This may be hard to believe, but there’s more to Jeep than the Wrangler. If you dig the image the Jeep badge connotes, but don’t want to make the sacrifice in on-road manners and overall refinement as you would with a Wrangler, the 2024 Jeep Grand Cherokee L fits the bill quite nicely. For the most part.

Granted the Wrangler has been around for much longer, but the Grand Cherokee a pillar of the Jeep lineup in its own right. It’s Jeep’s jack-of-all-trades: it can be as basic, off-road-oriented, or as luxurious as you want it to be. On top of that, you can pick not one, but two key configurations for this fifth-gen sport-ute—a shorter (and arguably better-looking) two-row variant, and this here Grand Cherokee L, complete with a third row of seats.

Unlike the two-row variant, Jeep still offers its 5.7-litre Hemi V8 with the Grand Cherokee L, putting out a stout 357 horsepower and 390 pound-feet of torque. That’s the good news. The bad news is, our tester isn’t packing the Hemi, but rather the base engine. Here, the venerable 3.6L Pentastar V6 lives on, rated at a middling 293 hp and 260 lb-ft of torque. Both powertrains are hooked up to the slick-and-smart, ZF-sourced eight-speed automatic transmission, and all Grand Cherokees sold in Canada are four-wheel-drive.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with this powertrain combo. The V6 is proven, the eight-speed auto is well-behaved, and there’s even a mean snarl to it when you floor it. But that’s about where our praise ends. The Grand Cherokee L is heavy, weighing over 5,100 pounds. With that kind of mass to lug around, the Pentastar’s middling output doesn’t cut it. The Grand Cherokee L drags its feet on the highway and runs out of breath easily. Until the overdue Hurricane inline-six finally arrives, the Hemi is the way to go.

Aside from the middling engine the Grand Cherokee L is well-mannered and easy to live with. Steering is light and responsive, making this behemoth easy to park. Despite not being equipped with air suspension, our tester still rode well, filtering out bumps and potholes with ease. We observed a bit more road noise than we expected, but it wasn’t overbearing, and wind noise is well-hushed. Even fuel economy gets a pass: officially rated at 13.0 L/100 kilometres in the city, 9.4 highway, and 11.3 combined, we averaged a reasonable 12.6 L/100 km in the real world. Fill-ups might be a little painful at first on account of the Grand Cherokee’s almost 90-litre fuel tank, but hey, at least it takes regular, and you can easily squeeze 700-plus kilometres out of a tank.

Visually, the Grand Cherokee L differs from the two-row model from the B-pillar and back. It has a longer wheelbase—204.9 inches, versus 193.5 for the two-row, to be exact—and it’s about 11 inches longer overall from tip to tail. It’s a handsome truck no matter how you slice it, particularly with the chrome brightwork all around and the optional 21-inch wheels against our tester’s Rocky Mountain Pearl paintwork—which has an otherwise subtle green tinge that pops beautifully in the sun. It’s a refreshing change from the all-black-everything look you see everywhere else, that’s for sure.

Inside, the Grand Cherokee L is nice enough. Our complaints with the two-row Grand Cherokee persist here—so-so materials, middling fit-and-finish, and way too much shiny black trim—but the seats are comfortable, visibility all around is excellent, and there’s plenty of space regardless of where you sit. Controls are a mix of physical switchgear and digital sub-menus buried in Jeep’s latest Uconnect 5 infotainment; it’s responsive and easy to use, but some text on the screen can be hard to read, and wireless CarPlay can be slow to boot up. Higher-end Grand Cherokee L trims come with a 10.25-inch display for front passengers, but this tester spares us from the redundancy.

Functionally, the Grand Cherokee L’s extra length translates to more second-row legroom and easy access to a third row that’s actually cohabitable by fully grown adults. Cargo space is decent for a three-row SUV, measuring 487 litres with all seats up, 1,328 L with the third row stowed, and 2,396 L with everything down. It’s roomy enough—certainly roomier than the Mazda CX-90—but with all seats down, competitors like the Ford Explorer and especially the Toyota Grand Highlander haul more of your junk in their respective trunks.

And that’s the problem with the Grand Cherokee L. The three-row segment has changed a lot since its debut three years ago; where upper-crust trims like the top-spec Summit Reserve continue to punch above their weight, lesser trims—like our $79,385 as-tested Limited model—just don’t hit as hard as more mainstream competitors. That’s simply a lot of money to pay for something easily bested by the CX-90 and its shockingly upscale digs, or the Grand Highlander and its shockingly roomy and upscale digs—and both of those options pack smoother, more powerful, and more efficient powertrains. Admittedly, if you regularly tow, little else in the segment can touch the Grand Cherokee L’s 7,200-pound towing capacity.

There’s still a lot to like about the 2024 Jeep Grand Cherokee L. It’s good-looking, capable, and genuinely spacious—but today, its mainstream competitors do all that, too, while feeling vastly more upscale for less money. As counter-productive as this may seem, the Grand Cherokee is best enjoyed in its swankiest forms, and with eight cylinders under the hood.