Jeep Avenger review

The Avenger is a small car that uses it well. Around the front of the cabin there's 34 litres of storage, spread across door bins, the (actually quite pitiful) glovebox, centre console wells and that extremely useful shelf you can see beneath the yellow-bordered vent element in the image above.

Standard screenage consists of a 10.25-inch colour touchscreen and seven-inch instrument display (which morphs into a 10.25in unit on mid- and top-spec cars). The main central one is snappy to operate and has good connected maps. But you’ll just use Apple CarPlay and Android Auto (both standard), won’t you?

The menus set-up is relatively inoffensive, and you can set up shortcuts for several common tasks; there’s a row of buttons for your climate control and a toggle below to switch between driving modes, anyway.

Forward, reverse, park and neutral are also but a button press away. Just be mindful of the magnetic, iPad cover-esque lid for the centre console storage: if you have a bag or satchel in there (which the outdoorsy marketing bumf insists you will), it means rolling up the cover… to obscure the drive selectors. Oops.

How best to describe built-quality? Robust, that’s the word we’re looking for. Even the top-spec car is awash with that nasty, scratchy plastic, though it’s mostly in areas you’ll never, ever touch. Unless it’s with a muddy boot or the fork of a mountain bike. And the seats seem to have been upholstered in rucksack leftovers. Neither is a big problem: it suits the Avenger’s rugged vibe just fine.

The front seats are spacious and comfortable, though if you’re on the taller side your left leg will get very familiar with the wall of the footwell. It’s snug, in other words. Headroom is more than adequate for six-footers, but will adults happily sit behind adults in the back seats? Not for very long. Legroom isn’t bad for the class, but copious it ain't. You’ll only get a child in the middle of the rear bench.

The boot is 380 litres seats-up, 1,053 litres down. Dropped-seat measurements are somewhat trivial as it rather depends on front-seat position. Perhaps that's why Jeep measures it as 2,443… rubber ducks. Us neither.