Thread: Jeeps Euro Push

While celebrating its 70th anniversary, Jeep is making renewed efforts to expand its European presence.

Late last week I was in Balocco, home of Fiats testing ground in northern Italy, about an hours drive from Malpensa airport Milans, where a special off-road course has been developed and built to put Jeeps through their paces.

It is barely two years since the Fiat-Chrysler alliance was formed but, says head of international planning Jeeps, Steve Batolli, the progress has been remarkable.

He was enthusing about Fiat boss Sergio Marchionnes hands-on approach to detailing which he described as going to a finer level of attention than we've been used to before, adding Its always been a conundrum for us, designing in the USA for other parts of the world. European design is more intricate than American and theres more intensity on the interior and exterior fit and finish as well as overall quality.

Chief engineer for the Grand Cherokee and Jeep Commander program, Philip m. Jansen added that Fiat insisted on an extra five million miles of late program testing that we would not have done.

What is just as remarkable is the flow of technology between the two businesses considering how young the partnership is; the Grand Cherokee I benefitted from drove a new Multijet ll three-liter V-6 turbo diesel developing 241 bhp and 405 lb.-ft. torque although it was hobbled by the five-speed auto inherited from the Daimler era. The Cherokee would benefit hugely from a more modern box likes ZFs eight-speeder.

Nevertheless it performed well enough, riding Italian Autostrada and two-lane roads more than adequately even if the steering was less than accurate on-center.

Interior materials and general build quality are a genuine improvement over previous efforts from Jeep although I couldn't really endorse Wards Automotive claim that it qualifies as one of the 10 best interiors in the world.

Jeep is predicting 124,000 sales across Europe by 2014 driven largely by a raft of new models. If it can deliver on quality and high content with pricing to undercut its European rivals then I can see the brand achieving its sales target.