Jeep Liberty. Independence Day

 

If the Jeep Commander seems too bulky, and the Jeep Compass, frankly, is not brutal enough, then you should pay attention to the Jeep Liberty!

Jeep Liberty. Price: from 828,000 rubles. On sale: since 2007.

 

It must be admitted that the dark green color of the Liberty suits this crossover very well. It immediately evokes associations with military equipment, whose reliability and endurance have always been highly valued. The car's appearance only reinforces this similarity. It seems that the car's design was worked on by a designer from a defense plant, accustomed to working with a protractor and a ruler, calculating the angles of armor plate installation. Therefore, the Liberty resembles more of a combat reconnaissance patrol vehicle than a light off-roader for outdoor recreation. However, you can't bring yourself to call it ugly. Quite the opposite: such deliberate simplicity and even some archaicness of design favorably distinguish it among other crossovers, making the Liberty's appearance flashy and daring.

But if on the outside everything is extremely simple, the interior cannot be called that. Straight lines also prevail here, but there is no talk of any simplicity. It seems that, having limited their imagination when creating the exterior, the designers decided to let loose in the cabin. This is some kind of inverted aircraft carrier - this is exactly how one can describe this pile-up of shapes and details. There is not a single element that does not protrude above the surface or, conversely, does not sink into it. But, credit where credit is due, with all this complexity, there is no feeling of crampedness. Inside, the car seems much more spacious than one might expect, looking at its external dimensions.

 

 

The secret lies in a well-thought-out seating position. It is almost vertical due to the low floor, so even rear passengers cannot complain about a lack of legroom. And given that the rear seat backrest is adjustable for recline, we can say that they are accommodated no worse than the driver and front passenger. By the way, it is the backrest adjustment that allows changing the volume of the luggage compartment. It is, of course, not record-breaking, but 651 liters of useful space is a quite decent indicator. If you fold down the rear seat backrests, the volume doubles. Overall, we found the cabin comfortable and functional. The only thing that mars the impression is the quality of the finishing, typical of modern Jeeps. Hard plastic, from which everything here is made except the seats, in a car costing more than $30,000 is perceived as a mockery.

In the base version, the Jeep Liberty is equipped with a 2.4-liter engine from the World Engine series with two adjustable valve timing phases. It is paired with either a five-speed manual or a continuously variable transmission. We got a car with a CVT for the test. It allows manual intervention, but throughout the entire route, the engine and transmission responded so adequately to the driver's actions that there was no desire to interfere with their work. As they say, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. And the Liberty worked very briskly, even better than we expected. And it handled well. The only thing we have complaints about is the brakes. They are somehow vague. You press the pedal, press it - and nothing, and then suddenly a breaking point occurs, and the wheels lock up. It's good that the intrusive ABS did not let the situation reach a critical point.

Perfectly aware that the Liberty is not a full-fledged SUV, we still could not resist testing its off-road capabilities. After all, it's not for nothing that it has the Freedom Drive I all-wheel drive system, the key element of which is an electronically controlled clutch in front of the rear axle. Unlike other systems with plug-in all-wheel drive based on a viscous coupling, a principle based on analyzing the difference in angular speeds of the front and rear wheels is used here. The electronics itself determines when to engage the rear axle and automatically redistributes torque. In addition, the driver can independently lock the center differential, transferring up to 50% of the torque to the rear wheels. We decided to check how all this works in real conditions.

The first meters of off-road travel were easy. Creaking and groaning, the Liberty confidently drove through shallow snow until the snow cover hid the tire tread. As soon as this happened, the car began to spin helplessly, and neither disabling the traction control system nor forced differential locking could move it. Everything became clear when we got out of the car to assess the situation: the car had summer tires! Our surprise knew no bounds. Firstly, how did we not notice earlier that the tires were summer, because even on a slippery road the car behaved confidently. And secondly, how did we even manage to drive so far through snow on highway tires. It's even hard to imagine where we would have gotten if the Liberty had been shod with proper winter tires.

And maybe it's for the best. After all, we already got our share of independence that day. And it, as you know, should not be too much. Otherwise, it will grow into selfishness.

Namesakes

In its homeland, the Liberty is called the Patriot. However, because Russia has its own Patriot, produced by the Ulyanovsk Automobile Plant, the Americans had to urgently look for a new name. They couldn't come up with anything smarter than borrowing it from their other SUV, which, in fact, now causes some confusion.


Driving
A fairly dynamic and quite predictable car with good off-road potential.

Interior
Spacious and quite well thought out in terms of transformation.

Comfort
Could be quite decent if not for the hard plastic and insufficient sound insulation.

Safety
At a proper level and includes the entire necessary set of systems.

Price
Quite justified.

Advantages and disadvantages

 

+ Dynamics, interior convenience, good off-road potential, extraordinary appearance. High-quality acoustics, omnivorous audio system
- Hard plastic, insufficient sound insulation.

Specifications

 

Make and model - Jeep Liberty
Dimensions - 4408/1785/11658 mm
Engine - gasoline, 2360 cm3, 170 hp/6000 rpm
Transmission - continuously variable transmission
Dynamics - max 185 km/h; 11.3 s to 100 km/h
Competitors - Dodge Caliber, Jeep Compass.

Our opinion

 

Both the Jeep Liberty and the Jeep Compass are built on the same platform (it is borrowed from the Dodge Caliber). However, the more masculine appearance of the Liberty, as it seems to us, will find a more lively response among the stronger half of humanity than its more refined brother. After all, a Jeep should be rugged, and the Liberty certainly has no problems with that.