How do you use a few acres to bring joy to a lot of people? There are many recipes: you can build a shopping or entertainment centre, a bar or a restaurant, an amusement park or a swimming pool, or just anything in the world.
But a real car enthusiast can use those acres in a much more interesting and peculiar way and build a track where it would be possible to perform car tests on different surfaces starting from regular roads and up to ford crossing and encounter with various extreme situations. A track like this appeared as a result of cooperation between the Jeep brand and Crocus Group. And now the Crocus City complex in Myakinino comprises the Jeep Territory.
The size of it is not that huge and scary. Some regular car dealerships can occupy much more space for parking places and other needs. And here everything is organised in a compact manner and each square metre is used efficiently.
There is an office building and 3 tracks located on a few acres: a regular asphalt surface with typical city obstacles, an off-road track and an extreme off-road track with high level of challenges.
It’s obvious that it is another marketing tool to attract customers’ attention to the new car model range but it’s definitely an interesting approach and what is more important it knows no equals as it is situated 1) on The Moscow Automobile Ring Road; 2) near the underground station; 3) it comprises all possible traversable and adverse terrains for the real off-road vehicles.
The current test fleet consists of 4 Jeep models: Wrangler Unlimited, Wrangler Rubicon, Grand Cherokee and Compass. And of course, the most extreme surfaces were saved for Wrangler.
It is more frightening to watch some of the trials than take part in them being inside of the vehicle. But some features of the cars really surprise and fascinate you, like, for instance, Wrangler’s suspension travel which was tested by us on the so-called “camels”.
During this type of tests some of Grand Cherokee wheels were not reaching the surface from time to time, but Wrangler went through these trials with no wheel being airborne. And when you were inside the car you could just feel some minor rocking as if riding over a bump.
We found the results of ford crossing tests not very representative as it was too shallow. I guess a regular customer should be satisfied with it, but we were bearing in minds the scenes from the new Range Rover Sport tests when muddy water from a deep river was washing over the bonnet. But the good one was to stop in the middle of the ford and see the water bubbling at the doorsills. :)
As I am more of an asphalt track person, the most severe ordeal for me was crossing the “range”. After climbing the hill’s back at almost 30 degree angle, you should carefully shift the gravity centre of the car so that it gets over to the opposite side and goes easily down the hill. It looks uncomfortable both from outside and inside of the car but when it gets to the other side any sliding attempts get blocked by all electronic systems and further descent goes on in a regular mode.
But actually it’s much more interesting to perform your own tests than read stories described by others, and especially if you are keen on American cars.
