The IT Nerd

The interior of the Jeep Renegade is a very interesting one and it has a few surprises included in the package. Let’s start with the front of the Renegade:

The doors have a mix of hard plastic and soft touch materials. The chrome handles make for a more classy appearance. The red accented speaker is cool as well.

The driver’s seat is made of leather and it has power adjustable. The front passenger gets the same treatment minus the power adjustments.

The seats have the Trailhawk logo on them so that you always remember what you’re driving.

The steering wheel is chunky and is not only leather wrapped but heated. It feels good in your hands and has the buttons and switches for cruise control and the infotainment system on it.

The gauge cluster is a pair of mechanical dials with a TFT screen in the middle. You can use that screen to display anything from fuel economy (which is what you see here), to music and navigation directions. It was visible in all lighting conditions. Oh, if you look closely at the tachometer, you’ll see that on the numbers 7 and 8 where the red line indicator usually is, there is a splash of mud. Cute.

If you enlarge this picture and look closely below the Start/Stop button, you’ll see the words “To New Adventures.” That’s one of the surprises that I was alluding to. There’s another one that I’ll get to in a bit.

The rest of the dash is a very “funky” design” as it has a couple of vents above the center console, a grab handle to the right, and a variety of switchgear below the 6.5″ touchscreen. The dash has a mix of hard plastic and soft touch materials.

Above the touchscreen are the words “Since 1941” which is a reference to the Willys MB Jeeps from World War II.

Here’s the dials for the dual zone climate control along with the 4×4 system. Plus there’s the USB and AUX ports and a 12V outlet below them. There’s a cubby below that that’s best used for spare change.

Here’s a closer look at cubby. It has a liner with a topographical map on it. I didn’t notice it, but my wife pointed it out to me.

The shifter and the cupholders are accented in red which is an interesting touch. I should also note that at night they light up as well. Below the shifter, you get an electronic parking brake and the button to disable the stability control.

It will hold a Starbucks Venti sized drink. But I do note that the cupholders are not deep. Thus I wonder if you’ll be wearing your beverage if you make a sudden evasive maneuver. It’s also too low and too far back from a ergonomics perspective to comfortably grab any coffee that’s in the cupholders.

The armrest is adjustable and has a decent sized storage area with a USB port in it.

There’s a decent sized lit glove box.

Since I am typically the designated driver when my friends and I go out to the bar, I got the chance to use the Renegade to ferry my friends home. Two people fit into the back, though I had to move my seat forward to make that happen. They commented on how comfortable it was back there.

The Renegade has 40-20-40 folding seats and can seat three in the back. But if you only need to seat two people, you can leverage these cupholders. I’ll also note that there’s a pass-through section for long objects.

A handy feature that the Renegade has is a AC outlet for back seat passengers.

A cool feature is the My Sky Open Air Roof System which gives you a power tilt/slide removable dual-panel roof. The front half can be opened like your typical sunroof. But both roof panels can be removed leaving you with open sky to look at. The removal process is easy…. Unless you’re 5′ 6″ like my wife in which case it can be a bit challenging… All the tools needed to pop the panels off are included.

When detached, the roof panels stow neatly in the height-adjustable rear cargo area inside this bag.

I leveraged the cargo area and the 40-20-40 folding seats to bring home some long items from the store.

Our weekly shopping trip required us to fold down one of the rear seats to get our shopping into the Renegade because we bought so much.

Underneath the floor in the cargo area is a full sized spare.

On the left side of the cargo area is rechargeable flashlight to the right of the speaker.

Here’s a closer look at the flashlight in question.

Now, what’s the other surprise? Remember that in part one of this review I showed you this picture with the comment that you should remember this look because we’d be revisiting it?

Here’s why I wanted you to remember this look. If you look around the Renegade, you see subtle and not so subtle hints of this look. Here are some examples:

The tool that allows you to remove the roof panels.

Behind the rear view mirror.

The middle portion of the tail light.

The speaker.

Even on the gauge cluster.

There are other examples, but I’ll leave them for you to find. Plus there’s other little things like this scattered about the interior. It will make the Renegade kind of cool to some. To others, this attempt to immerse the driver in everything Jeep might be a bit over the top. One thing that I do have to say about the interior is that I had lots of headroom and it was well put together. Though I did note some squeaking that I traced to the roof. Removing and refitting the roof panels fixed that. There was also a rattling sound that I traced to the area around the glove box. But even removing everything in the glove box, I couldn’t find the source of the rattling. But even with that, I have to say that this is a pretty good interior that I think that buyers will like.

In part four, I’ll look at the technology inside the Renegade. Stay tuned!

This entry was posted on November 11, 2015 at 8:00 am and is filed under Products with tags Jeep. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.