#wagoneer

Despite electrification taking over the national conversation, the automotive world isn’t going electric overnight. The transition to an electrified future will be a multi-step process that includes shifting away from fuel-thirsty powertrain configurations in favor of more efficient turbocharged and hybrid engines. Some automakers are taking that step already, and a new report suggests that Jeep could be next.

Automakers seem to love the idea of subbrands.

The most recent one to make this sort of shift -- Land Rover.

What I can't figure out is: Why?

The consensus, at least among us shrimp-sucking keyboard warriors who get paid to review cars, is that the Jeep Wagoneer is a bit of a flop, mostly due to an oddly-proportioned exterior design.

Sure, the overfed journo writes between bites of shellfish, the Wagoneer has a nice interior, an excellent stereo, and an unobjectionable, if unremarkable powertrain. But its looks frighten small dogs.

Preparing for a future in which there are a lot more batteries than spark plugs, Jeep has whipped the covers off a trio of electrified vehicles bound for the American market – and at least two of the all-electrics will be stateside in 2024.

Michigan residents living near the Stellantis Warren Truck Assembly Plant have been complaining for some time now about a fetid odor emanating from the facility, a stink that seems to have started after the place was outfitted for production of the new Wagoneer and Grand Wagoneer. Investigations pointed fingers at the facility’s paint shop and the state hit Stellantis with an air quality violation.

Now, the company says it has completed the installation of missing ductwork and has done so a couple of weeks ahead of schedule.

Jeep has decided to jump in the expensive end of the SUV pool with the truck-based Wagoneer and Grand Wagoneer. By now you’ve read Tim’s reviews of the brutes and had time to make up your mind if Jeep is on the right track or not with its ‘different lengths of sausage’ approach to styling. Hey, it works for Audi.

Drilling down into the minutiae of trims and features is always fun. Let’s see if we can parse The Right Spec from the maze of options on offer in this segment’s newest player.

The reviews are breaking today on the new Jeep Grand Wagoneer. As Jeep resurrects one of its most historical full-size nameplates from a three-decade slumber, it’s getting a lot of positive press coverage. But Jeep is in for a world of disappointment in a couple of years.

The differences between the 2022 Jeep Grand Wagoneer and the 2022 Jeep Wagoneer aren’t many.

The latter has a smaller-displacement V8, less power, an available 4×2 drive train, a cheaper price tag, and isn’t quite as deluxe. But it’s still upscale – just not quite as much as the SUV with Grand as part of the moniker.

That means the overall experience of driving the Wagoneer isn’t too different from the Grand Wagoneer, yet there are still some noticeable variations.

When the invite hit to drive the 2022 Jeep Wagoneer and Grand Wagoneer hit my inbox, I found myself a tad surprised by the location – New York City.

Or, to be precise, the roads outside the city in the Hudson Valley and Westchester County. We’d merely be laying our heads in Manhattan, with the real action taking place in the suburbs. With brief forays into strange lands named New Jersey and Connecticut.

There’s a reason why so many first drives are held in California – good roads and good weather. It’s the same reason why drives don’t take place as often in places like New York, Chicago, or even Detroit. The roads aren’t as fun to drive and are often in bad shape, and the weather is less predictable. Events that involve the (mostly) controlled environment of a track are an exception, of course.

The endless tease is over. The Jeep Wagoneer and Grand Wagoneer are finally here.

It feels like we’ve been talking about this vehicle forever. We’ve covered it ad nauseam, I saw an undisguised prototype up close at a (COVID safe) outdoor event hosted by Chrysler last fall, and we’ve debated its merits in Slack more than once. I’ll let you guess which staffer liked/disliked it.

It should come as no shock that the loftiest Jeep Grand Wagoneer will crest the six-figure mark; the automaker said as much when it announced its intention to resurrect the bygone range-topper. It’s not like Cadillac and Lincoln aren’t nudging that barrier (or breaking through it) already.

But getting into a full-size Jeep next year doesn’t have to carry such a high cost. On the same day it revealed its damn-near-production-ready Grand Wagoneer Concept, the automaker talked price.

Jeep’s playing the long game with its Wagoneer and Grand Wagoneer PR efforts, which comes as something of an annoyance, given the length of time it took Jeep to pull the trigger on this blindingly obvious product idea.

On Friday, the off-road brand upped its teasing, providing us with images of real Grand Wagoneer real estate.

Clearly deciding that the protracted teaser campaign leading up to the debut of the Dodge Challenger SRT Demon was a template worthy of another go-round, Fiat Chrysler continues dropping sly suggestions of its upcoming full-size Jeep. In the absence of a defined reveal date, this could go on forever.

It already feels like it has.

The Jeep Wagoneer looms. So does its ultra-lux sibling, the Grand Wagoneer. A seemingly obvious product that Fiat Chrysler didn’t get around to developing until late last decade, the full-size, Ram 1500-based SUV should reach buyers in 2021.

Will they line up for a chance to take home a vehicle bearing this heritage-steeped nameplate? Probably. America hasn’t lost its penchant for large vehicles, and if you think a shattered economy will push buyers into something else, think again.

We’ve talked an awful lot about fuel-sipping hybrids and virtuous electric vehicles in recent days; so much so, one could forget that a great number of buyers want nothing more than to take home the biggest, most spacious SUV on the road today. Ford sells plenty of Expeditions and Lincoln Navigators, and General Motors decided the time was right for an even larger Chevrolet Suburban, GMC Yukon, and Cadillac Escalade.

Big still sells, so it’s no wonder that Fiat Chrysler wants a piece of the action. It’s frankly bizarre that the automaker went the past decade without a full-size SUV.

Well, that streak will soon end, as there’s now rolling proof of the Jeep Wagoneer’s looming return.