Top Luxury Cars | 2009 Sneak Preview: 2011 Jeep Grand Cherokee

2011 Jeep Grand Cherokee

The first alimony check rolls in.

Ironically, it's only years after the big divorce that the Jeep brand finally benefits from the DaimlerChrysler marriage. An all-new Jeep Grand Cherokee debuts for 2011, and it now shares its underpinnings with the Mercedes-Benz M-class SUV. Better late than never, we suppose.

A new 3.6-liter replaces the previous 3.7-liter as the base V-6. It produces 280 hp and 260 lb-ft of torque (up significantly from the old lump's 210 and 235) and returns 11 percent better fuel economy, thanks in part to variable valve timing. The optional 360-hp, 5.7-liter Hemi V-8 returns to the playground, and both engines are paired with a five-speed automatic transmission and either rear- or four-wheel drive.

An optional Quadra-Lift air suspension (inherited from Mercedes) can raise the Grand Cherokee's ride height, increasing approach, departure, and breakover angles for even more off-road credibility. No longer constrained by the Commander, Jeep's mainstay family hauler has room to grow - and so the new Grand Cherokee is 1.8 inches longer, 3 inches wider, and, most important, rides on a wheelbase that's 5.3 inches longer. That last measurement contributes to a significant increase in rear-seat room, a welcome improvement over today's cramped bench. Jeep promises more soft-touch plastics and a higher quality interior, as well as an available Alpine sound system.

STAYIN' ALIVE, AT LEAST IN SOME FORM: The Grand Cherokee's styling is purely evolutionary, but Chrysler knows not to mess with a good thing - as the company faces extinction, it's Jeep that's most likely to survive.

Top Luxury Cars | Land Rover Discovery 4 (2010) : Land Rover Range Rover is awash in new power and tech

Land Rover Discovery 4 (2010): first official photos

By Tim Pollard

First Official Pictures

Land Rover is today unveiling a family of gently chiselled full-size 4x4s – think of it as Solihull’s answer to the changing zeitgeist and the next step in Land Rover’s greening of its range. The new Discovery gains a clean new diesel and can now claim a 30mpg average; there’s also a new interior and an exterior facelift – enough to warrant a new Discovery 4 badge.

The big news under the bonnet of Discovery 4 is the arrival of the new Jaguar Land Rover 3.0-litre V6 diesel. It’s an evolution of the current 2.7 TDV6 (which continues for base-end versions) and is equipped with the very latest in common-rail technology and a particulate filter to trim emissions to 244g/km, meet EU5 exhuast limits not due in until 2011, and hit an average of 30.4mpg.
So the new Land Rover Discovery 4 is a tad cleaner… hardly an eco saint though!

True, but the Discovery 4 gobbles around 10% less fuel than before; remember these 4x4 behemoths weigh in at a sturdy 2.7 tonnes or so. That kerbweight hasn’t really been addressed in this facelift – lighter weight Land Rovers won’t arrive until the next generation of all-new models arrive in the next decade, utilising lighter weight construction methods.

Only the two turbodiesels will be sold in the UK, although overseas markets will be offered the new naturally aspirated 5.0-litre V8. The 3.0 TDV6 offers an impressive range of talents, with 29% more power (242bhp) and 36% more torque (443lb ft) than the breathless 2.7. That’ll be why it chops a quarter off its 0-60mph time, now achieved in 9.0sec.

It’s a new Land Rover. Guess it’ll go off road?

You bet. The Terrain Response system is updated with a new soft-sand setting. Perfect if you happen to live near a desert or are a part-time lifeguard. A new rock crawl setting is added (handy for any lizards out there), while the stability systems are retuned to hold the car on hills. But there wasn’t much wrong with the Disco’s off-road mud-slinging antics – and we’re sure the new one will keep the standard high.

Land Rover is claiming better on-road dynamics for Disco 4; new suspension knuckles, bushes and dampers are fitted to reduce the roll centre and a recalibrated steering rack is used. We’re driving the new models in summer 2009, so we’ll soon know for sure.
How will I notice the new Land Rover Discovery 4 on the road?

Quite an easy facelift to spot, this one. The front end adopts a more Range Rover style with a hexagonal-patterned twin-bar grille and LED-trimmed lights front and rear, there are body-coloured door mirrors (at last!), and  the interior gains a serious makeover with an all-new cabin sporting a noticeably improved material quality. It’s seriously comfy in here: the Disco still seats three rows of seven adults in genuine comfort – not bad considering it has a smaller footprint than a Jaguar XF or Mercedes E-class.

Being a mid-life facelift, Land Rover has added a smattering of new tech too: there’s a 360deg camera system to avoid kerbs and rocks off-road, a hill holder, a system to guide you to your towing trailer, auto-dipping headlamps and keyless entry. All of this enabled by a new electrical architecture shared on all three new large Land Rovers (improved e-reliability is one claimed advantage).

The new Discovery 4 arrives in showrooms in September 2009. Don’t expect prices to change much from today’s levels. There’s little to criticise in the tech update, but are we alone in missing the architectural purity of the outgoing Disco? Design director Gerry McGovern admits Discovery 3 is too brutal for some markets and he’s had to tone it down. So there has been plenty of work to minimise the visual mass of this car, although the actual dimensions tell another story.

Top Luxury Cars | 2010 Lotus Evora - Road Test

Rome or Bust: We flog the new Lotus Evora from England to Rome and back.

For as long as most folks at Lotus Cars in Hethel, England, can remember, most everyone has eaten lunch in the office, worked eight-and-a-half hours Monday through Thursday, and then taken off the rest of the day at noon on Friday.

So a weekend at Lotus works out to two-and-a-half days. In the late ’80s, the company’s CEO, Michael Kimberley, suggested to his engineers a new approach for putting miles on Elan prototypes: Leave Hethel at noon and drive to Rome and back, a 2500-mile jaunt. Just be back in your cubicle on Monday morning with a picture of the car at the Colosseum.

Even Lotus’s devoted, monk-like engineers weren’t thrilled with the idea of living in an Elan for two days. The trips were not without setbacks: Once an Elan prototype’s exhaust snapped in half near Lyon, in France. The Lotus suffered the indignity of limping into a Renault repair garage, exhaust dragging and engine blaring. Then the Heth­el crew, which spoke no French, had to mime the problem to the perplexed French repairman. Hours later, after an exchange of francs and Lotus-branded pens and key chains, they were back on the road, the exhaust system welded back together.

A new Lotus model is rare—about as rare as using the words “practical, refined, reliable, and comfortable” to describe the car without the prefixes “im” and “un” in place. For more than 50 years, Lotus’s cars have pushed intoxicating levels of performance and handling, but a general lack of practicality, refinement, reliability, and comfort often left owners feeling exhausted and hung over.

The new Evora held the promise of being different, modern. The idea was to maintain the rabid Lotus-grade handling and perform­ance but throw in a livable interior, a back seat, more room, and the sort of civility that might appeal to Porsche drivers. So how, we wondered, would this new Lotus fare at continually high speeds all the way to Rome and back? Could a Lotus actually be comfortable over 2500 miles? Or would it revert to its old tricks—shedding parts, splitting exhausts, or worse, quitting entirely and forcing us to hitchhike home? We figured we should bring along some Lotus pens just in case.

After a red-eye from Detroit to London and a two-and-a-half-hour, 136-mile trip by car northeast to rural Hethel in Norfolk, I arrive at the gates of the former U.S. Air Force base that frugal Lotus founder Colin Chapman, now long departed, turned into company headquarters in 1966.

And there’s my Evora, sitting silently in a steady rain. This new model is a stylistic departure from the Elise and the Exige—it’s more maturely penned, looking very unlike a wheeled water bug. Like the Elise and the Exige, the Evora sits low, the front of the car barely at shin height, the tops of the front fenders about knee-high.

Getting in doesn’t require the Cirque du Soleil training that the Elise and the Exige do, but slipping between the wide side sills and the steering wheel remains more challenging than getting into any Porsche. There are still some dollar-store touches inside: cheap-looking window switches, the Ford-sourced turn-signal and wiper stalks. But overall, the interior has a style and quality that wouldn’t look out of place in an Audi.

Firm and snug Recaro seats and a tilting and telescoping wheel adjust easily for a comfortable driving position. Looking out, the huge windshield seems to end at your feet; the view ahead is panoramic, interrupted only by the tops of the front fenders, which serve as reference points. When seated on the wrong side of a car and driving on the wrong side of the road—all the while circling London’s Heathrow Airport waiting for a photographer—it’s always useful to know where the front of the car is.

Lensman Tom Salt arrives, and I’m stunned by the amount of gear he has brought along. Kim Kardashian probably packs lighter. The Evora’s six-cubic-foot trunk verges on useless, so we just cram our gear into the 23-cubic-foot back seat. Lotus claims the rear seat is usable by a fifth-percentile female, which basically means that if you’re over five feet tall, riding back there is only slightly better than being waterboarded.

We head into London, just in time for the stress of rush hour. We’re looking for backdrops to prove we’ve been here, so we aim toward Big Ben. That taken care of, we drive southeast out of London, then crawl in traffic for a few hours, and—finally—we sweep onto the M20, which looks like freeways do everywhere else. Fifty uneventful miles later, we tool into Folkestone and the entrance to the great tunnel built under the English Channel. Beyond it is France.