2023 Jeep Grand Wagoneer L: Review — Cars.com
(indie rock music) – A year ago, Jeep introduced the Wagoneer and Grand Wagoneer full sized SUVs and I don’t think there was anybody out there that looked at these things and thought to themselves that the one thing that these trucks needed to be was bigger. But there’s still a significant portion of the buying public that wants the biggest SUV that they can possibly get because they have a big family and they have a lot of stuff and they wanna bring ’em both at the same time. So there’s vehicles out there like the Chevy Suburban and
the Ford Expedition Max. And if you want a luxury vehicle you’ve got the Cadillac Escalade ESV or the Lincoln Navigator L. They are longer than the regular full sized SUVs. So the only thing Jeep could really do was to create a longer version of the Wagoneer and Grand Wagoneer and that’s exactly what they’ve done. This is the 2023 Jeep Wagoneer and Grand Wagoneer L. Now what’s the L stand for? I dunno, longer, larger, little bit loony? Still it is longer than it was before by 12 inches. It has a seven inch longer wheel base but
that’s not the only news. They’ve also got new power trains for this vehicle as well. So we’ve come out here to Montana, to big sky country. Land of big steaks and
And if you’d like to learn what the differences are between Wagoneer and Grand Wagoneer best thing to do is to check out our video on that. But everything from the back door backwards is new for the 2023 L version. That seven inch stretch to the wheel base allowed them to make the overall length a full foot longer than the short wheel based version. But all of that room, none of it went to the passenger accommodations. All of it went to the cargo area. So it now has the largest cargo area behind the third row of
any full size SUV. The Wagoneer specifically. How much room do you get with this extended length version? Well, you get more than 44 cubic feet of cargo room behind the elevated third row. That’s a little bit over 15 cubic feet more than you get in the standard short wheel based version of the Wagoneer and Grand Wagoneer. And that really can make a difference when you’re hauling all those people and still have to haul some stuff. But the other big news for this bigger Wagoneer and Grand Wagoneer isn’t just about length, it’s about what’s under the
hood. There’s a brand new power train for these vehicles as well. – Yo bro! That got a Hemi? – No, actually it doesn’t. Not anymore. Now you’ve got a twin turbocharged, three liter in line six cylinder engine called The Hurricane. There will be two versions of The Hurricane engine that appear in the long wheel based versions of the Wagoneer and Grand Wagoneer. The Wagoneer gets the one that they just call Hurricane. It gets 420 horsepower and 488 pounds feet of torque. The Grand Wagoneer gets a more powerful high output version called the Hurricane 510. It
makes 510 horsepower and 500 pounds feet of torque. Both are mated up to an eight speed automatic transmission as standard. And if you want rear wheel drive you can only get that on the Wagoneer. The Grand Wagoneer has standard all wheel drive. Now the high output version is called the Hurricane 510 but the regular version that makes 420 horsepower isn’t called the Hurricane 420. It’s just called the Hurricane. We asked them why they wouldn’t call it the Hurricane 420? Well, you could figure out what their answer was. Driving the new long wheel based models I
have to say, is really quite nice. And it’s nice because of a couple of reasons. First of all, this interior. This is the Grand Wagoneer obviously and it really does feel nice in here. The material quality is good, everything you’re touching is soft touch materials. The wood is real wood, the metal’s real metal. It is a hundred thousand dollar plus vehicle but it actually feels like a hundred thousand dollar plus vehicle. Now, the things that they changed in order to go from a short wheel base Grand Wagoneer to a long wheel base Grand Wagoneer were
more than just tacking on extra length. Yeah, you’ve got seven inches extra wheel base, one foot overall of extra room, and that necessitated changes to like the frame rails and a lot of the body structure, but they also returned the suspension. The air suspension in particular has been re-tuned for the extra mass and the extra length and it really does feel good. I mean, this thing is really your ultimate companion for highway touring. The thing will just eat up miles especially in Montana’s 80 mile an hour speed limits. That’s really quite nice, but it’s just
quiet, it’s calm, it’s very composed. Even over bumps witch there aren’t terribly many of here in Montana which blows my mind given that their winters are worse than we have back home in Michigan. I haven’t seen a pothole, but they still have some bumps and some rough terrain here and there. And this thing just handles it with ease despite the fact that it’s got enormous wheels and fairly low profile tires for a big SUV of this size. The changes they made under hood are really producing dividends for this thing. The changes from the V8 to
the inline six reduced noise in the cabin at highway speed by five decibels which is a significant amount. And you really do experience that when you’re cruising along at that 75, 80 miles an hour with the twin turbo charged Hurricane 510 engine. Basically, you know, purring away, you don’t really hear it very much. You don’t hear very much else either. You don’t hear wind noise, you don’t hear road noise, you don’t hear tire noise. It’s just this calm, quiet, serene highway interstate tour that really does feel nice, I have to say. Now there are some
quirks to this interior that, eh, you could take it or leave it. Some of the design choices are a little questionable. Of course, there is the Grand Wagoneer script on the nice wood that’s on the passenger side which, I don’t care what they say, it still looks like someone went to Michael’s and got some silver letters and tacked ’em on the wood. Not classy, not hundred thousand dollar level of sophistication. You’re not gonna find such things in a Range Rover, for instance. Some of the design choices like the, the flat panel displays here, the, the
controls for your climate control, the comfort screen as they call it here. That’s not so bad. It is a little low out of the driver’s site line so you do have to take your eyes off the road to operate it. And a lot of the buttons underneath it are touch sensitive but they have a capacitive click to them. They don’t move, but they make a kind of thunk noise and an actual audible sound. So that’s not so bad. The fact that things like the drive mode and the suspension mode are actually angled away from the
driver. This is the same complaint we had in the regular length Wagoneer and Grand Wagoneer and in the Grand Cherokee as well. So, why they keep angling things away from the driver to make them more difficult to see. I really don’t quite understand that. The rest of this interior, however, is beautiful. It’s comfortable, it’s ridiculously spacious. It has one of the largest interiors you can get in an SUV. So there’s room for everybody and all your stuff. It’s expensive, but it’s one of these vehicles that actually feels worth the money. Throttle response for the Hurricane
510 is excellent. It’s right off the bat. The thing uses two small turbo chargers. Each one feeds three cylinders and so those smaller turbo chargers spool up a lot more quickly. That means you don’t have the same kind of turbo lag that you would get if you had a single turbo of a larger diameter. So overall, the responsiveness of the Hurricane 510 is really excellent. You’re not gonna miss that V8, you put your foot down, this thing moves despite the fact that it is just a massive vehicle. Dynamically, the rest of this Grand Wagoneer L
is excellent. The brakes are strong, they’re progressive, they’re firm. You stomp on ’em and you don’t feel like you’re gonna have any problem bringing all of this mass down from higher speeds without a problem. The suspension is flat and level. The steering is, you know, it’s a big truck so it’s not gonna be athletic but it doesn’t embarrass itself when you’re driving through twisty roads like here in Montana, it’s, it never gets ahead of itself. It never feels like it’s gonna be ooh, sketchy or unusual. It’s just solid and planted. Really well done. I can
see why these things are becoming increasingly popular with people looking for big SUVs. They just drive brilliantly. So if you’re okay with the amount of passenger room that the Wagoneer and Grand Wagoneer offer because the L really doesn’t give you any more passenger room than the standard wheel based version but does give you a lot more cargo room. Well, if that’s something that interests you you might really wanna look into the new 2023 Wagoneer L and Grand Wagoneer L. Prices are gonna start about $3,000 more than the standard wheel based versions. Now that means that
a base Wagoneer L is gonna go for around $70,000 or so and the Grand Wagoneer L is gonna start right around 95 to $96,000. Now that can actually range, all the way up to nearly $120,000 for a completely loaded Grand Wagoneer which is, yeah, a lot of money but is still competitive when you compare it with vehicles like the Cadillac Escalade ESV or Lincoln Navigator L. If you’d like to learn more about the new 2023 Wagoneer L and Grand Wagoneer L, you can look everything up on cars.com.
