We all plan ahead right? Despite this very website appearing to be thrown together at the last moment by a team of drunken circus performers, behind the scenes it is somewhat organized. David is planning to return to a feral existence if we add another 200 members in the month of April. Being an autismist, my calendar is organized with a precision that would shame one of Field Marshall Montgomery’s battle plans. Torch’s plans for the day don’t usually extend beyond putting on a pair of pants, but we do have Zoom calls and spreadsheets and other professional tools to keep Matt from aging in dog years. But imagine if you had to think much further ahead. The process of designing a car starts about five years before it hits the showrooms, and it may stay in production with minor changes for ten years. Trying to navigate consumer tastes and changing market conditions across a fifteen year timespan is an incredibly difficult needle to thread.
We’re constantly hearing car manufacturers don’t take risks, and car design is the same old same old. Lighting graphics, surfacing and trim features get rehashed and regurgitated repeatedly across different companies cars with diminishing returns. There are reasons for this (I’m not saying they’re good reasons) which I’ll explain in a bit, but sometimes OEMs do make bold design choices with the aim of doing something different, only to walk it back come facelift time. The 2014 KL Cherokee is a gold plated example of this phenomena. Despite extremely strong sales its novel split headlight arrangement and aero look visage proved controversial, so Jeep gave the KL a more conventional front graphic halfway through the car’s life cycle. In the face of upsetting a small but vocal subset of buyers who the Cherokee wasn’t intended for, Jeep didn’t have the courage of their design convictions.
Before we get into the KL Cherokee and why I’m devoting a Damn Good Design to it, we need to understand the how OEMs use the design process to differentiate their vehicles in the marketplace. Companies that have a strong brand image try to design vehicles that visually reflect and support their heritage. This is usually premium brands, because having a consistent identity is important to the customers who buy those cars. Someone in the market for a Bentley, Porsche or Land Rover for example, want it to look like one because they are buying into an image – their car is not only a reflection of how they see themselves but how they want others to see them. Visual continuity is everything. When I first saw the 2022 L460 Range Rover in 2017, I thought it looked extremely clean and modern, but maybe a bit safe and conservative. But a Range Rover is an iconic car that’s been in production since 1970, so that is exactly what Range Rover customers want: the same as it’s always been, simply better and newer.
For more mass market OEMs the situation is a bit different because they don’t necessarily sell on image, status or capability. Customers are more likely to buy based on more prosaic concerns like value, reliability, economy, practicality, availability and what their peers drive. Not having to adhere to a specific look or vehicle type occasionally liberates mainstream companies, which is why some of the most bonkers, revolutionary and interesting cars come from this part of the market. But most of the time they play it safe and follow prevailing fashions, which is why we see the same visual treatments appearing on cars from different companies, leading to them having a superficial resemblance to each other.
Just Play The Hits
Some mainstream brands are lucky enough to have kept an iconic car in their line up for decades, like the Mustang, or have reintroduced one to great success, like the Challenger. Although their value in terms of heritage is priceless, in general cars like these are stand alone outliers with little visual impact on the rest of the range, although that hasn’t stopped Ford attempting to warp the Mustang identity onto a five door electric crossover or Fiat turning its cars into a range of various sized 500 shaped blobs. Renault is currently softening the EV transition blow by making its latest electric models reincarnations of the much loved 4 and 5, demonstrating the value of raiding the back catalog.
And then there’s Jeep, which like Mini sits slightly above the mainstream with a brand image and cultural heritage to die for. Along with my old friends Land Rover, Jeep is the preeminent manufacturer of capable off-the-shelf off-roaders. With Land Rover selling cars to television housewives and the landed gentry, Jeep has remained a remarkably accessible and resilient brand, successfully building chunky urban assault sub-compacts at the bottom, slightly less visually compelling six-figure Range Rover rivals at the top, and everything in between. The Jeep oeuvre is stacked with beloved classics from the J series pickups, the SJ Wagoneer, the XJ Cherokee and the ZJ Grand Cherokee. Bestriding the lot like a colossus is the Wrangler, a direct descendant of the legendary second world war Willys Jeep. These cars are the wheeled embodiment of American ideals about rugged individualism and the great outdoors.
What Made The XJ So Special
The original XJ Cherokee was a seminal moment in the evolution of the SUV. It marked the turning point when SUVs began to move away from body on frame boneshakers to something more every day and refined. Jeep was able to leverage their tie-up with Renault to utilize the French company’s pioneering CAD/CAM expertise to create a unibody SUV that was smaller, but roomier and much more economical than the SJ based cars it ostensibly replaced. Access to the Renault dealer network helped the XJ, along with the TJ Wrangler spearhead one of the only successful and lasting invasions by a US brand into the European market. Over an incredible 18 production run nearly 3 million were sold worldwide. After the Wrangler, it’s probably the most important car in Jeep history.
Unfortunately when it came time to replace the XJ, Chrysler had entered its disastrous merger of equals with Mercedes-Benz, another company in the middle of having its engineering-first principles gutted in the name of cost-cutting and efficiency. Subsequently, the KJ and KK Liberty replacements were pastiches, leaning too hard into caricature Jeep stylistic elements and compromised by longitudinal layout that hurt their packaging and economy. Known as Cherokee elsewhere in the world, in the US they were given the jingoistic Liberty moniker. The KJ lasted only six years before being heavily retooled to become the KK, which itself stayed in production until 2012. The KJ was by far the stronger seller, nearly 900k units finding homes but the KK fared much worse with less than half that.
It’s worth taking another pause to focus the hindsightometer on this part of the Cherokee story. Jeep had a beloved, successful and iconic vehicle in the XJ Cherokee, but chose not to continue the nameplate. This is always an undertaking fraught with peril, especially for a car that had been in production for so long. If your new car is a galactic leap forwards and the previous model has negative connotations then absolutely, it can be worth trying – think about how the Focus replaced the Escort. But with a car that is a fundamental part of your heritage like the Cherokee, we will see you are potentially playing with fire by denying yourself the opportunity to tweak the formula for the times. The other side of this coin is keeping a nameplate on a car that is fundamentally a different prospect to its predecessor also risks outrage. The new Defender was never going to be a like-for-like replacement for the iconic original, because the basic utilitarian market had long since moved on to things like quad bikes and John Deere Gators, and Land Rover simply didn’t have the resources for an all-new body-on-frame platform it could only use on one vehicle. Land Rover have been slowly working their way upmarket and a Defender with live axles just wouldn’t do, darling. This is what I mean when I say it’s a tricky needle to thread – you have to consider not just where you were, but where you are going.
And where Chrysler was going was bankruptcy. As Chrysler emerged from the ashes in 2009 after the disastrous Daimler-Benz and Cerberus years, Fiat became the major shareholders of the wreckage, giving Jeep access to a new box full of Italian toys. Although Jeep still had the Compass and Patriot road-based crossovers, they were ghastly holdovers based on an old Mitsubishi platform. The new KL Cherokee would use the more up-to-date Fiat Compact platform, first seen underneath the 2010 Alfa Romeo Giulietta and tweaked for the 2012 Dodge Dart and 2014 Chrysler 200.
Why The KL Turned Out The Way It Did
The brand new KL Cherokee was unveiled at the 2013 New York International Auto Show. Led by long-time Jeep designer Greg Howell, it was a much smoother and more approachable-looking car than anything else Jeep had at the time. With a shallow aero nose, a sharp horizontal break in the trademark grill and controversially, a split headlight arrangement that at that point had only been seen on the equally eye popping Nissan Juke, it was something completely fresh and a world away from the weekend warrior cars that constituted the rest of the lineup. In a precursor to the outrage prior to the launch of the new Defender, the main bone of contention with the hardcore Jeep fans was the absence of live axles. On a crossover. When our old pals Jalopnik leaked the then-unnamed new crossover in pilot build form, the comment section exploded in frothing outrage that descended into borderline racism and ableism. According to them, it simply didn’t deserve to be called Cherokee, a storied nameplate that had been absent from American soil for twelve years.
Jeep were stuck between a rock and a hard place. The existing Compass and Patriot had laid the groundwork for more road-biased Jeeps, but the Cherokee name in the eyes of fans was sacrosanct. It meant live axles and a tested ability to cross the Rubicon Trail, a rite of passage for any Jeep. The problem is this is a specific level of off-road ability that the majority of Jeep owners don’t really use. It highlights the tension between what your brand actually stands for, and how customers use their vehicles. In 2019 head of Jeep design Mark Allen told ABC News that only 10 to 15% of Wrangler owners take them off-roading. And that’s the Wrangler. From a design point of view Jeep made absolutely the right decision in basing the KL Cherokee on a modified FWD car platform, although it’s worth noting they made significant adaptations to give the Cherokee genuine off-road ability, especially for the Trailhawk versions.
It Was Successful Until They Made It Boring
Despite all the controversy the first version of the KL Cherokee sold very well. And then sold some more. According to Wikipedia, over 1 million made it onto driveways across America, selling 240k in 2018 alone. Added to that is a further quarter of a million units for the rest of the world. When the more conventionally faced 2019 model arrived, merging the split lighting and making the grill slightly more upright, sales began to taper off, slowly at first and then off a cliff. There were worldwide mitigating factors that contributed to some of this, but across 2022 and 2023 barely 65k Cherokees were sold. It’s not clear whether will be directly replaced.
The other thing to consider when thinking about the KL Cherokee is who was paying the bills. Fiat knew what they had with the Jeep brand – remember earlier I said the original XJ and YJ Wrangler had established a beachhead in Europe – always a tricky market for American car brands to penetrate. Fiat wanted to further increase Jeeps presence in Europe from slightly leftfield choice to a genuine mainstream alternative, so a less bellicose and aggressive vehicle would be necessary to expand sales here because an overt tacticool influence is seen as a bit naff.
Now I’m not going to sit here and argue the KL Cherokee is an amazingly brilliant, epoch shaking piece of automotive design, because it isn’t. Not every car can be a Citroen DS or indeed the original Willys, and nor should they be. Good design isn’t about creating high art every time the Bic hits the paper – it’s about designing the right product for the right time, and making it as pleasing as possible for the intended customers. And customers do like distinctive looking vehicles if they have substance to them. One of the reasons the original Nissan Juke was so successful was because it didn’t look like anything else on the road, and the young (and young at heart) market it was aimed at appreciated that, along with its low purchasing price and running costs. The 1998 Fiat Multipla was delightfully bonkers, but behind its radioactive amphibian looks was a genuinely brilliant MPV. It was not a car for everybody, but owners really fell head over heels with their visual individuality and versatility. The 2014 KL Cherokee was nothing like as challenging as the Fiat and was perfectly judged for its target audience of non-traditional Jeep buyers.
I really liked it when it was released, and still do. It struck me as a fresh, bold take on the Jeep identity that was a distinct alternative to the bland crossovers available elsewhere . In the time between the XJ and the KL the odd-road market had changed considerably, and the Cherokee had to adapt to that to remain relevant. Sadly for the hardcore, that meant ditching the clanking railway engineering between the wheels and the body. I asked David, a man who if you cut him open would have the word Jeep written through him like a stick of rock, if he would have bought a KL Cherokee if it had live axles. He said no, because he’d rather have a Wrangler.
Case fucking closed my friends. Case closed.
- Someone Is Selling A Mountain Of 30,000 Jeep Wrangler Taillights
- The Ultimate Overlanding Jeep Cherokee XJ Is For Sale In Michigan — The Coveted 1996 High-Top Chief
- I’m Buying A Second Jeep Because I Forgot How To Put My First Jeep Together
- Our Professional Car Designer Has A Fever Dream And Designs A Jeep Hypercar
I found this article interesting and enlightening even though the author has an opposing viewpoint to mine. I have some lingering thoughts, however, and I feel like I have agency to voice them because I had a 1988 Cherokee Pioneer and loved it for many years.
1) The fact that the powers that be did not replace the very important to the Jeep brand Cherokee with a new Cherokee in 2001 is… (I’m trying to think of a kind word) bananas. There were focus groups, weren’t there? I know focus groups, having watched many of them on closed circuit TV ruin various things. Focus group research is unreliable, everybody knows this, and only exists to provide cover for executive decisions. “The Car” by Mary Walton about the second generation Ford Taurus really brings this point home.
2) Jeeps have had friendly faces since World War II and the 1984-2001 Cherokee was no exception. The face of the 2014 Cherokee looks like Predator had a baby with a mantis shrimp and quickly fed it canned haggis. That’s a design opinion from an internet stranger, but I’m pretty sure that one can state as a fact that the face of the 2014 Cherokee is not friendly. Which is off brand.
3) It is true that a small percentage of people took their ’84-’01 Cherokees off road, but I would bet a large percentage of them liked to think they MIGHT. Jeep not only weirded the new Cherokee’s looks, Jeep took away the live axles that made a convincing argument it was possible. “I cannot fool myself and others if I do not have the right costume,” said somebody somewhere.
The whole brand is centered around war, it’s very much the antithesis of friendly. And you don’t need live axles to go off road.
All true but consumers are irrational.
Adrian, I think we’d all appreciate an article about your least unliked boring cars and what redeeming design elements you find in them.
I’m not sure if changing its design was the downfall… I think by the time of the facelift so many buyers were aware of the quality issues plaguing Jeeps. I remember the Grand Cherokee, that was a huge sales success in Australia suddenly stopped selling because of the publicity around its quality issues. Same with all FCA products to be honest.
As an aside I test drove a KK Cherokee in 2011 and I don’t think I’ve ever run away from a car faster than that one. It was hideous to drive, it got hilariously poor fuel economy and despite being 14 meters tall had no boot space or leg room, my recollection being that they weren’t even particularly good off roaders. The follow up despite being based on a FWD platform was by far a better car in all respects.
And here I thought the Renegade was the most controversial Jeep ever made because was (GASP!) a Fiat underneath.
The Renegade raised hackles because it was manufactured in Italy and not Toledo, Belvidere, Kenosha or Detroit.
That too.
I believe that if they’d done the 2019 refresh version first, and then the split headlights version, they would’ve been even more successful. (So much so that the split headlight likely never would have been offered.)
Sure, Jeep sold a lot of new 2014-2018 Cherokees. The Compass was too small, and the Liberty was of distinctly pudgy proportions. The Cherokee is the in between size they should’ve never left to others.
The refresh brought in the Jeep loyalists who were hesitant to buy the ugly split headlight version. The split headlights turned some of the general public off so they moved on to other brands. So much so that some aren’t even aware of the newer, merged lights version.
The biggest problem with the renewed Cherokee is that the 2014 split version diverged too far from Jeep image and DNA and never recovered. That big of a shift takes a long time to recover from.
The 2014 version is just as ugly as the day it was introduced. “Perfectly judged for its target audience” is an absurd comment in the face of the criticism of its day. Unfortunately we don’t have access to sales figures from other timelines to prove it objectively.
Disclaimer: not a Jeep person, not an off-road person, so I have no identity stake in this.
I think the KL is ugly (and the facelift boring), but completely agree with Jeep’s position on going for radical change, especially in the face of increasing mileage and emission standards and needing broader appeal. The problem with any Heritage company is balancing its old customers with the need to adapt. It’s the animal that evolves to be perfectly suited to a specific niche, but suddenly needs to adapt when the conditions that drove its success change. At some point, though, they have to evolve or die off. Issue is that Heritage brand success relies on a certain set of die hards who often have their identities wrapped up in the product. While that loyalty can be fantastic, the downside is that they only want the old thing to go on forever and get angry when it changes too much even out of necessity and, as time goes by, the original fanbase tends to shrink. The bigger the company, the bigger numbers they need to sell, the bigger this problem can be. Someone like Morgan can survive on ash frames for decades (but even they’ve changed!) at volumes low enough to always remain smaller than the pool of willing weirdos, but not someone like Jeep and it’s difficult to impossible to walk the line that pleases the old and appeals to the new. The answer is various models to widen appeal, but that still requires walking a line with image.
It’s kind of like music, too. There are bands that have been playing for decades doing the same thing. Some people love to hear the same sound album after album, but for me, at some point it gets stale. Then there’s those bands who seem like a different group every album or every few albums for the way they change their sound. In some cases, I’m really more of a fan of certain albums than a band itself because the sound I liked evolved into something I don’t. However, I still count myself as more of a fan of the band because I like things to change and, even if I often don’t like the changes, I have more respect for the guts it takes to move on from something that works and for me, the better artist is the one who isn’t standing still.
It’s a good point. My personal touchstone here is the Jaguar XJ6. It’s one of my absolute favorite Jaguars, it was (and remains) a gorgeous car, but Jag couldn’t just keep making it forever.
And music-wise, this was absolutely Radiohead. ’90s Radiohead sounds different than ’00s than ’10s. But yet, there’s still an identifiable Radiohead ethos that permeates it all.
Jaguar is a good example. My oft-stated derision for the XKE aside, I really like old Jaguar. I want to like current Jaguar and I wish them well, but they’re having a very difficult time evolving and the heritage they’ve been leaning on for decades is severely diminished. Though I’m just a dog guarding the gate to the underworld, looking to a future market of far fewer marques that can’t seem to adapt to the massive changes going on, all three heads are in agreement that we’ll be seeing Jaguar roll on through and we will bow our heads in respect*.
*It’s probably due to a relic of dealer agreements and some kinds of corporate setup BS that we don’t see this, but I think there might be a future in off/on marques under an umbrella. Like, if Land Rover wants to build a sports car or luxury car, they could use the Jaguar name (doesn’t make sense as a LR or RR name). As demand for these models that don’t fit the LR/RR brand comes and goes, so does Jaguar. It would require corporate umbrella dealers rather than individual marque dealers and I’m sure it’s a lot more complicated than I’m stating it, but I think there are a lot of valuable name plates that just can’t survive as full-range profitable marques going forward. That doesn’t mean they have to die off completely if they can become more like sub-brands that only have to be profitable for a time by model. Lancia is even worse off—why are they still around as a rebadge or bottom-feeding for some throwaway model in very limited distributorship to sell? Make a new limited edition Stratos off an MC20 or a new Integrale or something completely new that fits what Lancia was off of something else more high volume, something more targeted that might not sustain a company, but can add to the bottom line and, when it doesn’t or a limited run of cars is up, that’s it for Lancia until there’s another idea for a car that fits.
You raise an intriguing point I’ve thought about a little too, if from a related angle.
Imagine if GM was able to, a few years back, announce that for a single year, the Pontiac Firebird was returning. Sure, it would mostly have been a Camaro with some different bits here and there, but the buzz around it would have been epic and it probably would have been snatched up. Its warranty would specify that it’s honored by GM, etc. And then it’s done. No more are made again, or at least as a current model/on a regular basis.
I personally would love to see a limited edition “Mercury Cougar” from Ford.
I don’t quite remember, but I think Pontiac was what I was thinking of when I first thought that up. GM certainly didn’t need so many badge engineered uninspired cars from different makes just to fill out those divisions’ respective portfolios, but what if they just kept making the G8 and Solstice until the platform was done? Then or concurrently, yeah, a new Firebird. While the Camaro and Firebird were very similar, I think there was plenty of room to set them apart more than just lights and they traditionally appealed to a little different crowd. Now with the Camaro dead, maybe the Firebird would go, too, then no Pontiacs until maybe sometime in the future if a good opportunity pops up for a new GTO, Firebird, whatever.
I think there’s even more room for a Cougar based on the Mustang, something more comfort-oriented and less extravert (I guess this could also be done with a Thunderbird, but it would have to be larger, which makes it more expensive and would probably sell even less as few seem to want big coupes anymore). With largely the same structure, I think they could use the Mustang results and data for safety and emissions, so volumes wouldn’t have to be high, which is good as it probably wouldn’t sell in huge numbers. Maybe make them limited by design while that kind of thing still (usually) sells.
I think your broader point is spot-on – we’re going to eventually see some brands/cars as basically intellectual property.
We’re accustomed to seeing auto making in very mid-century terms – large, mostly (but less so now) vertically integrated manufacturers that produce a full range of vehicles.
That’s going to change. Ford is already showing the way, specializing only in what it does best, either b/c of history (Mustang, F-150) or happenstance (tariffs that keep competitors out or the unintended consequences of regulatory actions). I suspect we’ll see more of that, whatever form it may take – like Jaguar as a micro brand, making only a handful of sedans and coupes, rather than trying to offer fairly uncompetitive SUVs, for instance.
I have very mixed feelings about these Jeeps. My wife and I bought a 2015 CPO Cherokee in 2016 with 26,000 miles on it. 3.2l 2wd, with most every gadget that they came with on the inside. We put 80,000 miles on it over the next 6 years with no repairs, the only things it ever needed were oil changes and spark plugs at 100,000 miles. I was always impressed by its acceleration, and I regularly got 32mpg highway with it. On the other hand, I always felt it was too small on the inside, and after I took over driving to could never quite find the “right” position for my seat. However, it will always have an important place in my heart because it saved my life. I fell asleep driving home from a friends memorial late at night with cruise control on, and ended up drifting into a guardrail and flipping it end over end. I survived, the Jeep did not. The amazing thing to me afterwards was that all of the doors opened and closed normally, including the hatch. I never loved that Jeep, but I now have respect for it.
The low interior volume was one trade-off of the KL’s heavy-duty suspension bits and strengthened chassis (which still affected non-Trailhawk models). But that solidity had benefits, as you discovered.
Jeep purists were vitriolic toward the KL, but Jeep over-engineered those things far more than any typical soft-roader. You could easily take a KL over some off-camber pitches that would pop the doors off a RAV-4. However, all of that engineering contributed to the KL’s highest-in-class sticker price, and it’s not like you got a world-class interior to go along with it (although it was certainly not worse than any Toyota product).
In the end I think it just suffered from being more expensive than the competition, and FCA characteristically let it wither on the vine toward the end, like almost their entire lineup.
It was our first “nice” car after a long string of beaters (me) and hand me down Chrysler products (my wife), so I always quite liked the interior compared to the 2008 Patriot that preceded it. But it was pretty eye opening to compare it to my bosses CRV, that thing seemed cavernous on the inside comparatively speaking. We both drive Honda products now, much to the chagrin of my wife’s Chrysler family (in Metro Detroit, loyalty to the automaker that fed generations of your family runs pretty deep).
Coming from inner city Detroit, I completely understand.
I’m a transplant so it was weird to me at first, but I get it. Still, “Chrysler” is literally and figuratively not the same American company that put food on the table of their family anymore, so that one is a little harder for me to understand.
“Dodge City” on Warren, the Sterling Heights plant in 17 Mile, and the Jeep plant on Jefferson. That’s enough in and around Detroit to hold its home team standings.
Fair enough, it’s all so muddled now though. Really, all of these companies are international in nature and should be thought of as such. Which is why I’ve taken a “drive what I like” attitude, especially since the company I work for does business with the most of the car companies.
It had an interesting mix of features. One of the selling points to me on the KL was that it was the cheapest 4WD vehicle I could find with vented seats. I used to wear suits to work and those seats were a blessing in the south during the summer. I used it for camping rather than off-roading, but it was still the perfect vehicle for both work and play for me. I still have it (well, one of my kids drives it) and it is still ticking along with 130,000 miles on the odometer.
I’ll be honest, I don’t much care for either the original design or the refresh. The original design had an odd front end, but the rest was dull. The redesign made the front end more traditional, but then the whole thing was dull.
As for the sales falling off a cliff in 2022, a friend bought one a 2022 Cherokee and I am absolutely embarrassed for him on how much he paid. Jeep dealers were asking crazy, crazy numbers for them, so I can see why nobody would buy one.
We’ve got a 2019 post-facelift model. 3.2L V6. It’s fine! It’s a Chrysler 200 tall-station-wagon. It’s too heavy, it’s not very good on gas, but it’s fine! We got it for a song thanks to employee pricing, and it’s been a fine car.
I always liked the look of these Jeeps (the first version not the boring makeover), but in the Trailhawk trim. That roughed up the edges perfectly, to my eyes, and it even came in some cool colours.
I think the KL’s biggest issues has always been drivetrain.
Otherwise, it was pretty decent, honestly.
The 1-2 and 7-8 upshifts can be rough, thanks dog clutches! I’ve never seen 9th in regular driving – I cruise at about 78mph. (3.2L V6)
It was rare in any rentals I was in for it to go into 9th. Granted, I live in hill and mountain regions, so when I got a flat stretch of road with no heavy winds, it’d go into 9th without issue.
I think I saw it with the 2.4L in a rental once, but the 3.2L is already turning like 1800RPM at 80mph in 8th.
Maybe my minds hazy, but I remember using cruise control with the 3.2’s a lot and it’ll go into 9th at speeds past like 72.
Maybe I’m lost though. Been a minute since I drove a KL though.
I think the 3.2 was developed specifically for the KL because the 3.6 would not fit in it. (Someone correct me if I’m wrong.)
I can’t imagine that it was. If the 3.6 couldn’t fit into a slightly bigger-than-average compact SUV, how could it fit into a smaller-than average mid-size sedan? The total height of the engine bays between the KL and 200 was relatively substantial, I believe.
One of the reasons I had thought that was because I don’t think the 3.2 was used in any application other than the Cherokee? At least not in North America.
As far as I know it was one of the last two small-displacement V6 engines available in the US market, the Mitsubishi 3.0 being the other.
It wasn’t used elsewhere, but it is a Pentastar V6, like the 3.0 used in foreign, tax-the-displacement markets. They share a lot in common with one another, with no real outer differences, including physical size.
I’m sure, at some point, there was a plan to offer it in other products but like with many other (rumored) things related to the Pentastar, nothing came from it.
Good read. I liked this Cherokee and I wish they still kept going with it. I really liked the bold original front end on these things. It would have been really cool to see them keep going in that direction. When they gave it that boring ass corporate front fascia it was almost indistinguishable from the later model Compass and even the Grand Cherokee at the time. It was like if you squinted you could see all three vehicles at the same time.
Damn well written. The XJ was a classic design. However I feel, from occasional wrenching on my ‘90 XJ, maintenance and ease of repair was not Job 1 from the designers.
From my perspective, not a hardcore Jeep guy, I don’t see a world of difference between the original and updated KLs. Seems like a normal design evolution.
What issues do you have? XJ Cherokees are very easy to work on.
It’s surprising that they’re very easy to work on, because you’re right, serviceability was not Job 1. That 4.0 engine was never meant to be installed in Cherokees, and the first three years of Cherokee production didn’t offer it. They had to shoehorn it in later, and it’s impressive that they didn’t make it a nightmare to work on by doing so.
I’m currently in Germany on a fancy pants car design event so will dive into the comments later when I’ve drunk all the complemtary beer.
Please keep editing this comment after every complementary beer. The entire internet wants to see how this evolves.
Based on his spelling of complemtary, he may have started early.
So like eight beers later can we get a design critique on one of the best cars ever made, the Saab 900? (I may be biased.)
Now that’s going to be a party. As for me, I liked the look but was disappointed in the loss of ability.
Is complemtary a drunken portmanteau between complimentary and contemplatary? Like you needed some free beers to cogitate upon the subject?
It was free beer. I’m not made of stone.
I’ll be happy to provide free drinks should we ever meet!
You may live to regret that statement.
The bad part of these is the weird concave hatch with nothing in the middle. If you could get the facelift hatch with the original face it would be the ideal version.
Though it’s also kind of uncomfortable and doesn’t have a good use of space.
Owned a Patriot (2016). Utter shite. The front-end components were flimsy and it could not stay aligned, despite never going offroad. Tires were utter garbage from the factory. Turning the vehicle in a tight radius, the sidewalls would cause it to crab and hop. So much mouse fur and cheap plastic, terrible ECM (had to reset it monthly or the car would stall on shifts). 2.0L engine was a step above Lada Niva power and agriculture nature, acceleration was measured in eons. 5 speed manual was a must to whip this penalty box along in traffic. Radio had to be reset weekly. Dumped it at 40k. Looked so good! That’s all it did that was good though. That made me wary of even trying the Cherokee – that and the fact that the 2.0L and 2.4 are cousins. And that 2.0L was dogsqueeze.
Honestly I forgot the 2.0 was even offered in that car! I think the 2.4 would’ve been the bare minimum. I haven’t heard about ECM issues on that engine (WGE 2.4), but then I haven’t been scouring the forums for it…
Now that I vented my spleen, I guess had I known when I bought that Patriot that it was a Dodge Caliber in Jeep’s clothing, I would have said no way. Still, I think the second-generation Patriot’s looks are great. For a small vehicle they captured rugged and the old Cherokee’s looks quite well. The driving experience was not great. Build quality, true to the Caliber underpinnings, was hot trash.
I really liked the interior of the newer Cherokee. In fact, the departure from the previous Cherokee design was really cool in my mind and for a while I did consider trading up. The fact is, Jeep really didn’t have a winning play with the replacement of the previous model. Maybe they could have styled this model just like the original, but people would still have nitpicked.
I completely understand.
What’s your verdict on the Patriot’s design, which seemed to more or less mimic the beloved XJ?
(and didn’t people generally like the Ford Escort?? I loves me a good Focus – own one even – but I was also a fan of the Escort back in the day. The final gen was meh, but wasn’t that b/c Ford knew the Focus was coming out?)
People absolutely loved the Escort, especially the last generation. It looked like a baby Taurus. It’s just that the architecture of the replacement was so different that they had to give it a different name.
The one thing that stood out to me was the curve in the tailgate showed the reflection of my truck upside down. Wonder if the designers did that on purpose…
This is what bothered me more about the Cherokee design over time. I never minded the front, but for some reason tired of seeing the upside down reflection of my car in that big expanse of tailgate. It’s not the only one I’ve seen that happen on, but most vehicles have the license plate in that area instead.
it’s a jeep thing, you wouldn’t understand.
I am looking at these for my kid as a first car- 7-8k all day for a newer (looking) fairly capable off roader that gets decent mileage and has some on-road civility. ANY year of Wrangler here in Tx pulls down more than 8k. The 2014-2018s still look fresh and new enough, and the aftermarket is becoming surprisingly robust because of the volume sold. I think that like the XJ now, that as these are hitting their second and third owners, you see them lifted, modded and they’ll more desired.
This weird Jeepening is what happens with all new model Jeeps- when they first come out, people compare them to the last generation; Happened with TJs the JKs and the JL’s too, “purists” always have issues. Then they get used- and more people get exposed as they get passed around and their prices drop to 5-6k. Then miraculously something happens. They get modded, individualized, turned into off road toys and people romanticize them. It’s happened with all versions of the “Wrangler”, even the Liberties (the ones still running), and especially the XJs which- if you look can sell for 5k or 25k. These Cherokees, just by nature of pure volume will eventually get there.
So as I’m looking at these- in 2018 it looks like there was a shift in the small Jeep SUVs. Is there a difference between the Compass and the Cherokee now? The only way to tell them apart is the name badge on the back. That could account for some of the sales issues. They are identical and not in a Corolla-Camry-Avalon way.
Funny that you mention the Compass. I had a rental one a few weeks ago and when I would see a Cherokee I was like oh it’s another Compass until I got near and realized it was a Cherokee. I honestly can’t tell them apart either.
Hopefully the Cherokee rides better than the Compass did because god did that thing absolutely suck. A terrible motor, terrible ride, terrible gas mileage. I made it 4 days and swapped it out for something not terrible when I just couldn’t take it anymore.
Last year, I was helping a friend who was looking at small SUVs/CUVs. In scoping out real-life examples of the ones she was considering, I came across both a Compass and a Cherokee in a parking garage. They looked nearly identical, the Cherokee’s just a hair larger.
And since Jeep has that thing about NOT putting the model name on the back, that knowledge wasn’t coloring my views.
But….. It’s not a fairly capable offroader. It a Fiat with independent suspension that will be outperformed by any Subaru off-road.
Not every model of jeep is eventually accepted and turned into off-roaders. Grand Cherokees in general(but especially anything newer than a ZJ) are fairly rare in any kind of offroading, and I have seen one lifted Liberty ever.
The (new) Compass was brought in as basically a lighter, more mainstream Cherokee. It’s smaller on the outside, but the same or bigger on the inside. Sadly it was saddled with the Tigershark 2.4 as the only engine choice until finally the 2.0 turbo was offered starting in MY 2023.
Now I ain’t no fancy pants designer type guy, but I know an uggo when I see one! I hated these when they were new, and I continue to hate them now.
I always simply saw these as “Fake” Jeeps because they were just a Fiat with little bits and pieces of trim and sheetmetal to make it look “Jeepy”. I feel like the time is ripe for bringing back a new version of the old Boxy XJ
My issue with these was that there was only 1 angle where the front looked good. Otherwise I just find them to be just too pointy or odd looking. Personally I think the refresh looks better.
But then I’m not any sort of designer. I purposely bought a Kia Soul and 2 decades ago would have bought an element if it wasn’t for the dealer not wanting to bother ordering what I wanted so my design opinions should probably be ignored.
Was some of the sales drop off the increase of crossover choices that were newer and better from other car companies?
That’s likely contributed, just more frequent updates of the competitors that were already out there too. Nissan put out the 2nd gen Rogue in 2014 too, and even they gave it a facelift and a full redesign over the course of the Cherokee’s run.
Jeep’s sales as a whole have been lower in the last few years compared to that 2010s growth period as well, but the Cherokee had also seen its lineup pared back significantly to just a couple of trims in its final years, which surely affected it more than anything. They seem to be moving the Compass into its role, and that was already pretty close to the Cherokee when it came out in a few ways. Since then it’s expanded its upper trim offerings plus added a standard 2.0T, so there wasn’t much reason left to buy a Cherokee. It hasn’t recovered to the level it was at in 2018 too (171k) nor made up for all the prior Cherokee sales, but its sales have at least grown year over year. I have to think more people on the upper end might have just stepped up to a Grand Cherokee too especially as they wound down the prior gen in that 2021 timeframe.
Most of the design is good – I understand the reasoning behind making it a crossover without live axles – but I cannot get over the grill that slopes back into the hood.
The grill reminds me of those late ’70s waterfall grills like you’d see on a Cutlass or New Yorker
those grill things might be just fake stick-on things if I remember right.
They just should have kept calling it the Liberty.
I saw a final gen Liberty (the boxy one) this weekend. The design has aged well, even if the vehicle itself hasn’t.
Lol no they look just as turrible as they did in 2008 or whenever
Yes, with pointy roof rails and a single high-mounted driving light on the driver’s side.