"Would you buy it again?"
Hell no, I would rather take public transport. And this will be my last post here on this forum for which I'm sure you'll all celebrate which I'm ok with.
This was the absolutely the worst "new" car experience we've ever had. I'm going to list the pros and cons of the Renegade after ~4 years of ownership that are pretty much a consensus with my wife and I.
Pros:
- It looks neat
- The little easter eggs are a neat party trick...for a short time
- We liked the Mojave Sand color
- uConnect is indeed still the best infotainment system on the market even with the small ass screen non-Nav units like what we had
Cons:
- Not economical at all, my 2016 Dodge Charger R/T with a 5.7L HEMI was within ~3mpg of the average of the Renegade--with my wife and her lighter foot driving the Renegade. That's right, my heavy V8 sedan almost got as good of mpg as our Renegade. When we traded the Renegade the avg mpg was 24.9 throughout the life of the vehicle and at that time my Charger was at 22.1. How does a fairly light vehicle and a 4cyl engine have such shitty fuel economy?
- Slow, and very unsafely slow I might add. I cannot count the number of times we were almost rear ended because pulling out of our neighborhood or on to a frontage road and the damn thing just wouldn't pick up any sort of speed. Felt like 0-60 in days or months rather than seconds.
- It is a rattle trap, though unsurprisingly so. Some of the plastic parts in the engine bay started to rattle after about ~15,000 miles. The rear driver's side door had a buzzing rattle beneath the door panel. The rear hatch door panel also had a rattle. The rear cover things below the lights rattled. There was a faint rattling sound somewhere buried in the dash. This thing after ~49,000 miles at trade in sounded like a 1980's GM car with how much rattling and such was going on.
- Extremely uncomfortable for adult passengers over 5ft 9in in height in the front passenger seat and back seats. The footwell intrusion in to the cabin for the front passenger seat is massive couple that with very little leg room to begin with and my 6ft tall self was never comfortable. The back seats were like sitting on boards. The driver's seat was the only half comfortable spot in the vehicle.
- Once we had a baby in Feb of this year one of the points of having this thing (four doors for the family) was realized and we installed the rear facing car seat. Well the result of that was having to move the front passenger seat almost all the way up just to be able to get the car seat installed on the base and your hand behind the car seat to grab the release lever. And we didn't even get the largest car seat either! I quite literally couldn't even sit in the front seat, my knees wouldn't even get under the dash. My wife, who is 5ft.5in. had her knees physically resting on the glovebox door so even she couldn't even use the front passenger seat either. With this our Renegade was turned in to a 2 seater and thus regardless of everything else I've said in this post it became quite useless to us. I'm not exaggerating here either, quite literally the front passenger seat could not fit a normal sized adult with a rear facing car seat installed. Otherwise we would of paid it off and drove it until the drivetrain broke and then used the lifetime warranty to fix it and traded it in.
- Brake pedal had an odd behavior where if you even lifted your foot a millimeter it would start rolling forward. You had to keep firm pressure on the pedal to keep it stationary. I've never been in a vehicle with this behavior, and I used to sell cars so I've literally driven hundreds of different models from all automakers.
- The long skinny go pedal, also known as an acceleration pedal, was way too touchy. Don't put any pressure and you just moved along at 1mph touched it more than a couple inches and you'd break the tires loose. It was impossible to drive this thing smoothly.
- The 9spd auto never could decide what gear to be in. No really, it was like driving around with a committee in charge of deciding what gear to be in when driving around town and or passing someone on the highway. The 9spd trans also had a huge problem bump down shifting when slowing down for example at a red light. Felt like someone was kicking us in the back every time we went to stop at a red light.
- A funny party trick but a sad one at that. With a strong headwind or up a slight incline the cruise control could never EVER keep the speed within 1mph of the set speed. There was several occasions where the gutless engine and 9spd transmission by committee just couldn't decide how to proceed and when to drop gears to accelerate to match the cruise speed. Sometimes it was just humorous to watch the ineptitude.
- So very expensive for so little. We had the Latitude model and it honestly felt like a stripper work truck. Other than wheels I honestly to this day don't know why we even bothered to get a Latitude, there seemingly weren't any "features" we got over a base Sport model beyond better wheels.
- Last but most certainly not least. The resale value is horrendous, though unsurprisingly if I'm honest. I knew this Jeep skinned Italian Fiat 500x thing wouldn't have good resale (or any reliability). Thank god we only owed ~$1,500 on it or we would of lost our shirts when trading it in.
I'm being as literal and honest as I can be here. I really am not trying to exaggerate, we really did not have a good experience with this. Funny thing, I had a brand new Jeep Compass Limited as a rental car for two months and while it really isn't much different per se half of the above issues I mentioned were solved. It was light years better to drive, a passenger could ride in the passenger seat with the car seat installed and I had no issues with the transmission by committee like we had with the Renegade. I think had this current brand new Compass generation model been brought out in 2015 as-is our experience just may have been better. Plus it looks better than the Renegade and the interior is nicer and more comfortable.
So if you're shopping for a Jeep Renegade buy a Jeep Compass (Trailhawk, especially) instead, it'll be a much better buy and easier vehicle to live with. Otherwise save up some more money and buy or lease a Jeep Grand Cherokee Laredo and be much better off.
Hope everyone has a happy life. Cheers!