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Vehicle Tests > Driven - Different Strokes
Driven - Different Strokes
Issue: August 2009
Words and Photos by Robert Pepper
The small-4WD segment is fiercely competitive, so cars need to be special to stand out.
If you're shopping for a small no-low-range off roader it's a choice made difficult by the sheer quantity of cars on the market. If all you want is a wheeled box to get A to B, then take your pick, but many of these vehicles are the motoring equivalent of a boiled potato; they make perfect sense but are as interesting as watching paint dry or reading articles full of clichés. If on the other hand you want something more exciting then the field narrows, and then if you also want off-road capability your choices are surprisingly few. One of those will be the Jeep Patriot, and after taking one to the Jeep Muster we bring you this report.
First thing to say that the Patriot is Jeep-different, and you're either going to love or hate it for that reason, but either way you have to respect it just for being cool. It looks different to the average small vehicle, then you get inside and there's the typically American seating position with high, smallish windows. Short drivers may need a periscope to see over the bonnet. To indicate how divisive cars of this nature can be, I thought the interior was quite stylish and functional, whereas Mrs P disagreed on both counts. We did agree it's well built all round. Visibility in any direction isn't great, especially to the rear and there was no camera or parking sensor in this vehicle.
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The front seats were universally acclaimed as being very comfortable and are heated. This is no gimmick in wintry Victorian weather, it's an option we'd gladly tick. The centre storage console is tiny, glovebox not huge and the door pockets quite small - laughably so on the rear doors. The park brake is not the easiest to operate but all other controls fall easily to hand. Again, just to be different, Jeep place their audio steering wheel controls on the back of the wheel not the front. Another love or hate thing, and this time I'm in the latter camp. Something else in the hate section is the usual myriad Jeep Beeps whenever the car decides you're being dangerous, for example opening the door with the engine running. The car will lock the doors automatically, and first time out it took a while to get above the auto-lock speed in heavy traffic. When that speed was exceeded it coincided with a lull in the music and as the doors locked with such an abruptly loud click I thought I'd been shot - but then it's a Jeep, not a Hummer so that's unlikely. The auto-lock can be disabled via the personal settings, a display that also shows the usual fuel consumption and other useful information. Something very cool and worthwhile is the tyre pressure monitoring system; better than the one in the Wrangler, this one shows you the tyre pressures of all four wheels, all the time. A great safety feature and one which should be standard in all vehicles. Other safety pluses are the important features of ABS with EBD, curtain airbags and stability control.
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Words and Photos by Robert Pepper
The small-4WD segment is fiercely competitive, so cars need to be special to stand out.
If you're shopping for a small no-low-range off roader it's a choice made difficult by the sheer quantity of cars on the market. If all you want is a wheeled box to get A to B, then take your pick, but many of these vehicles are the motoring equivalent of a boiled potato; they make perfect sense but are as interesting as watching paint dry or reading articles full of clichés. If on the other hand you want something more exciting then the field narrows, and then if you also want off-road capability your choices are surprisingly few. One of those will be the Jeep Patriot, and after taking one to the Jeep Muster we bring you this report.
First thing to say that the Patriot is Jeep-different, and you're either going to love or hate it for that reason, but either way you have to respect it just for being cool. It looks different to the average small vehicle, then you get inside and there's the typically American seating position with high, smallish windows. Short drivers may need a periscope to see over the bonnet. To indicate how divisive cars of this nature can be, I thought the interior was quite stylish and functional, whereas Mrs P disagreed on both counts. We did agree it's well built all round. Visibility in any direction isn't great, especially to the rear and there was no camera or parking sensor in this vehicle.
read on below advertisement
The front seats were universally acclaimed as being very comfortable and are heated. This is no gimmick in wintry Victorian weather, it's an option we'd gladly tick. The centre storage console is tiny, glovebox not huge and the door pockets quite small - laughably so on the rear doors. The park brake is not the easiest to operate but all other controls fall easily to hand. Again, just to be different, Jeep place their audio steering wheel controls on the back of the wheel not the front. Another love or hate thing, and this time I'm in the latter camp. Something else in the hate section is the usual myriad Jeep Beeps whenever the car decides you're being dangerous, for example opening the door with the engine running. The car will lock the doors automatically, and first time out it took a while to get above the auto-lock speed in heavy traffic. When that speed was exceeded it coincided with a lull in the music and as the doors locked with such an abruptly loud click I thought I'd been shot - but then it's a Jeep, not a Hummer so that's unlikely. The auto-lock can be disabled via the personal settings, a display that also shows the usual fuel consumption and other useful information. Something very cool and worthwhile is the tyre pressure monitoring system; better than the one in the Wrangler, this one shows you the tyre pressures of all four wheels, all the time. A great safety feature and one which should be standard in all vehicles. Other safety pluses are the important features of ABS with EBD, curtain airbags and stability control.
next page »
