SA Roadtests
South Africa
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This is the home of automobile road tests in South Africa. We drive South African cars, SUVs and LCVs under South African conditions. It also just happens that most of the vehicles we drive are world cars as well, so what you read here probably applies to the models you can get at home.
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*Please remember too, that prices quoted were those ruling on the days I wrote the reports.
Posted: 6 March, 2013
Published in The Witness Motoring on Wednesday March 13, 2013
We call Jeep’s mid-size SUV “Cherokee.” So did the Americans originally, but changed it to Liberty for the KK series that ran from 2008 until production ceased at the Toledo North assembly plant on August 21, 2012. It’s still being produced elsewhere in the world, so we will have right-handed versions of the current model until sometime next year. In the meantime, the Toledo plant will reopen with a new Cherokee this coming September and go back to using the traditional name.
There is a mix of old and new in its makeup. The 2.8-litre common rail diesel engine is a VM Motori R428 from new alliance partners Fiat, while its five-speed automatic gearbox is a W5A580 from ex-partners Mercedes-Benz, who call it 5-Gtronic. The MP3022 Selec-Trac ll transfer case is all-Jeep. Even its body is a mix of technologies; a unibody construction with built-in ladder frame. DNA can get so complicated.
What isn’t complicated is that it’s still a rugged go-anywhere vehicle that is meant to get dirty. After a couple of days of civilian life, we took it up this other hill we know; the one where low range is always required. The climb was straightforward but things changed a bit when we turned left at the T on top, rather than right. The track got really narrow and overgrown and rocky washaways were unavoidable.
Things became a little untidy for a while. The USB flash stick filled with MP3 files must have shaken a bit loose, because the computerised controller-voice suddenly demanded that we choose a track number between one and twelve. Your writer yelled: “Eleven!” but “she” ignored him. Perhaps he was supposed to push her buttons first, but he had other things on his mind. Once things settled down, normal music service resumed with Carole King singing: “I feel the earth. Move. Under my feet.” Oddly appropriate, we thought.
Back with technical matters, the M-B gearbox was brilliant for its time, but technology has moved on. Response is slow by today's standards, needing firm treatment to get it to behave as expected. It’s still better than most CVTs though, so it will be interesting to see what's fitted to the new Cherokee when it comes on stream.
Perfectly up to date, is the drive selector on the centre console giving users a choice of 2WD, 4WD auto and 4WD low. It’s easy to use, permitting switching between two- and four-wheel drive at speeds up to about 100 km/h, but requiring the usual stop and shifting to neutral before selecting 4WD low range. The auto position splits torque 35:65 between front and rear axles in normal use but can transfer the whole 100-percent to just one axle in extreme conditions. Unlike the old Selec-Trac l that locked both drivelines together, the new version allows 4WD auto to be used for general everyday driving should you so choose.
Safety kit and electronic aids include a pair of front airbags and two side curtains, ABS with rough road detection, traction control, electronic roll mitigation, ESP, braking assistance, uphill start, downhill crawl, ISOFix, child-proof locks, rear backup assistance and tyre pressure monitoring. Naturally, the air conditioner is filtered and automatic, while the nine-speaker, eight-channel, 368-Watt Infinity music system includes a hard drive so you could store over 1000 songs and never have to carry supplemental hardware again.
Apart from that, it has leather upholstery, the usual powered windows, mirrors and sundry toys and it moves five people and 420 litres of luggage comfortably. The seating position is high and commanding and the view outward, through big side- and rear windows, is almost panoramic. Internal furnishings are generally good although the centre console moved a millimetre or two each time the parking brake was lifted or released.
Liberty or Cherokee; the name doesn’t matter. Freedom to roam is what this Jeep is about.
Test unit supplied by Chrysler SA press fleet
The numbers
Price: R449 990
Engine: 2768 cc, four-cylinder turbodiesel
Power: 130 kW at 3800 rpm
Torque: 460 Nm between 1600 and 2600 rpm
Zero to 100 km/h: 10,5 seconds
Maximum speed: 180 km/h
Real life fuel consumption: about 11,6 l/100 km
Tank: 70 litres
Ground clearance: 189mm front/196mm rear
Approach/departure/breakover angles: 28,2/30,0/21,7 degrees; 38,2 degrees approach with air dam removed
Wading depth: 483mm
Warranty and maintenance plan: 3 years/100 000 km
This is a one-man show, which means that road test cars entrusted to me are driven only by me. Some reviewers hand test cars over to their partners to use as day-to-day transport and barely experience them for themselves.
What this means to you is that every car reviewed is given my own personal evaluation and receives my own seat of the pants judgement - no second hand input here.
Every car goes through real world testing; on city streets littered with potholes, speed bumps and rumble strips, on freeways and if its profile demands, dirt roads as well.
My articles appear every Wednesday in the motoring pages of The Witness, South Africa's oldest continuously running newspaper, and occasionally on Saturdays in Weekend Witness as well. I drive eight to ten vehicles most months of the year (press cars are withdrawn over the festive season - wonder why?) so not everything gets published in the paper. Those that are, get a tagline but the rest is virgin, unpublished and unedited by the political-correctness police. Hope you like what you see, because there are no commercial interests at work here. As quite a few readers have found, I answer every serious enquiry from my home email address, with my phone numbers attached, so they can see I do actually exist.
I am based in Pietermaritzburg, KZN, South Africa. This is the central hub of the KZN Midlands farming community; the place farmers go to buy their supplies and equipment, truck their goods to market, send their kids to school and go to kick back and relax.
So occasionally a cow, a goat or a horse may add a little local colour by finding its way into the story or one of the pictures. It's all part of the ambience!
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SA Roadtests
South Africa
ctjag8