The 2023 Jeep Grand Cherokee SUV is so good, we awarded it our Cars.com Best SUV of 2023 award earlier this year, then promptly bought a long-term tester to see how it is to live with. But we didn’t get just any trim - we bought a Trailhawk, the ultimate off-road trim for the Grand Cherokee, which for 2023 is only available with the 4xe plug-in hybrid powertrain. Given that we had the ultimate family off-roader in our hands, we wanted to see how it behaved in the dirt, so we took it down to the Jeep Jamboree at Badlands Off Road Park in Attica, Ind.
But it didn’t go alone - there’s another ultimate off-road 4xe in the Jeep lineup, the 2023 Jeep Wrangler 4xe Rubicon. The folks at Jeep loaned us one to take down to the Jamboree to compare against our long-term Grand Cherokee, a Firecracker Red 20th Anniversary Edition, made to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the top off-road Rubicon trim.
We figured this would be a great opportunity to see how the two top off-road Jeeps stacked up against each other, revisiting a battle we had nearly seven years ago out in the California desert. We wanted to see what wheeling through the forest was like in near complete silence, as the plug-in hybrid powertrains allow you to do when you have sufficient battery power and set the Jeep in EV mode.
Join Cars.com Detroit Bureau Chief Aaron Bragman and Senior Research Editor Damon Bell as they take the two top Jeeps through the dirt, sand, rocks, trees and streams of rural Indiana to see which of these expensive off-road machines is their favorite.
Read our full head-to-head: www.cars.com/articles/2023-je...
Find a 2023 Jeep Grand Cherokee 4xe for sale near you:
www.cars.com/shopping/jeep-gr...
Find a 2023 Jeep Wrangler 4xe for sale near you: www.cars.com/shopping/jeep-wr...
See the 2023 Jeep Grand Cherokee 4xe pricing, trims and specs: www.cars.com/research/jeep-gr...
See the 2023 Jeep Wrangler 4xe pricing, trims and specs: www.cars.com/research/jeep-wr...
Chapters:
0:00 Intro
1:24 Capability versus comfort
2:36 Grand Cherokee surprise
3:33 Knife to a gunfight?
4:17 “Silent” wheeling
5:52 4x4 systems
6:11 Coffee makers
7:05 Take your top off
8:05 Full EV off-road issues
8:41 The 4xe powertrains
9:50 EV range off-road
11:00 Side-by-side observations
11:42 Mostly undamaged … mostly
11:57 The surprising capability of a Grand Cherokee
12:51 Dual mode nature
14:07 Sticker shock
14:50 What you gonna do with it?