Family car? Check. Sport utility vehicle? Check. Drag racer? Check.
That sums up the 2018 Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk. After a week in this wild mashup of useful buffoonery, we came away wishing we had another one. Copious amounts of muscle in a package that cannot be poo-pooed by the more practical mindset is just genius. Therein lies the edge-of-madness thinking of Fiat-Chrysler’s SRT brand.
The 2018 Dodge Durango SRT is a perfect example of what happens when the right amount of everything is put together into a package worth selling. Its beastly 6.4-liter V8 engine and family-smart design are a great combination. When performance matters more than daily use readiness, though, the SRT engineers get more Trackhawk in their thinking.
The 2018 Grand Cherokee Trackhawk drops the third row of seating and a few other passenger ergonomics in favor of a lot more horsepower and more performance-focused design. The GC Trackhawk is basically a Hellcat in Jeep form, and while that might seem just ludicrous, it’s actually pretty genius. In a Mad Hatter kind of way. Which happens to be how a lot of geniuses operates, it turns out.
The Hellcat’s 6.2-liter V8 with its supercharged output of 707 horsepower and 645 pound-feet being channeled to the drivetrain. That drivetrain is all-wheel drive by default and those who push down the throttle and listen to the grumble of that big engine and the screeching tire results will be glad for that. The Trackhawk, with its greater weight and AWD, is far easier to control in a straight run than is the Challenger Hellcat.
This means 0-60 mph times of 3.5 seconds are possible with the Grand Cherokee Trackhawk, despite its hefty 5,400 pound curb weight. Impressive! Even more impressive is the stopping distance from 60mph of just 114 feet. That comes thanks to the oversized Brembo brakes and grippy P-Zero tires mounted on the big Trackhawk.
The 2018 Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk is tuned for track performance, as its name implies, but the bulk of the Jeep simply cannot be ignored, regardless of how much thought went into the suspension and chassis tuning of the big SUV. The Trackhawk does well in the corners, but there are limits to the single-speed transfer case used to churn the front wheels and physics involved in the big Jeep’s bulk. Even with those, however, the Grand Cherokee Trackhawk will corner wonderfully at speed, provided the driver is willing to let the gut tickle with an anticipated rollover and push limits. The Trackhawk is not a coupe.
What’s really great about the 2018 Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk, as with any Dodge-Jeep vehicle, is its everyday comfort despite its roaring musculature. The Jeep Grand Cherokee is comfortable and somewhat sedate in most daily drive situations. Provided the driver can keep a light foot and doesn’t mind the hood-shaking rumble of the big 6.2L. Outside of the small Trackhawk badge on its tailgate and the “Supercharged” signature across the lower panels, the Grand Cherokee Trackhawk looks like any other Grand Cherokee on the road. More or less.
The huge wheels, fat brakes, and barely contained shakiness of its idle are giveaways too, but only to those looking for such things. It doesn’t take long for the kids to get their V8 legs and adapt to that motion at idle when getting in and out of the big Jeep.
The 2018 Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk is $90K of crazy awesome. It makes family hauling a new-level experience. We do not, however, recommend laying stripes of rubber from the school dropoff zone or out of the library parking lot. That’s just bad form.
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