Some pretty damning stuff, even the jeep engineers on site couldnt do much to fix it short of adding weight....which just causes blow outs!

Scary that they can sell that car as having 'esc'.

Ah Chrysler...you ruin everything.

well tick those off the list of potential purchases

*timeshift

Adding video to channels (Timeshift) - requested by ant.

I find it laughable that they allowed the Jeep engineers to attempt to "fix" the problem on-site. The important variables are: A) vertical center of gravity, B) track (width between wheels), and C) tires and tire pressure (coefficient of friction). Probably in that order.

They can't do much of anything significant to alter any of those variables on-site -- they are design issues. Loading the vehicle down with a shitload of weight to lower the center of gravity (a little) "helped" slightly in terms of the roll, but put way more stress on the tires. Still, it did provide some useful information to the engineers in that they know to focus redesign work on getting the engine mount and other heavy bits lower in the frame.

So the thing to take away from that is that yes, the Jeep needs a redesign (I wouldn't buy one with that problem), but don't read too much into the "failures" caused by their adding weight to the vehicle. I'd wager that if you loaded the same weight into the Volkswagen and Volvo they tested/praised, you'd get a hell of a lot of blowouts also. Kudos to those models for not needing a redesign and handling the test well, but to me I saw the Jeep engineers simply doing what was possible on-site to figure out what needs to be done to address the problem.

Anyone from moose country knows that you NEVER swerve for an animal, anyway. You pile on the brakes and take the impact. Swerving like that either puts you into oncoming traffic, or the soft shoulder, and compounds the problem.

And incidentally, the Grand Cherokee is an off-road truck. The Touareg and its ilk are/were designed as upsized, slightly more capable cars. The Jeep will fare worse on the tarmac because of its origins. The test isn't really apples to apples.

>> ^Fransky:
And incidentally, the Grand Cherokee is an off-road truck.
True, but that's not why most people buy them.

I have a jeep wrangler and I can tell you from experience that you don't swerve. The bumper is pure steel attached to the frame. The deer that walked into the road got pink misted without much damage to the jeep itself. Some cars aren't made to swerve.

@Stu If a kid runs out in front of your Jeep, are you going to "pink mist" it too? It should be renamed to the high speed avoidance test. We have lots of deer down here and they say the same thing about deer too, to just hit the breaks and take the hit. Of course that never happens as you instinctively want to avoid the crash, so we get a lot of good 'ole boys rolling their trucks over swerving to avoid hitting a deer.

@charliem and @MilkmanDan Jeep removed weight not added. They worded it strange, but read it again, it says "Jeep-Chrysler loaded the car with 470 kilos (1 036 lbs), 132 kilos (291 lbs) under the official maximum payload." The previous tests were performed at the maximum official payload the car can carry.

It looks like Jeep could fix it with a suspension upgrade. The Jeep compared to the other two vehicles rolls farther into the turn and bounces where the other two roll into the turn without the bounce.

I wish they wouldn't call it the elk test, or moose test or whatever. jimnms is right - it should the the high speed avoidance test. This would stop people going into discussions about the right or wrong way to hit a moose which is actually nothing to do with this test.

Maybe they should call it the small child avoidance test? I wonder how many people would say they'd just pink mist the kid?

>> ^jimnms:

...Jeep removed weight not added. They worded it strange, but read it again, it says "Jeep-Chrysler loaded the car with 470 kilos (1 036 lbs), 132 kilos (291 lbs) under the official maximum payload." The previous tests were performed at the maximum official payload the car can carry.
It looks like Jeep could fix it with a suspension upgrade. The Jeep compared to the other two vehicles rolls farther into the turn and bounces where the other two roll into the turn without the bounce.


I was quite confident that you were wrong ...and then I actually read the documentation from the link in the description. It does seem that the initial tests were performed with the vehicle at maximum payload and then they (Jeep engineers or the testing company? both?) removed weight (100kg) for followup tests. So, thanks for setting me straight! In particular, it makes me more impressed with the other vehicles that apparently can handle the increased stress on the tires even at full payload.

That being said, some of this just doesn't seem to add up to me. It seems that after they subtracted weight, they blew the tire in a great majority of the tests (7 in 10?). That kind of failure rate, at or even below the "maximum payload" suggests that the official load ratings are screwed up. The information from the testing team says that there was some discrepancy between Jeep's listed curb weight and the actual curb weight of their test vehicle, and other weird stuff. Suffice it to say that I'm much more confused about their test procedure, the actual sequence of events, and why they were hoping to improve the results from the first (?) test by removing weight.

Interesting comments thread here all around.

Fate Denied - Moose Test has been added as a related post - related requested by oritteropo on that post.