Why we ran it: To see if this new Avenger is finally the Jeep to crack Europe
Month 1 - Month 2 - Month 3 - Final report - Specs
Life with a Jeep Avenger: Final report
It arrived to fanfare, but this little electric SUV isn’t leaving with its head held high - 17 April 2024
The whole point of our long-term tests is to really get to know cars over a number of months and miles and in the hands of different testers. More often than not, we reveal hidden depths and intrigue and allow cars that might not set a startling first impression to let their qualities shine through.
Occasionally, the opposite scenario manifests itself: a car arrives to a warm reception and with a big reputation that starts to unravel over a longer period of time.
The Jeep Avenger arrived on our fleet late last year sitting on a lofty perch. It had been crowned Car of the Year (COTY) 2023 and named our Best Small Car for the same year. It was with great excitement and anticipation, then, that we welcomed it to our fleet, and given my history with the little EV, it felt right for me to be running it.
I had been one of the judges on COTY and given the Avenger the maximum amount of points I had available in the process. I'm a big fan of small cars, particularly those that bring all the benefits of being compact yet don't feel inferior to drive or dwarfed on the road, and the Avenger emphatically lived up to that billing on first impressions.
Are you wondering where all this is heading? Or is it obvious? Without skipping too far to the end, the Avenger leaves our fleet with its reputation diminished. It simply went wrong too many times and in too many different ways for the early lavish praise to continue, while some quirks became irritations over a period of time.
I still like the Avenger. It's a fantastic size: at a smidge over four metres long, it's the smallest car in its class, yet it retains a chunky look and feels solid from behind the wheel. It's nippy and manoeuvrable in town, has a useful amount of usable storage in the front of the cabin and has a good level of driver engagement, albeit at the expense of ride quality - which was one of those issues that became more irksome as time went on.
Other things that began to grate included the pretty basic functionality and graphics of the infotainment system (your near-£40k deserves better, although I was grateful for wireless Apple CarPlay), the longer-than-necessary press of the starter button to 'fire' it up and, most irritatingly, the range indicator, which seemed to mimic the rapidly emptying counter from the game show Pointless. The range we got on average was almost 100 miles lower than the official claim.
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I love the styling of these, but it's a real shame to hear about the reliability issues. I also think they're a bit over-priced compared to the competition (the the EV variant at least).
So starting from around 1k more than the much faster Volvo, good luck with that.