Jeep Cherokee safety has been awarded a maximum five-star overall rating by independent safety body Euro NCAP, from whom it also earned a ‘Best in Class’ title for the ‘Small off-road 4x4’ category with an overall score of 83 percent. It has also scored well in safety tests in the U.S.

Standard equipment includes seven airbags, Electronic Stability Control (ESC) and Anti-lock Braking System (ABS) with a special calibration for off-road use.

There’s a large collection of further safety kit available, including Forward Collision Warning-Plus, which monitors changes in the gaps between traffic ahead and can both activate the brakes and sound an alert if it senses an imminent collision.

Lane Departure Warning uses a camera to keep track of the Cherokee’s position in its lane and either display a visual warning on the dashboard or gently apply some torque to the steering wheel to alert the driver if they begin to drift over a white line without indicating.

Blind Spot Warning uses radar to warn of vehicles the driver may not be able to see directly behind and adjacent to the car, and illuminate an icon in the corresponding door mirror and sound a chime before they pull into their path (although you can turn the chime off if you want).

There’s also Rear Cross Path Detection, which warns of vehicles crossing behind when backing out of a parking space by illuminating icons in the mirrors and sounding a chime – just like the blind spot monitor.

On the surface, Jeep Cherokee practicality appears strong. On all models the front passenger seat can be easily folded flat should you need to load very long or awkwardly shaped items and its base flips up to reveal a storage area to conceal small items or valuables.

There’s plenty of space for rear passengers, with generous knee and headroom and a scalloped shape for the rear of the transmission tunnel to help find room for the middle passenger’s feet.

The rear seats are split 60:40 and can be slid forwards and backwards to free up extra boot space. Inside the boot, there are hooks and mouldings to hang shopping bags from and a removable rack on the left hand side can be fitted with various storage accessories explained in the Equipment section of this review.

So far, so good. There is a rather serious flaw in Jeep Cherokee practicality, however – the boot itself is simply far too small.

A luggage volume of 412 litres (up to the parcel shelf with rear seats up) is undersized for the class and it’s shallow, with a lack of space between the boot floor and parcel shelf to fit tall objects. That’s because the space required to fit a full-size spare wheel (standard on Trailhawk versions) and rear suspension travel suitable for off-road use means the boot floor has to be high, which also results in a high load lip which could make loading heavy objects hard work.

The 60:40-split rear seats do slide forward to free up more space, but that then leaves a chasm between the boot floor and seats in which you could lose objects. With the rear seats folded load volume is 1,267 litres (up to the roof).

Maximum towing capacity is 2,475kg (for 168bhp 4x4 models), which is a very strong performance in its class.