With 520kW and 1 000Nm, it’s grander than Grand
Mirror, mirror on the wall, which SUV is the fastest of them all?
This one is: we don’t know of a four-wheel-drive ‘off-roader’ as fast at Reef altitude as the rather special Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT8 shown here. Tested on Gerotek’s famed Long Straight recently by not-quite-tame race driver Jacques ‘The Stiglet’ Joubert, it humbled the 0 – 100 km/h sprint in a VBOX-verified 4.74 second. Then it blitzed to 400 metres in 12.85 seconds at a terminal speed of 177.2 km/h. And as a finale it dispatched the standing kilometre in 23 and-a-bit seconds, the 1 000 metre board flashing by at 230 km/h.
So that’s that then. Let anyone with a faster road-going, street-legal SUV “Haal uit en wys…”
Rob Green from RGMotorsport isn’t given to hyperbole, but he’s impressed at just how fast his team’s latest creation is, and in the same test session it achieved a 0 – 250 km/h sprint time of just under 30 seconds, only requiring 1 408 metres to get there. By comparison, the stock SRT8 – no slouch by any standards – needs an extra 23 seconds and 1.3 kilometres to clock the same speed.
“This is a monster,” says Green with a grin. “But it is a monster which remains easy to drive in a normal way in day-to-day traffic. We’re in the business of making our customers’ performance dreams come true, but the reality of that dream is that they still want a car they can use every day, without compromises.”
Often, highly-modified vehicles do sacrifice driveability, which is one of the reasons RGM takes a holistic approach, and make decisions in consultation with the client and with one eye firmly on long-term enjoyment – that means properly engineered solutions that’ll last. Bearing testament to this is the success of projects like the supercharged Nissan 350Z (of which some 33 were successfully modified) and more recently the Toyota 86 Supercharged, heading for the half-century mark, and counting.
Forced induction courtesy of a supercharger is the route most frequently chosen by RGMotorsport, a solution which doesn’t sacrifice responsiveness or breadth of powerband, and also offers superior refinement. In the case of the SRT8 Jeep an RGM-Whipple twin-screw ‘blower’ sits atop the 6.4-litre V8, and has a self-contained lubrication system as well as a dedicated air to liquid intercooler.
An end-to-end RGM-Techniflow 76mm exhaust, high volume cold air induction system, and customised RGMotorsport engine software finish off what is a 520kW/1 000Nm package…
Upgrades on the Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT8 (and the similarly-engined Chrysler 300C SRT8) start from R190 000, including RGMotorsport’s standard six month/20 000 km warranty on parts and workmanship. Enquiries to [email protected], or phone 011 792 8352. All information is also available on our website: www.rgmotorsport.com.