If a bear relieves itself in the woods but there’s nobody there to see it, did it really happen? If a tree falls in the forest but there’s simply nobody around to witness the glory of nature at work, are we still gonna believe it happened? And if David Tracy is out on vacation and we need to film a video that week, does Griffin Riley take over?

The answer is yes. At least to the last one, because I need to actually see the bear lose a couple of pounds in the confines of his arboreal home, and because I don’t believe in trees. But when David was treating himself to a well-earned vacation a few weeks ago, I got behind the wheel of a truly generational vehicle that I’m so grateful I had the opportunity to drive.

I ain’t finna hold you on this one any longer; this shit was gas. [Ed Note: I cannot legally delete that since he’s Gen Z and I don’t want him to call me “Unc.” -DT]. The beautiful machine I drove for this week’s Trade-In Tuesday is the incomparable FCA flagship:thea 2011 Jeep Patriot. Do people like Dave think that it’s a big middle finger that spits in the face of the seven-slotted brand’s lineage as a rugged off-road brand? Yes. But I’m here to tell you that he’s wrong and a FOOL. And I hope he doesn’t fire me.

Why It Should Be Bad

News flash! The Jeep brand is synonymous with and probably the gold standard in outdoorsy automotive ambition, which is why someone like David loathes the Patriot so much.

I’m a fraction of the off-roader DT is, and less than 1% of the engineer that he is as well (although I was the lead programmer in my elementary school’s robotics team and we went to nationals thanks to my programming, nbd) [Ed Note: Griffin must be a member of the 18th Royal Navy, because I’m impressed. -DT].

That’s all to say that I am nowhere near as qualified to speak about everything that makes the perfect off-roader, but I did tighten a few bolts on his WWII Jeep and, if nothing else, I filmed and edited him talking about these things for months at a time, and I think some of his knowledge has rubbed off on me. So here’s what’s important here:

• Geometry. If you have a bad approach and departure angle, there’s no world where you can meaningfully hit the more rugged terrain that you’ll find in nature.
• Suspension. Part of the beauty of a Jeep is its solid front axle that flexes all damn day to guarantee you have insane amounts of traction on the aforementioned rough spots. Since there’s a straight line connecting your tires from left to right, if you hit a big rock on the driver’s side, the passenger side is mechanically forced to go further down, giving you more traction in the process. [Here’s a detailed description of solid axles vs independent suspension. -DT]
• Drivetrain and its orientation. There are arguments for and against FWD vs RWD in a vehicle, and obviously Four Wheel Drive is very much the gold standard when you’re really getting after it on the trails, AND you’d ideally have a low-range gearbox that allows you to aggressively crawl up the steeper obstacles.

The Patriot has none of that. Just take it from David when I told him one was available to film.

[Ed Note: Three things: Sorry about the “it’s” typo. To my parents-in-law, the blurred part may look like a bad word bit it’s actually “gosh darn,” and I didn’t realize this was a 2011. That changes a lot; Fiat came in and in 2011 fixed almost all the interiors. -DT].

So with the Patriot refusing to check the boxes of anything and everything that makes a Jeep a Jeep, it’s gotta be a pretty bad car, right?

It Honestly Wasn’t

I wasn’t in the room while the boys from Belvidere were developing this, so I don’t know what conversations they were having about it. That being said, I’m fairly confident they didn’t build the Patriot with the intention of it being an off-roader for the ages. I’d venture to say that they built something that’s an inexpensive, efficient road car first and that everything else came later, and I’m not mad at that. Especially since it came out just before the Global Financial Crisis.

In so many ways, the car reminded me of the 2005 Scion xB that I had as my first car. In terms of dimensions, the Patriot is roughly 20 inches longer than an xB, but one thing that always shocked people when they hopped in the Scion is how commodious it is in the interior, and the Patriot was no different. The Scion is 64.6” tall, and the Patriot is 66.8” tall; I’m a bigger guy standing at 6’2” and had no shortage of headroom in either.

The interior of the car was nothing to write home about, but was anything at the time? The Scion’s was middling, my Corvette’s is basically just a reskinned Suburban interior, so is my ‘04 Wrangler’s. To belabor a car of that era for having a bad interior makes me think you’re the same kind of person to be angry that there’s sand at a beach. But if you lower your standards and meet the car where it’s at? It’s totally fine!

[Ed Note: Again, this being a 2009+, and especially a 2011+ model is key! Here’s what the OG Patriot’s interior looked like:

And here’s the refreshed 2011 like the one Griffin drove:

Griffin’s point about all interiors not being particularly amazing back in the day is fair. -DT]. 

Without a doubt, the CVT is a bummer, and the Patriot doesn’t have an engine worth a damn either. They shipped with either a 2.0L or 2.4L World engine, with the former offering 158 hp and 141 lb⋅ft of torque and the 2.4 offering 172 hp and 165 lb-ft of torque, and it felt horrible. At several moments, I wanted to see what the engine had in store for me, and I floored it, and it demonstrated a pace similar to that of the Himalayas’ growth or the shifting of the world’s tectonic plates. The car went nowhere.

Our model, which was traded in to our lovely team at Galpin Honda, was a two-wheel drive model based on the lack of any kind of 4×4 badging and no dial or second shifter to activate the Four Wheel Drive mode and its simulated low range gearbox (it doesn’t have a real low-range). How would that perform off-road? Probably very poorly if our experience off-roading the Crosscab is any indication, but does that matter? No. and here’s why:

Nobody Off-Roads.

I grew up off-roading my whole life in everything from go-karts to full-size side-by-sides to trucks and SUVs. I have a Jeep of my own that’s seriously well built, sitting on 33s with a decent lift kit, a winch, a hi-lift jack, and plenty of other things ready to take me to the middle of nowhere at a moment’s notice. And it hasn’t seen a trail in nearly a year.

All over California, I see Wranglers that look like they just got out of a car wash and that have spotless paint that’s never been pinstriped in its life. They’re so not into the Jeep world that they don’t even have the courtesy to initiate OR return the so deeply cherished, traditional Jeep wave. And while some of them have co-opted our silly token of appreciation and they have ducks on their dashboard, I’m just about positive they didn’t get them from someone while on the trail. My ducks? They’re dirty.

I’m not saying that to attack the people who don’t get after it in their cars, because that’s just normal, especially in a city like Los Angeles. When it takes me 40 minutes to go roughly ten miles to work, it becomes really hard to justify spending hours to go less than 50 miles away from home base in hopes of being on the dirt. And on the flip side, I don’t take my Corvette to the track, either! It’s just not how we are. And it’s just not what the Patriot is.

If you approach the Patriot expecting it to be a worthy contemporary to the Wranglers and XJs of yesteryear, you’re gonna be incredibly disappointed, and you might be named David Tracy. But if everything were made for David, we’d live in a world of tiny German range-extended vehicles that share the road with rusty shitboxes that you’d break your body fixing every day after a trip to the junkyard.

David and others like him are not the mean buyer, and certainly not the mean wrencher, and I feel like the Patriot knows that. Most people just need a cheap car that’ll get them to and from work, and this is gonna do it no problem. This was definitely a cheap poverty spec model, with crap plastic everywhere, and next to no 12Vs to plug anything into, crank windows, and no power locks in the rear, but you can work with all that easily. The cloth seats didn’t wow me at all, but it’s not a luxury car where you’d expect heat, cooling, or massaging, and it’s not a sports car that demands insane bolstering.

[Ed Note: My problem with the Patriot and its Compass cousin is that they aren’t honest vehicles. You ever hear the expression “That old F-150 is an honest truck”? That means it is exactly what it looks like — a truckish hauler of big items. It doesn’t ride great, it doesn’t get amazing fuel economy, but it can haul an entire deck worth of 2x6s and it’ll never die. The Patriot isn’t a great street vehicle; it’s not particularly efficient; it doesn’t handle well; it’s not even that reliable (but it’s not terrible). It’s meant to look like an off-road vehicle without actually being one. It’s dishonest, and generally, I don’t like that trait in a car. The result in this case is a car that is cheap, efficient, and well-mannered for a Jeep. And that qualifier means it’s really not that great in the grand scheme of the market. With that said, not everyone wants to buy the objectively-best-vehicle, and I defend anyone’s right to want to buy an irrational car. -DT]. 

Simply put, the Patriot is an inoffensive place to spend an hour of your time when you’re going to work. It won’t wow you; it won’t get you there fast, but it won’t disappoint you if you know what you’re getting into. No real off-roader would ever think about buying this thing to be a part of their fleet, but my mom might. And if she wants to go on a hike a bit deeper into the middle of nowhere, she puts that thing into Four Wheel Drive and hits the gravel road to her destination. She sure as shit won’t be doing anything that needs a low-range gearbox, I’ll tell you that much.