Here's Why You SHOULDN'T Underestimate the Jeep Renegade!

[Music] you joined me out on the trail today in one of my least favorite cars I hated this thing when it was new I thought it was a buzzy little eono box that was pretending to be a Jeep I'm talking about the Renegade and my dad said you know give it a fair shot let's see if you're right or wrong go take it out to Moab Utah go put it on some slick Rock and find out what it's really about oh boy the Jeep Renegade launched for the 2015 model year and it came with a great song and a catchy commercial wow oh already scraping something there what am I hitting on take a look at this I cannot see this obstacle at all because of this black hood bulge oh I'm going the wrong way that's that's part of the problem not actually the trail all right try that again the issue was is once you tore back the marketing you realize that underneath this vehicle is basic on a Fiat and they try incredibly hard to convince you no this is not a Fiat this is a true red blooded red white and blue Jeep and I've always been skeptical of that claim which is why we're out here at Jack's tracks in Moab Utah which is a trail which challenged the Hummer EV on 35s and these uh um enormous amounts of ground clearance and I thought I'm going to prove my dad wrong I'm going to prove that this thing really is just a rental car in bright yellow clothing so well actually I hate to say it but it's kind of doing okay dang it so this has got this 2.4 L Buzzy noisy powerless engine which makes like 180 horsepower but the Trailhawk has shorter gearing and it's climbing this slick rock with this 9-speed automatic transmission with the shocking amount of ease oh it's going to be stuck now no it's not it's still going so not all Renegades are made the same there's the sports and the limiteds and the latitudes and all sorts of special editions in fact I did a breakdown a long time ago where I went through all the trims it went pretty viral but I look absolutely ridiculous I seriously look like I'm nine but um look the the Renegade flavors are very different depending on the year and the spec and the trim now this is a 2016 and the Trail Hawk and some ways that the Trail Hawk differentiated itself you got the black sticker on the hood to help prevent glare I don't know look cool but you do have integrated recovery points down here on the front and two of them one on each side there does appear to be a lot of plastic here but underneath the plastic is a true metal skid plate then wheels and tires were different on the Renegade compared to other trim so the Trail Hawk here has this quite attractive 17-in wheel very Subaru like and then we're rolling on a set of wild Peak tires this is a new at4w by Falcon I've been really impressed with this tire first time running it ever brand new compound it's an allterrain but it's super quiet on the road and very impressed not much you can do in terms of tire size on a renegade so 22565 R17 is roughly the max if you want to avoid hitting that mcferson strut front suspension without going with a spacer you can lift them with like a puck lift but it doesn't necessarily mean you can put bigger tires on them trail rated badge down the side Renegade and red here on the trail Hawk trim and then out back what is cool about the Trailhawk is once again they did give it mechanical changes from gearing to skid plates to wheel tire combo and you also on the trail Hawk version got a rear recovery point which is a really nice thing in this category of [Music] car the Jeep Renegade was in the sub compact class of SUV so this competed with v vles like the Honda HRV the superu cross trk it's now a really competitive segment it wasn't quite as competitive when the Renegade launched almost 10 years ago but what Jeep claim set the Renegade apart was its off-road capability so they came out with this model the Trailhawk right at launch which gave it a little bit of additional suspension lift some more aggressive tires but interestingly enough it also came with proper underbody protection in the front as well as toward the back um underneath the fuel tanks which in retrospect is kind of cool because this segment now is so popular with the ctOS and the Kona and that kind of thing and the Renegade is no longer being sold here in the US but really no other car has this amount of underbody protection in this segment let alone proper recovery points for back you know Subaru with the crossr Wilderness has these little orange things where you can screw something in and recover that way but these are honest to goodness recovery points integrated into the Renegade that's pretty cool I hate to admit it that's pretty cool oh finally we're stuck oh no we're not it just keeps going this is a proper Jeep Trail now and a little Renegade it just keeps moving I mean I don't want to say I'm bewildered and I'm not because I do know it does have a trail rated badge on the side but I am surprised that it's doing as well as it's doing I mean considering that this is a vehicle designed to get good fuel economy and have a lot of space on the inside but not tackle offro terrain I'd say we're kind of killing it surprisingly how about this big rock are we going to scrape I don't know at 8.7 in or thereabout of ground clearance meant that we cleared that rock all right well it's going to get harder up here maybe finally we can Vanquish the Renegade so the interior of the Renegade is pretty Plastic Fantastic lots of kind of hard cheapy materials but don't really care because it's a used car and when you're out in the dirt it's easy to wipe down which is fantastic and it's also a very comfortable interior so this is a pretty basic Trail Hawk we have this little 3 and 1 half in UK connect screen which is still this is this is a bold opinion but one of the best systems ever put in a car because it's got amfm radio and Bluetooth connectivity and nothing else no goly goo to scre you up we also have heated seats and heated steering wheel in this car and there were a lot of screen and interior configurations that changed over the years and they all kind of evolved a little bit it's not a luxury interior it's very durable and super usable look at this look at this imagine that hard controls for climate control what a concept in 2024 so the trail we're running today is called Jack tracks now this is an excellent Trail it's actually one of my new favorites in OAB because it's very hidden well off the Beaten Track and with Onyx off-road you can find where you're at out on the trail and also check out the difficulty so you never get lost and you always know what you're getting into this is a great app it also works with apple carplay if we had it which we don't now look one of the things I always thought was a little gimmicky in the Renegade oh come on baby come on there you go was the uh various terrain modes so there's a dial down here by the shifter and you've got you know automatics snow sand that kind of thing but but if you got the trail hawkk you got some additional terrain modes including a rock mode which is what we're in now and what rock mode is doing is it's breaking the wheels that are spinning trying to send and find traction with the uh Wheels on the ground to maintain forward momentum now it doesn't have a proper rear diff lock like the Wrangler or like even the Jeep Cherokee this era but shockingly it's actually doing a good job of managing wheel speed and then come on baby let's oh wow it did it it climbed that pretty good siiz rock okay we're going to try to two foot it here this vehicle also has a button that says for low and this in my mind is a little bit deceitful because it doesn't actually have a low range set of Gears instead what it does is lock the NSP speed into the first gear which I just dismissed and thought it wouldn't be enough for actual Trail use but the gearing it's it's kind of working like working surprisingly well considering we only have I think it's 180 horsepower and 175 PB feet of torque we're maintaining forward momentum like it's nothing look at that I'm not even Full Throttle like with the Subaru you spend a lot of time with those cbts that Max throttle trying to get the torque delivery this I'm just crawling with typically under a third of the pedal under a quarter of the pedal [Music] wow time for something a little trickier so I'm up against these Ledges in the Renegade and it's going to look like nothing on camera but this is going to be a great test of this vehicle I promise it's harder than the Walmart parking lot it probably looks like we've got these good steps they're probably 8 10 in in some places and it's quite steep so we're in rock mode first gear with that four-wheel drive low we also have our four-wheel drive lock engaged I'm kind of skeptical whether or not we're going to be able to do this but we're going to give it a try come on Jeep that's what we're running out of torque okay let's take a look at the situation here how can we how can we tackle this it's going to be down to line placement come on baby there we go come on come on come on baby come on there you go come on come on Jeep I'm going to have to give it a little bit of a bump here I think to get it up and over this rock oh yes shockingly good look is it a what was that that was a rock is it a Wrangler absolutely not but for what is just an affordable little runaround meant to take the kids to school heck yeah that's pretty [Music] awesome there is a Jeep badge up here on the trunk in both of the tail lights there's a grill in both of the headlights there's a Sasquatch in the rear window there's a grill in the speaker Grill there's a Jeep Grill up here by the mirror on both sides it seems like every cubby there's some kind of topographical map or Jeep Grill this one has both of them and above the screen it says since 1941 and even by the start button it says to new adventures look they're really trying to convince you that this is a proper Jeep which is a little tacky it's also a little cutesy however ever they do have some self-awareness because here in the fuel filler it says cowo baby a little uh throwback to its Italian [Music] Heritage all right final obstacle in the little Renegade um big divot some big rocks here I'm not convinced we're going to be able to get up this but we're going to give it a try trans temp by the way so the transmission is typically the first thing to overheat when you take these crossovers Offroad because the gearing typically isn't there and then you end up just riding the torque converter to Oblivion um we're actually at 187 on the trans temp even after cruising up this Trail for the last 20 minutes so I think it's pretty good oh it's Sandy here going to try to two foot it here take it nice and [Music] slow oh oh oh we're in a big divot here let's check out what's going on I think we just ran out of tire I think the the hole is too big for the tires let's see oh GE so what's happening here is we're digging down into this little Sandy divot and we're actually starting to run over run out of approach angle on the driver's side so we just need a bigger tire to really clear this the bigger issue is right here though because this is the smaller of the rocks and I think it might kill the Renegade we give it one more go but uh we may have hit the the uh end of the ability of what the little Jeep can do so this is a tough obstacle cuz I can't really bump it or I'm going to slam the underside into this rock and while there are skid plates on some things like the rear diff is still very unprotected we're starting to slide off the trail now Bad News Bears oh come on je don't let me down come on F tires do what you can to grip come on [Music] baby come on come on Jeep let's see what's going on I think the tires are just too small so look here's the thing I could go balls to the wall to get past this first ledge and probably run a good chance of scraping the rear diff on the way up but then we got the second linge up here so we've hit the capability of the Renegade on this obstacle is it acceptable for a Wrangler I'd be disappointed for a car that gets 26 27 MPG and holds five people comfortably and cost 11 Grand used I think we did pretty well 10 years later 10 years after the Renegade went on sale is it as disappointing as I remember you know I don't think I gave this car a fair shot when it was new and I do feel a little bad about that because you know I compared it to what I would consider a real Jeep like a twodo Wrangler you know pull the top off solid axles manual transmission this is not that but when you put this in the lens of a small relatively affordable crossover that spends 99.9% of its life on the road the capability of the Renegade is well above I would say every competitor in its class even to this day you know I've spent some time off-road in the cross Trek Wilderness just a little bit and yes that vehicle does have a lot of ground clearance which is awesome but it doesn't quite have the gearing or the sophistication or the the the torque management that the Renegade seems to have at least in the real world it doesn't deliver the same performance that this vehicle does now is it a better car all around yeah this Renegade I still would say is pretty cheaply made and I don't really trust the long-term reliability of this nine-speed transmission which has a little bit of a track record and you know the the list goes on about some of my other reliability concerns but you know for what it is it's very good and I think this car is a reputation largely in the US because they sold these things in I think the millions around the world specifically like Brazil and some markets where these are still for sale they sell incredibly well and people use them genuinely maybe not rock crawling but on dirt roads and to commute to family and friends house well off the Beaten Track and they seem to hold up okay in those environments so no I'm not as disappointed as I was expecting to be I'm actually quite pleased this is a small vehicle with huge Windows that's easy to see out of with a lot of room and an engine that's a little anemic on the road kind of decent off the road though you know it's with this Trailhawk I think it's got over it's got like 420 gearing in the axle ratio versus 373 in the standard Renegade it's got enough torque you know it it's doing everything I'm asking it to do without any fuss it's a little creaky oh and it's a little wobbly here and there but it's really doing a nice job I'm very impressed um of course we paid 11 grand for this the 100,000 miles clean title you could get a better Wrangler TJ or a Cherokee XJ or whatever for this price point you know granted with higher miles it could be older but um those Vehicles aren't going to be nearly as good on the road as this sure this is a little slow and Wheezy and Buzzy but it's got independent suspension and reel brakes and airbags and traction control abs and modern technology so it drives fine on the road unlike a 94x j which is going to drive like a 94 XJ on the road especially when you lift it so I think the compromise is definitely worth in this Renegade um I wouldn't use it as a rock crawler on a daily basis but if you're looking to dip your toes into the world off-roading and still have a comfortable car to daily drive maybe consider a renegade Trail Trailhawk well I hate to admit it but I was properly wrong about the Jeep Renegade Trailhawk look it's not a Wrangler it's not even a Cherokee Trail Hawk because those had a true low-range and a beer locker but for the size of the vehicle and the price point it's very good for light to moderate off offroading especially when you upgrade the tires that was blown away with these Falcon wild Peak at4w Performance you know first time off-road we're going to have to run them through some more Paces but they held up to everything and they really offered very good traction transformed the capability of this car let me know what you guys think in the comment section below as always been Tommy behind the camera Alex we'll see you in another video

Channel: TFLoffroad

Views: 22,948

Keywords: TFLoffroad, TFL, TFLoff-road, TFLcar, TFLtruck, TFLnow, jeep renegade, jeep, renegade, off-road, jeep renagade moab, jeep renegade moab, jeep renegade offroad, renegade off-road, jeep renegade 4x4, renegade 4x4, moab, offroad, renegade moab, jeep renegade review, jeep renegade trailhawk off road, jeep renegade mods, modified jeep renegade, jeep renegade (model), jeep renegade 2019, 2016 jeep renegade, jeep renegade trailhawk, how good is a jeep renegade offroad

Id: vQSVjAMQOx8

Length: 18min 28sec (1108 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 01 2024