In terms of bang for the buck, few sport-utility vehicles come close to the Hellcat-engined Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk. But even though it’s rocking 707 horsepower and 645 pound-feet (875 Nm) of torque, this fellow is facing two capable rivals in Sam CarLegion’s latest video.
The British contender is a Range Rover Sport SVR, which means that it’s hiding a 5.0-liter supercharged V8 under the hood. It’s not the most sophisticated engine out there, but it’s more sophisticated than the Jeep’s blown HEMI thanks to direct injection and two cams per cylinder head.
Developed by Jaguar when the Ford Motor Company was calling the shots in the 1990s, the venerable AJ-V8 in this particular specification is flexing 575 horsepower and 516 pound-feet (700 Nm) in a slightly lighter vehicle than the Trackhawk. More specifically, we’re dealing with curb weights of 5,093 pounds (make that 2,310 kilograms) and 5,258 pounds (2,385 kgs).
The German challenger is a BMW X5 M Competition, which happens to be the lightest of the lot at 5,038 pounds (2,285 kilograms). The Bimmer also happens to feature a pair of turbochargers instead of a good ol’ positive-displacement blower, and 4.4 liters versus 6.2 and 5.0 also means that it’s the smallest engine on the grid as well. Be that as it may, it’s pokier than the AJ-V8 at 617 ponies and 553 pound-feet (750 Nm) of oomph.
In the first quarter-mile sprint, the Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk hooks up better than its rivals and keeps going strong as it crosses the finish line ahead of the X5 M Competition. As fate would have it, Sam CarLegion forgot to put the Bimmer in full sport mode. He rectifies this issue on the second run by getting the owner to set up the car ahead of the race, and somewhat unsurprisingly, the Bavarian brute has asserted dominance.
After a 1:43 scale model of a Ferrari 250 GTO sparked Mircea's interest for cars when he was a kid, an early internship at Top Gear sealed his career path. He's most interested in muscle cars and American trucks, but he takes a passing interest in quirky kei cars as well. Full profile
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