Pentastar is supposed to be a good engine

by bj2, Saturday, August 17, 2013, 20:46 (4120 days ago) @ brionic

I remember when it came out, but I don't know if they have proven themselves to be good. GM and Ford had both come out with new V6's that were very good so Chrysler had to come out with their version. My wife has the GM 3.6L V6 in her GMC Acadia and so far it seems to be a good engine, they use the same engine in the Camaro, CTS, etc.

My wife bought a 1999 Grand Cherokee with the then new 4.7L V8. It was a good engine and provided plenty of power for the car, and we drove it in town, on the freeway, and a good amount of offroad in Colorado and Utah. The engine provided more than enough power for everything we did and if you pushed the car hard you would feel like you had a hotrod. That engine was rated at 235hp, the new Pentastar V6 is much more powerful than that at 290hp.

When we bought our GC the other available engine was their old inline 6, rated at 195hp. We went to Wyoming one time on vacation and got one of these for our rental vehicle. It ran fine but didn't have as much highway power as our Jeep, although it would do serious passing maneuvers if you really pushed it, and it got much better fuel mileage. Our V8 usually got 17-19mpg highway. We put 150k miles on it with no problems at all from the engine.

The stats for the current GC put the Pentastar at 290HP and the Hemi at 360HP, so there isn't a lot of difference but there is enough to be able to feel it. If I was buying one I would probably go for the Pentastar because I'm real sensitive to fuel mileage but if a person wanted more power they should go for the hemi.

Someone mentioned the 3.8L V6 used from 2007-2011. It was rated at about 200hp, barely more than the 4.0L inline 6.