Jeep drives Overland into new territory

July 22, 2013 by Alastair Sloane

Wrangler exterior

Wrangler exterior

Wrangler exterior

Wrangler — Wrangler badge

Wrangler — Wrangler exterior

Wrangler — Wrangler dashboard

Jeep is going to launch its Wrangler Overland range, two- and four-door models with more goodies than the standard line-up.

The company says the Overland’s extra equipment – satellite navigation, internet connection, automatic headlights, and so on – will help the Wrangler to compete with soft-road rivals while retaining its off-road ability.

Fiat Chrysler New Zealand director Clyde Campbell says the

Wrangler Overland offers a combination of styling, features and ability that is unique in the market place.

“The substantial saving over buying the extra equipment separately makes the Overland attractive to buyers who want to combine luxury and refinement with genuine off-road ability in a car that could only be a real Jeep,” he said.

Features the Overland offers above the base-model two-door Wrangler Sport and the four-door Wrangler Unlimited are:

• Leather trim

• Heated front seats

• Automatic headlights

• Bright interior accents

• Body colour flares

• Body colour three-piece hardtop

• 18in polished silver wheels

• Alpine audio system and media centre, Bluetooth

• Reversing camera

• Black Sunrider soft top

• Tinted glass

• Tubular side steps

The Jeep Wrangler Overland range arrives next month. The two-door is priced from $59,990 and the four-door Unlimited model from $64,990.

Under the bonnet is the 3.6-litre Pentastar V6 petrol engine mated to a five-speed automatic transmission and delivering 209kW at 6350 rpm and 347Nm of torque at 4300 rpm.

Chrysler says 90 per cent of maximum torque is available between 1800 and 6350 rpm. Fuel consumption for the combined cycle is a claimed 11.7 litres/100 km, or around 24mpg.

If you are in a position to shell out upwards of NZ$600,000 for the 60^thanniversary Porsche 911 S/T or optional Porsche 911 S/T Heritage, you’ll no doubt want the signature titanium watch that goes with it. That’s how Porsche figures it anyway. Or, if you want the watch you’ll need to get the car. Both the car and the watch are limited to 1963 units, the year the original 911 model broke cover. The watch – Chronograph 1 911 S/T and Chronograph 1 911 S/T Heritage – and the car carry matching edition numbers. The watch is priced at $US13,500, or around $NZ22,200. The car, says Porsche NZ, starts at $NZ608,000. A “strictly limited number” will go into production for NZ early next year.

Eight European Union countries are pushing to weaken new EU emissions limits for cars, saying they are overly ambitious and unrealistic for carmakers to hit. The eight countries – France, Italy, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia – said in a joint paper that parts of the proposed Euro 7 regulation, including curbs on exhaust pipe emissions, should be scrapped entirely. They said the limits would force carmakers to invest in improving exhaust emissions performance, money which would be better spent on developing zero-emission vehicles. Taken together, the countries would have enough votes to block the proposal.

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The outside temperature in Midland, Texas, was 40.5C when staff at the local office of the US National Weather Service set out to show the cabin of a closed car can literally get baking hot in summer. They mixed up a batch of chocolate chip cookies and laid them on the car’s dashboard – the surface of which showed a temperature of 87.7C. A little over four hours later the cookies were ready to eat. “Even though ours weren’t golden brown, we can confirm that they are done and delicious,” the staff wrote on Facebook.