2013 Jeep Grand Cherokee Trailhawk Road Test

2013 Jeep Grand Cherokee Trailhawk Road Test Review

By Bob Plunkett

Chunky granite boulders stack up as one of many stair-stepping barriers to our four-wheeling progress while on a test drive steering a 2013 Jeep Grand Cherokee Trailhawk special edition sport utility vehicle on a definitive off-road track for Jeep at Chrysler's vast vehicle test facility in Chelsea, Mich.

Confronted by the bumpy tangle of rocks, any driver might prudently assume that the best way to proceed beyond this barrier would be to find some path that skirts it, but for our experiment we must crawl over the boulders because the objective of this excursion is to test the off-road prowess of Jeep's ultimate four-wheel-drive (4WD) SUV.

Sturdy Grand Cherokee represents the original sport-utility vehicle tracing back in Jeep history to 1963 and the Wagoneer, with innovations like the Quadra-Trac automatic full-time four-wheel-drive (4WD) system and a limited slip differential, introduced in 1973, and the watershed design of 1984 for the first unibody four-door SUV. [Full Review]