Jeep Avenger 4xe North Face review: hybrid 4WD power and graphics ahoy

What’s going on here?

Deep breath, it’s the Jeep Avenger 4xe The North Face Edition. Let’s call it the Avenger North Face for clarity’s sake. The curious car/fashion tie-up may no longer be commonplace, but Stellantis still has faith. Following in the footsteps of the mighty Peugeot 205 Lacoste are the new Fiat 500 Giorgio Armani and this, more rugged Avenger.

Its seats have leaped diligently onto the North Face puffer trend, there’s an anti-reflection decal on the bonnet (like an old rally car), a tent and other camping gubbins in the boot, and mountain topography etched everywhere.

Priced from a smidge over £35k, it adds four grand to the price of a regular Avenger 4xe (or around £50 a month), but if you’ve ever indulged in a minor shopping haul inside a North Face store outside of Black Friday season, you might see that as a fairly predictable (nay reasonable) leap.

So what lies beneath?

It’s the same, agile little Avenger we know and rather like, here with 4WD hybrid power. So a 1.2-litre, three-cylinder turbo petrol drives the front wheels and is supplemented by two 28bhp electric motors, one at each axle. The rearmost one isn’t permanently active, and disengages entirely above 56mph to aid fuel efficiency, but it’s there to help you scrabble over rougher surfaces than a regular, front-driven Avenger might conquer.

Below 19mph, power is typically split 50:50 front/rear. OTT for the school run, but it’s perhaps the most traditional Jeep character that’s yet coursed through the significantly European-feeling Avenger (no bad thing, when it was crowned 2023 Car of the Year).

There’s also a bunch of different terrain modes (Snow, Mud and Sand), standard mud 'n' snow (or optional all-terrain) tyres wrapped around 17in alloys, posh multilink rear suspension and all manner of stats to titillate anyone who gets muddy for a hobby: 22deg approach, 21deg breakover and 35deg departure angles and a ground clearance of 210mm (up 10mm on standard) to help you wade through 400mm of water (or ascend a 40 per cent, loose-surface climb). Jeep claims the Avenger 4xe offers up to 20 per cent traction when the front axle has little or no grip.

I’m driving mine on the road, thanks.

Then you’ll have a nice time, too. The Avenger is a light, agile and surprisingly fun car at its core, and the complexity of hybrid power and 4WD does surprisingly little to cloud that. Weighing 1,475kg, it’s 220kg heftier than an entry-level FWD Avenger (with a manual ‘box!) but notably lighter than the Avenger Electric which presumably did the heavy lifting to scoop that COTY trophy.

Performance is brisk enough, and no more, its combined 134bhp peak delivered at 5,500rpm for 0-62mph in 9.5 seconds. The top speed is 120mph, while claimed efficiency figures are 52.3mpg and 122g/km of CO2.

And the handling?

It rides mostly well, albeit with a bit of fuss on its knobbly ‘M+S’ treads (maybe spec all-season tyres if you’re sticking to tarmac) and handles with a pleasing agility. It appears to move all-of-a-piece through corners, working all four tyres evenly to deliver predictable, trustworthy grip – though you can still get a scurry of wheelspin on the front axle if you’re especially boisterous out of a wet junction. It flicks into turns with the keenness you’d surely hope of its squat footprint and moderate weight, but demonstrates a deftness Jeeps never have.

Of course, it’s nowt like a classic Cherokee or rugged Wrangler, sharing many of its mechanical bits with a near endless array of Stellantis crossovers. Vauxhall Mokka, Peugeot 2008, Fiat 600, Alfa Romeo Junior… there’s load of ‘em. Yet the Avenger manages to stand proud of them on more than ground clearance alone. Both the character and plushness of its interior appear to come from the upper shelves of the Stellantis cupboard, this Avenger feeling notably fancier than the Citroen C3 we recently tested.

What about the hybrid bits?

Those are welcome, too. There’s a useful amount of brake regen built in – without any confusing modes to activate it – and while this isn’t a hybrid you can plug in at home, nor cover vast miles from the grid alone, the engine extinguishes itself reasonably often in slow traffic or during calmer cruising. We scored 46mpg during mixed, often quick driving, so if you plan to use this as more of an urban runabout, you’ll surely achieve the official claims. But you're probably best in a FWD car (or the EV) anyway.

So what's special about the North Face?

Depends how much you want to look like an unpaid brand ambassador, not least when a regular Avenger 4xe offers the same powertrain for usefully less. But if you’re dead set on the aesthetic you see here, you’ve a choice of white, grey or black paint before the North Face logo is flung mercilessly over the little Avenger.

They’re making 4,806 of them, which is the height of Mont Blanc in metres; it's the peak of the Franco-Italian mountain which plays a prominent role in much of the bold trim swathed across this North Face Edition. Perhaps quirkiest of all are the toolbelt-like fabric and elasticated cords on the front seatbacks, the visual effect very similar to a flexible adventure rucksack. Silly? But of course. Doesn’t make it wrong. Not unless your kids constantly twang those cords the length of a motorway run to the in-laws...

Oh, and Avenger sales appear to be going great guns. They’ve shifted over 200,000 in just two years and Jeep's UK sales have been strong so far in 2025. While Stellantis apparently fumbles the futures of Alfa and Maserati, the littlest Jeep of all appears to be a success story amongst the melee. With or without a gaudy North Face makeover.