You ever wonder what a Jeep would look like with an F1 racing engine under the hood? No? Yeah, us neither. But that's pretty much what we're getting with Jeep's new Hurricane 4 in the 2026 Jeep Grand Cherokee, which uses a passive pre-chamber with turbulent jet ignition, allowing it to produce awesome power with minimal fuel input — more power, in fact, than Honda's turbocharged K20C1 from the venerable Type R.Now, you can go ahead and hurry on down to the comments and get all the jokes out of your system right up front. Jeep, building one of the most sophisticated new engines on the market? You might as well buy a stick of dynamite and a cheap wristwatch and put that in the engine bay, because this sounds like a ticking time bomb, right? We get it, but we think this new engine has a lot of potential, and it's worth a look, at least for the sake of curiosity, whether or not you would ever buy a Jeep with this many moving parts. Maserati Meets Jeep For An Accessible Performance Engine Maserati The technology driving the new Hurricane 4 isn't completely unheard of in the consumer car world, having made its production car debut in the Maserati MC20's Nettuno engine, a twin-turbo V6 producing 621 horsepower. But, a 2023 Maserati MC20 starts at $215,995, and Maserati produced fewer than 1,300 units for that model year, so, production or not, the Nettuno is hardly a mainstream engine.Maserati and Jeep are Stellantis stable-mates, so the off-road brand's decision to bring this tech to the masses in the Grand Cherokee isn't completely out of left field, just mostly out of left field. How Does The New Hurricane Inline-Four Work? Stellantis Turbulent jet ignition. What the heck does that mean? Inside a typical engine cylinder, you have an intake stroke, pulling in air and fuel. Then you've got the compression stroke, compressing the air and fuel for combustion. With TJI, some of that air and fuel is going into a pre-chamber, which then, in the power-stroke, shoots a series of turbulent jets out into the main chamber.It's like literally packing a tiny jet engine into your combustion chamber for some extra propulsion. It's more efficient than conventional combustion, reduces the likelihood of engine knock, and results in higher power output. The pre-chamber has eight radial holes and an intake hole, with high heat preventing carbon buildup. Essentially, you don't have to worry about this tiny engine part clogging up, because it's burning through the gunk before it can form. A Turbocharged Jeep Engine With Maserati Tech, What Can Go Wrong? Brett T. Evans/CarBuzz/Valnet We've covered in the past how Jeep's reputation for unreliable SUVs is somewhat overblown. The truth is that Jeep has made some of the most dependable engines ever built, and the perception of Jeep Wranglers and Jeep Cherokees as exceptionally failure-prone has a lot to do with the shape these vehicles are in when they hit the used market. That is, you don't buy a Jeep for lots of long-haul highway miles, you buy it to climb over stumps and rocks and skip across creeks.Be that as it may, the fact remains that Chrysler issued the second-most NHTSA recalls over the last five years, with 247 on file, following Ford at 400 recalls. This, despite coming in fifth for overall end-of-year sales in the US in 2025, when adding all Stellantis brands together. So it's not completely unfair to raise an eyebrow when you hear that Jeep will be manufacturing one of the most sophisticated engines on the market. The Grand Cherokee Has Proven To Be Fairly Reliable J.D. Power gives the 2026 Grand Cherokee a Quality & Reliability rating of 81/100, one point higher than a 2026 Toyota Tacoma, and RepairPal estimates an annual maintenance cost of just $666, which comes out to around $55 a month. What's more, the most expensive repairs rarely have anything to do with the engine. To go over the priciest common fixes for a Grand Cherokee. Active suspension system control module replacement $1,370 - $1,440 Steering gearbox replacement $626 - $1,135 Air conditioner receiver drier assembly replacement $523 - $643 Tie rod replacement $285 - $326 VVT timing control solenoid replacement $285 - $326 We can't blame anyone who's had a bad experience with a Jeep for wanting to stay far away from the new Hurricane 4-powered Grand Cherokee. This might be the last brand that you want experimenting with F1 technology. But all those jokes about Jeep sending you a recall notice just for reading this article, they're only half-true.For that matter, turbocharged engines are more dependable than you might think, too. Turbochargers will eventually shorten an engine's life expectancy, but, by the time you've put enough miles onto a car for that to matter, you'll probably have been featured on the local news for joining the high-mileage club. The Hurricane Grand Cherokee Looks Promising, But... JeepIf you want a Hurricane 4 engine, the 2026 Jeep Grand Cherokee starts at $43,855 for a two-row, 4x2 Laredo Altitude. The Pentastar V6 is not being outright killed off by Jeep, and you can still buy a Grand Cherokee with a 3.6-liter six-cylinder for the 2026 model year, but all signs point to Jeep phasing the Pentastar out in favor of newer powerplants like the Hurricane 4. The rollout for the new four-cylinder could turn out to be a smashing success. The 2026 Grand Cherokee has already been hit with two recalls, but these are for a high voltage battery fire and loss of drive in hybrid models. The jury is still out on the new engine. Hold Onto Your Pentastar, For Now It's never a bad idea to hold off on buying a car with a brand-new engine while the brand works the first-year kinks out, but the new Hurricane engine could create a scenario like we've seen with the new Toyota Tacoma. That is, Toyota discontinued the V6 Tacoma with the launch of the fourth-gen model for the 2024 model year, and the relative scarcity, combined with reliability concerns with the 2024 Tacoma, saw 2023 Taco prices rising above their initial MSRP.If you look at trending prices right now, three years into the new generation, a 2023 Taocma TRD Sport Access with a V6 engine is still selling for more than its sticker price.Our take: if you're wary of the new engine's dependability, or, if you want to make some money, hold onto your Pentastar Grand Cherokee, and keep it in good shape. Right now, the SUV is depreciating at a fairly typical rate for a Jeep, but give it a few years and who knows? A 2025 or 2026 Grand Cherokee with a Pentastar engine could be worth a bit more than a brand-new model with a Hurricane 4.Or we could be way off, and the Hurricane 4 could turn out to be perfectly dependable. In which case, you'll have something in good condition to trade in for a 324-horse turbo-four.
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