The rumor mill has been working double time over the last year with unofficial announcements that the Jeep JK will be offered with a diesel engine sometime in 2015 or 2016. Earlier this year, Jeep CEO Mike Manley more or less said it would be so, but information about the exact engine was not forthcoming. It hasn’t been much of a challenge to make an educated guess as to which diesel might find its way into the engine bay of the next JK as Chrysler seems to have found a preferred engine for the coming year. The 2014 Ram 1500 and Grand Cherokee are now available with the highly anticipated 3.0-liter V6 EcoDiesel, and early reviews suggest it’s a great engine.
That power plant, made by manufacturer VM Motori of Cento, Italy, is even more likely to be the JK option with recent news that Fiat will assume full control of VM Motori. Previously, Fiat had shared equal ownership with General Motors. What will Fiat do with all those engines? Put them in JKs, we hope.
This new development puts us one step closer to the promised diesel JK. A pairing of the EcoDiesel V6 and a Jeep JK would be impressive, and could give the JK a 30+ mpg EPA rating and maybe even a 600+ mile range. As the saga unfolds, questions still remain. The biggest being, what will we talk about when we finally get a diesel JK?
