Why we’re running it: To see if this new Avenger is finally the Jeep to crack Europe
Month 1 - Specs
Life with a Jeep Avenger: Month 1
Welcoming the Avenger to the fleet - 10 January 2024
I have worried that what has so far been a fairytale beginning for the new Jeep Avenger will come to an end at some point - and that some fingers will be pointed in my direction for being complicit.
I went to the car's launch back in November 2022 so was the first Autocar staffer to deliver a verdict on it. I raved about the Avenger so much that it got my vote for the 2023 Car of the Year - a title that it would go on to win - and my voice was the loudest among colleagues to name it Best Small Car at the 2023 Autocar Awards, despite no one else on the mag having driven it at the time.
A year on, it wasn't a dream; I hadn't drunk the Kool-Aid. The Avenger really is a good car, and not just good for a Jeep. Colleagues have since driven it and liked its character and the way it drives.
Yet all my acquaintances with and drives in the Avenger so far have been brief, which makes this long-term test even more interesting. It certainly leaves a good first impression, yet what we learn over the next few months will dictate how lasting that impression is going to be now the shock and surprise factors (both positive, I should add) have worn off.
To recap, the Avenger is like no other Jeep before it, and not only because it can be recommended for the way it drives on the road as well as off it. It's the first Jeep to have been designed, engineered and manufactured away from the US; instead, its creation was led by Italy and the building of it takes place in Poland. Such is its Euro focus that it won't even be sold to Americans.
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So starting from around 1k more than the much faster Volvo, good luck with that.