We’re surprised the ice didn’t crack.
American marque Jeep has enough credibility as a brand to sell any form of rock-crawling, mud-plugging SUV it wants, from the Wrangler all the way down to the little Renegade. But in the world of high-performance SUVs, buyers need a little more convincing that the brand from Toledo, Ohio has any business in the niche.
So to prove that its supercharged-V8 Grand Cherokee Trackhawk has a right to be called a performance SUV (and perhaps knowing that it’s outgunned on the road by cars like the Lamborghini Urus and Bentley Bentayga Speed), they took one of their snarling, burbling V8 machines out to Siberia where, at the Baikal Ice Motor Sports Festival, it set the record for the fastest SUV on ice.
It maxed out at 280km/h on its run, averaging speeds of 257km/h on a rolling start over a kilometre, while standing starts over the same distance managed over 100km/h.
The 280km/h rating was verified via GPS trackers, and the record was set in accordance to rules under the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) and confirmed by the Russian Automobile Federation.
We mentioned the Bentayga Speed & Lamborghini Urus because, on the road, the Grand Cherokee Trackhawk can ‘only’ do 290km/h. The Italian truck can hit 305km/h flat-out, while the stiff upper lip Brit will manage 306km/h. The overall record for speeding on ice lies with a bastardised E30 BMW M3 with a Supra inline-6 that hit 346.82km/h.
But y’know, yay Trackhawk.
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