The fortunes of Jeep and Chrysler, two Fiat-owned American car brands, could hardly have been more distant from each other than they’ve become in the first few months of 2015. After a long period of decline, the decision was finally made to abandon the idea of selling Chryslers in the UK, so you will be able to buy a new 300C, Chrysler Grand Voyager or the Ypsilon only while stocks last.
Jeep, by contrast, is very much on the rise. At about the time Chrysler's failure was confirmed, along came the Renegade, a compact SUV sharing some technology with other models but built on a new platform which will surely be the basis of other products in the near future.
A Jeep spokesman spent some time at the UK press launch comparing the Renegade with the MINI Countryman and Skoda Yeti, but I'm not the only one who thinks there is a more obvious rival – the Kia Soul. The Renegade appears much more butch than the Soul, but they are similar in that they're both what you might call "cartoon" cars with amusingly distinctive appearances.
Jeep's designers have taken this to extremes by including various "Easter eggs" which owners can have fun discovering for themselves. It would spoil the game to bring all of these to your attention, but I do like the little graphic of a Willys Jeep starting to climb up the side of the windscreen, and the fact that the "danger" area of the rev counter is denoted not by a red or orange line but by a stylised splash of mud.
The Renegade has been designed with a sense of humour, but in many ways it's also a very serious car. It has a lot of headroom and reasonable legroom for front and rear passengers, though the odd shape of the luggage compartment limits its load capacity to a modest 351 litres. The choice of engines and transmissions makes it suitable for as wide a range of customers as possible, including those who want to go off-roading quite a lot of not at all.
There's a 1.4-litre MultiAir turbo petrol engine available with maximum outputs of 138bhp or 168bhp, a 2.0-litre diesel with the same options, a 109bhp non-turbo 1.6-litre petrol and a 118bhp 1.6-litre diesel which is expected to be the most popular in the UK. The MultiAir is much quieter than the diesels, though in a strange way the noise of the latter seems to match the spirit of the car better.
The gearboxes are five or six-speed manual, six-speed semi-automatic (called DDCT and similar in conception to the VW Group's DSG) and a nine-speed automatic. You can have front-wheel drive or one of two 4x4 systems called Active Drive and Active Drive Low, the latter including a low ratio range of serious off-roading and available only in 2.0-litre automatic diesels.
You even have a choice of ride heights. Petrol models and the 1.6-litre diesel have 175mm of ground clearance, but most of the 2.0-litre diesels have 198mm, and the most rugged of them all, the Trailhawk, has 210mm. Approach, departure and breakover angles for the latter are accordingly the best in the range at 30, 34 and 24mm respectively.
On tarmac, the ride quality isn't great, but the Renegade holds on well and is surprisingly good fun through a series of tricky bends on a quiet country road.
You'll either like the looks (very American, even though the Renegade is actually built in Italy) and be amused by the styling touches, or you won't. If you do, you'll probably enjoy living with the car, and perhaps be slightly baffled by the reactions of less imaginative people who wonder what you were thinking of when you bought it.
