehicle made it interesting. One things Jeep has always had trouble with, through its ownership by various parent companies from American Motors to Chrysler to Daimler to Fiat to Stellantis, is things coming loose and rattling, squeaking, grinding, etc. after a few tens of thousands of miles. Or sometimes way sooner. This particular vehicle was surprising in that, at 63k miles, it only had one rattle that I could hear- and that one could have been a rear seatbelt that just needed to be threaded back through the tether correctly.
Performance. The performance of this Grand Cherokee was... adequate. With the base 3.6L V6 engine it's not setting any speed records. The rated 0-60mph time is 8.0s. It didn't feel slow, though. It's fine for tooling around town and it holds speed well on highway hills. Steering and braking are fine, too. Nothing about the performance is surprising- either good or bad.
Comfort. We found it a comfortable vehicle for 8 days of travel. The front seats are room, they have decent adjustment, and the seat heaters in our vehicle worked well. (These heaters are an option in the base Laredo trim and standard in the Limited and above.) The vehicle was also easy to get in and out of. That's largely due to the Grand Cherokee's unibody design. Unlike the body-on-frame structure of the Wrangler, the GC's body sits lower to the ground. One surprising comfort feature was the heated steering wheel. Until now I've always thought of this is a frivolous luxury... for people outside of arctic weather, anyway. But this trip both Hawk and I tried it in moderately cool Fall weather and we were both like, "OMG, this feels so good, have my hands always been this cold?!?!' 🤣
Technology. It was satisfying that this car has Apple CarPlay standard. Connecting our phones was easy. And the system was reliable- unlike some other CarPlay equipped cars we've rented recently, where sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't and there's no rhyme or reason why. One bothersome issue with car designers moving controls into the touch screen that's part of CarPlay, though, is that too many controls no long have easy, direct access. Like, when I wanted to change how the vents were blowing, I had to navigate through an on-screen menu. When we wanted to turn the seat heaters on- and they had to be turned back on every time the car started again- that was a menu navigation, too. Yes, designers can get carried away with putting too many buttons and knobs on the dashboard. But having too few is a problem, too.
Fuel economy. I was surprised by how well this vehicle did with gas. It hit 24 mpg on long highway stretches and seemed like it was still getting about 21 mpg around town. That's noticeably better than our 2011 Nissan Xterra. Of course, our Xterra is taller and has 4wd and chunky all-terrain tires. All those factors sap fuel economy. I wonder what mileage an offroad-ready Grand Cherokee gets nowadays.