Jeep Cherokee review

Who’s ready for a game of American car bingo? Good, let’s begin. Swathes of cheapo, tinny plastic? Tick. Lots more synthetic oil product pretending to be leather on the dashboard? Check. Pungent artificial pong of plastic? Oh, check checkity-check. Horrid imitation wood? Check, if you spec the OTT Overland model, which you shouldn’t, because the Limited is better value and four hundred per cent less distasteful. There are also an infuriating collection of warning bongs and alarms that make the driving experience truly maddening, and the switchgear appears to have been laid out by a forgetful toddler. House!

Okay, it’s not all bad news. The unashamedly boxy shape hints the Cherokee is no studio flat inside, and so it proves. Headroom and rear legroom is a strong suit and the boot’s got a flat loading sill ahead of a 514-litre boot that’s good for 1,267 litres in seats-down van mode. There’s no seven-seat option, like the Land Rover Discovery Sport’s, but as a five-seater, the Cherokee’s easily as commodious.

It’s a well-soundproofed cabin, and the available equipment list is comically comprehensive. The touchscreen’s a snappy, sharply-rendered interface, and Jeep’s seen fit to trust it not just with the DAB radio, sat-nav and settings menu, but also the heated seats, heated steering wheel and other such minor controls. So, it’s a fussy system, but impressively useful once you’ve got your head around it. If only the incessant bonging for speed cameras that have long speed switched off or speed limits it’s misread could be easily muted…

Problem is, the buttons that Jeep has included are haphazard. Right under the touchscreen would be the logical place for the screen-off button, but no, that’s where the lane-departure and parking sensor buttons are. The screen-related buttons are further down the dash. And the climate controls, somewhere down by the knees, are fiddly.

The materials aren’t flimsy enough to be called tinny, but they’re not exactly plush either – hard-wearing is the most appropriate way to describe the acreage of rather pungent plastic that surrounds you once you climb aboard.