2011 New York Auto Show: 465-HP Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT8

While appealing and cool, the timing is bad with gas over $4 a gallon in many states.
http://fuelgaugereport.aaa.com/?redirectto=http://fuelgaugereport.opisnet.com/index.asp

I still want it, but could I keep if fed?

Awesome specs but... What's the point?

@louiswei, the point I'm guessing is that you have cars like the x5m, x6m, porsche cayenne, q7, etc that sell relatively well, why not offer an american car for half the price, most of the performance, and most of the features. Oh and theres the halo aspect of it that brings more people to the brand.

In the engineering world of bad-ass, you do not ask the question "why?" you ask "why not?"

The question for me is, can it perform better than the old one?
Full tests will answer that.

What about the weight?
And fuel economy?

We`ll see.

@ lostboyz,

Ok then.

But just for the record, I consider the X5M, X6M (regardless of M or not) kind of pointless as well.

and this is the first pointless car in existance?

What is the point of any car really, other than transportation?

Cool car....terrible time to introduce it. MOPAR desperately needs a decent compact car....not a 400+hp truck.

Those are surprisingly high-profile tires. A 1/4 mile in the mid-13's and a 0-60 in 4.8s doesn't seem that impressive with 465-hp underfoot. It must be the weight.

@ gregnv + cr_driver:
They say it will return 13-percent better fuel economy than its predecessor and 450 miles per tank.

@louiswei--

This type of vehicle gets filed under the "have your cake and eat it too" category. For those with families that don't have the capacity to have both sports cars and family haulers, this makes for a nice compromise. Same with the X5M, Cayenne S/Turbo, or M63 AMG (for a lot more money).

However, I agree that there is no good reason the X6 exists.

"This type of vehicle gets filed under the "have your cake and eat it too" category."

M5 wagon? E63 wagon? No?

Those rims are horrible. They don't look good on an SUV, it looks like a hot hatch/sedan kind of rim.

Whats with those high profile tires? The old STR8 had a nice set of wheels, I hope there will be a better option.

http://i667.photobucket.com/albums/vv36/BOYCHIKS/BlackChrome/DSC_0172.jpg

louiswei says:
""This type of vehicle gets filed under the "have your cake and eat it too" category."

M5 wagon? E63 wagon? No?"

Not exactly--those exclude AWD (and this will also provide more ground clearance for those regions and applications where that might be useful as well).

I'm sure it is better in everyway than the first gen SRT8 but it is just too big and those wheels and front end are horrible. I have to say that living with an SRT8 Jeep for 4 1/2 years was fun, but just had too many limitations on where you could take it. I had to have a truck to go up to the mountains or off road of any kind.

This Jeep is one AWESOME looking machine. Every detail is worked out right, and I think the wheel design works well here. I bet that front end in your rear-view mirror would illicit a little fear or maybe a little wetness in the pants, hahahahaha!

"Cool car....terrible time to introduce it. MOPAR desperately needs a decent compact car....not a 400+hp truck"

Just decent? How about great?.....

http://www.fiatcanada.com/home/index.php

As for the SRT8, I love it. Sure it makes no sense whatsoever but that's the point. It's a low volume, high attitude image truck.... designed to eat Raptures for breakfast.

Oh, it's not too late to the party yet. Gas isn't even five-clams a gallon quite yet!

Rather than a do-all, I classify machines like this as a do-nothing. The AWD capability is really limited to impressing your friends in the rain. The tires and suspension are hardly off road capable. For winter driving, you'd really want different tires, and at that point, better tires on a RWD wagon (like the aforementioned choices, including the CTS-V wagon) would work well. The dry pavement performance resigns itself to merely "good for the size/weight/height" rather than "really good." So, I guess I don't get it. Same with the tall Germans (X6M, et al).

The wheel design is horrible. This sort of design belongs on a hot hatch; they don't exude any sense of power or strength like the last generation SRT8's wheels did. And the loss of the center-mounted exhaust outlets is disappointing. Then again, I never tow anything.