4 Reasons For Jeep India To Launch The Renegade

Jeep India has kick-started its Indian product offensive with the Wrangler Unlimited, Grand Cherokee and Grand Cherokee SRT. While these SUVs offers the typical bulky proportions and brutish design traits you’d expect from an American automaker, there’s one launch we’re really looking forward to – the Renegade.

There’s a lot of reasons why the Renegade has a lot of potential to get Jeep India the numbers it needs, but here are four of the most important ones:

Affordable Jeep

If you’ve kept yourself abreast of the reactions after Jeep’s launch, you may have noticed that the pricing hasn’t gone down well with everyone. At a price of Rs 71.59 lakh (ex-showroom, Delhi), the most affordable Jeep is anything but affordable.

The Renegade will be positioned far below the Wrangler Unlimited. While we were expecting a price of around Rs 20 lakh, that does seem unlikely as the premium pricing of the current range indicates that the Renegade could be positioned in the ballpark of Rs 35-40 lakh. However, this would put it in the same bracket as the GLA Class, Q3 and X1, which have been well-received by premium car buyers.

The Jeep name does have a strong pull and while the Renegade won’t offer the premium quality and ambience of its German rivals, it will be the ‘gateway model’ into the Jeep family and will offer more exclusivity too.

Compact Size

While the idea of owning a plus-sized SUV is cool, with our urban conditions getting increasingly congested, compact SUVs make a lot of sense. Easier to use, better to manoeuvre and handle, more economical – all qualities the Renegade enjoys over the likes of the Wrangler Unlimited and Grand Cherokee.

The smaller proportions not only make it easier to live with, it also helps when you go off-road, which brings us to the next point.

4X4

The Renegade is no mere urban crossover/soft-roader. It comes with an all-wheel-drive setup but instead of the traditional low-range option, it employs a 4-wheel-drive lock and traction control enabled system. It is also available with the ‘Selec-Terrain’ feature which is a drive mode selector that allows the driver to tune the traction settings based on the driving scenario. Depending on the location and weather condition, you can switch between snow, sand, mud and rock mode, with an auto function available to take over for you.

Rugged Styling

The expected price rivals we mentioned before from the houses of Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Audi are great machines to look at. They feature futuristic designs that can make many go weak in the knees, but for the buyer who wants something more hairy-chested, the Renegade offers just the right amount of muscular traits and aggressive touches to ‘butch’ things up. The iconic Wrangler front design, unpainted front bumper, boxy wheel arches resonate the classic Jeep vibe we love. It may not have the intimidating credentials of its older brothers, but the tough styling traits make this the Scrappy-Doo of SUVs.

Jeep is expected to launch the Renegade in India next year and given the brand’s plans to start local production, we hope to see some competitive pricing.

What price would you like to see the Jeep Renegade launched at? Share your thoughts with us in the comments!