  2014 Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT. Click image to enlarge |
Review and photos by Brendan McAleer
Here’s how I’d like to think Chrysler builds the Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT. First, they pluck a mild-mannered Pentastar-V6-powered machine from their production line and plonk it down in a lead-lined chamber. Everyone leaves the room as quickly as possible.
Next, part of the chamber slides open slowly, revealing a chunk of faintly glowing, highly radioactive material, bathing the entire room in massive quantities of gamma radiation. After a great deal of this treatment, the door slides shut again, the room is sterilized, and a white-coated junior technician comes in with a clipboard.
He then proceeds to make a series of personal remarks about the Grand Cherokee’s mother until the truck gets VERY ANGRY INDEED. There is something of a fracas.
Later, they paint over its green, hulked-out surface, sweep what remains of the techie up with a very small dustpan, install a decent stereo and sell it to the public with reasonable financing rates and a five-year powertrain warranty.
Basically, if ever a car was the Incredible Hulk, this is it. Let’s go smash something.
You used to be able to buy this thing as an SRT8, indicating an eight-cylinder engine shared with the Challenger, Charger and 300C. The SRT’s still got a Hemi in it, but where the muscle cars make do with a five-speed automatic, the Grand Cherokee variant has an eight-speed transmission, as well as standard all-wheel drive.
   2014 Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT. Click image to enlarge |
That makes it, to my mind at least, not a horrible choice for a short-distance road trip. You wouldn’t want to go too far, not with 6.4L of American thunder to feed and water, but it’s a hilariously burly machine, and demands to be taken out on the open road. There’s a fairly new automobile museum down the road in Olympia, Washington, and it sounds like it has a pretty great collection. Destination set.
 2014 Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT. Click image to enlarge |
My co-pilot for this trip is my old college friend John. We’ve known each other since 1996 and, as he has three kids and I one, we see each other about once a year. We both lead busy lives – he’s one of his school district’s youngest vice principals – we’re there when the kids need us, we help out around the house, we do dishes and dig flowerbeds and assemble furniture and do late-night-feedings and coach soccer games and change diapers and do all the other tasks required of modern fathers and husbands.
We are responsible adults, and grown men – and pretty much by the time the front wheels clear the driveway, all that goes out the window in a 470-hp-propelled cloud of hydrocarbons. What a machine!
Traffic coming out of Langley is pretty bad, so the Jeep just grumbles along on a short leash like a tame but ill-tempered Kodiak, while John cues up a little Temple of the Dog. Between the V8 soundtrack, the crunch of heavily distorted guitars, and the howls of a youthful Chris Cornell, there’s an air of excitement. But we still have to get across the border.
“Afternoon, officer,” I say, with my best winning smile. The border guard takes a good look at two and a half tons of midnight-black, LED-swathed, scooped, ducted and flared malevolence sitting there on dark-chromed 20-inch alloys, and then he looks back at us. I kinda’ look like Tintin.
“Carry on,” he says with a sigh, and the HMS Cocaine sails on into the U S of A, its natural habitat. And speaking of natural habitats, to get on the highway, we have to stop at a light on the on-ramp, requiring a brief burst of acceleration to get up to 70 mph (112 km/h).
