Brute Force

There’s nothing subtle about the physics-defying, 522KW/868NM jeep grand Cherokee Trackhawk.

- Louis Cordony

EVEN HUNDRED horsepower – if it were an entry requirement for a nightclub, it’d fill with only the most exclusive, exotic, or exciting cars. Inside you’d find scenes like a Lamborghini Aventador SV screaming Italian into the ear of a Porsche 911 GT2 RS. You’d see a Tesla Model S P100D scrambling for a spare charge cord behind the bar or Ferrari’s 488 Pista would strut over from the dance floor, with melted tyre flicked around its wheel guards. Then a Jeep Grand Cherokee walks in. Suddenly, the music cuts and everybody stares.

A Jeep with 522kW. It’s a ridiculous idea, isn’t it? Anyone with a sane grasp of physics would lose their mind about injecting that much power into something with a roll-centre higher than a labrador. Yet that’s the brief for the Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk. And we’ve been awaiting its arrival Down Under.

Its bulbous nose shelters one of the world’s most unhinged engines. Created originally for the Challenger Hellcat, Dodge and Jeep’s SRT engineers took a Grand Cherokee SRT’s 6.4-litre Hemi V8 – itself bristling with 624Nm – and redesigned it from the oil-pan up. A forged steel crank was used to cut stroke measurements and displacement, then a 2.4-litre twin-screw blower was lowered into its vee.