The Jeep “KJ” Liberty is derided by pretty much any diehard Jeep fan because it represented the start of the car-ification of Jeeps. It was the first Jeep to introduce independent front suspension in high volumes, and while that suspension offers plenty of on-road and some off-road benefits, by and large, it’s a major downgrade in the Jeep off-road world. The KJ Liberty’s soft looks, its completely forgettable 3.7-liter V6, and its relatively weak automatic transmission options ultimately doomed it in the pantheon of Jeep history, but a former Jeep development engineer thinks the vehicle deserves more love. And he has a couple of amazing photos to explain why.
Getting a job at Chrysler after college was the greatest thing to happen to me. I thank the lord regularly for that serendipity. The fact that, after emailing a bunch of professors asking how I could get a job at Chrysler, one professor told me about a man named Professor T.C. Scott, who had been a consultant for Chrysler since the 1960s, and whose office was right in my mechanical engineering building!
Anyway, T.C. helped me get in touch with the right people, and after an internship, I joined Chrysler in the summer of 2013: The exact, most perfect time I could possibly have joined. As soon as I arrived, the JL Wrangler program began, and I was put on the powertrain cooling team (technically called “AeroThermal”). Being at Chrysler between 2013 and 2015 was an unbelievable experience; Fiat had just saved the company and was pouring resources into it. The new Wrangler, the new Pacifica, the new Ram, and even Hellcats were all in development. And most importantly: Many of the old-timer Jeep guys were still there, just about to enter retirement.
To be able to work with the people who helped develop the Jeep Cherokee XJ and ZJ and TJ was such a privilege, and it’s why I’m even writing this article. I follow Keith Montone on Facebook because he was connected with the Jeep “old-timer” group that I sometimes hung out with — folks like Jim Repp (one of the two fathers of the Jeep Wrangler Rubicon), the late Phil Toney (who sold me a cylinder head once), the legendary Tony Carvallo (who’s on the younger end of the “old-timer” spectrum), Tom Habercamp, Brandon Girmus (who isn’t old at all, but has an old soul), and on and on. Montone, a former Jeep Vehicle Development engineer who worked at Chrysler between 1998 and 2018, recently posted these two amazing, never-before-seen photos of a prototype Jeep Liberty KJ getting some serious air:
“A long time ago at a company far far away. Yours truly driving,” reads the reminiscing caption. In the comments are some great stories from former Jeep engineers; stories like this one:
One year we were at Silver Lake with the KJs. I was riding shotgun with the laptop and an intern was driving up test hill. I told him not to stop short, make sure you’re in the throttle until you just crest the hill. He matted that thing and never let off. At one point all I saw was sky out the windshield and then only sand. Airbags didn’t go off but ripped the front fasia off and bent the rear axle. You could see the wheel speed sensors peg in the data when we went airborne!
I asked Montone what I was looking at in these flying-Liberty pictures. He broke it down:
The vehicle development team wanted to test the “Jeepness” of the new Liberty. We had access to Island Lakes Rec [in Brighton, MI] at the time so we decided to take some of our soon to crushed mules out and see how they would fair. We found a berm and began driving over it at increasing speeds to see how much it could take. We hit that berm over 50 times. On the last run, the battery tray broke and blew a fuse in the fule sending unit. We replaced the fuse and drove it back to Plymouth Road albeit worse for wear. A lot of people deride the Liberty for its looks, but it was one tough little sob.
He later went on to tell me “We beat the tar out of that vehicle every chance we could get and it held up.”
I asked about the Liberty and its less-than-positive reputation among Jeep fans. Montone understands it, but thinks the Liberty deserves more love. “I do consider it a real Jeep,” he told me. “I agree the looks are a bit soft for my taste, but it was engineered with the intent to off road. It has cast iron lower control arms.” On top of that, Montone pointed out better ride comfort and handling, and a sweet rear-mounted tire on a swinggate mechanism that pops the glass up automatically (he told me about the swinggate, which I also quite like: “I am biased, however, since I got it patented for Chrysler ha ha.”).
Montone went on to discuss some of the KJ’s shortcomings. “The biggest challenge was getting more ground clearance. Without solid axles, it’s obviously harder to lift.” With that said, Montone said the KJ could still get it done off-road, even without a lift. “We have development trips in Moab over some harder trails and it did the Rubicon trail so it my book it’s a ‘real’ Jeep.”
“I am a big XJ fan and have owned both XJ and Libertys. When I was Manager at Mopar Off Road Performance, my team took a XJ to EJS and SEMA with some after market parts,” Montone made clear, before saying that what killed the 3.7-liter V6 KJ’s reputation more than anything was the fact that it was billed as the replacement to the XJ, when it was really something entirely different. The true replacement for the XJ, Montone argues (and I agree), was the four-door Jeep Wrangler JK.
“I think the Liberty was not good as a replacement for the XJ. I think they could have been sold side by side. The XJ crowd waited for the 4 Door JK and bought it in droves,” he told me. “Nothing will get the love of the [XJ Cherokee’s] 4.0L. Solid as a rock.”
I agree with Montone. The Liberty’s issue was that, when put side-by-side next to the venerable XJ, it just lacked some of the toughness and character of the old AMC rectangle. Nevermind the powertrain, which was middling; that could be forgiven, especially since the Liberty rode better, was quieter, looked decent, and could still perform off-road. It was a reasonably nice small SUV with some relatively impressive off-road chops, so long as by “relative” we’re comparing to the competition and not the predecessor.
I’ve always believed the Liberty was a cool little SUV with the unfortunate task of having to follow one of the greatest SUVs of all time. Maybe if I find a cheap stickshift I’ll try one out for myself.
I started my 30-year automotive career at now demolished, Jeep Truck Engineering in Detroit. Phil Toney was an a helluva guy. I went on a week’s long trip with Phil to Moab along with other Engineers and JTE workers back in the late 90’s. I would later on in life work with my father at his small business in Royal Oak where I sprayed the tub of Phil’s YJ with poo-colored bedliner (his color choice).
Your article drummed up some memories of when the first development prototype KJ’s arrived at work. The crusty AMC guys laughed. Us newbie spitfires laughed. We scoffed at the “bitch version Jeep” (sorry, times were different back then) and said it was the start of the downfall of the Jeep namesake. All of that, until we took it off-road. A bunch of us grabbed some early build cars and headed up to Mt. Morris (a.k.a. ‘the mounds”) and proceeded to beat the snot out of the couple of KJ’s we absconded with. You know what? They did aright. More than alright, they kept up with YJ’s, early TJ’s and an XJ! Didn’t miss a beat. They climbed, they handled mud, water, rocks, everything with ease.
I’ve since seen them on the road, all of these years later, and gave them my private, quiet respect nod.
I feel like it was simultaneously too cute and too ugly for its own good.
We had an 05 KJ CRD and loved it. We towed our 23′ Carolina skiff all over the Florida Keys, towed a 21′ camper in WI and once we chipped it it got 30MPG on trips, at least until we lifted it with an Old Man Emu suspension, shocks, upper control arms, a lunchbox locker and all the skidplates.
We then towed it tens of thousands of miles behind our RV, including up to Alaska. We did thousands of miles off road, including Hells Revenge and Elephant Hill in Moab and the Mojave Road.
It was remarkably reliable for 150k, other than going through alternator clutches every year or so for a while.
In the end, we got rid of it for a Colorado ZR2 because we wanted more space in back to haul camping gear, which turned out to be a lemon.
Honestly, I wish we still had it.
For a vehicle (or anything) to be “airborne”, it must actually experience lift from the air around it, like an airplane. Or a paper plane, which, while not having propulsion, nevertheless experiences lift resulting from the momentum it got from the person launching it.
A car jumping off a ramp or a cliff-like thing is mostly not airborne at all, but simply ballistic, like a bullet fired from a gun. Cars try to avoid generating lift, generally speaking.
Lot of loyal Cherokee XJ fans were royally pissed off when XJ’s progenies (KJ and KK) were renamed as Liberty but remained Cherokee for the export markets. They started the petition drive to switch back to Cherokee. So, no love for the name, Liberty, amongst them.
Chrysler switched back to Cherokee for the fifth generation KL. The same loyal Cherokee XJ were aghast to see how fugly the fifth generation Cherokee looked and petitioned to have KL named something else other than Cherokee…
The political correction reared its ugly head with demand to remove Cherokee out of respect for the Cherokee nation. So, a new petition to keep the name Cherokee.
Oh, well, you can’t please everyone…
You need to have driven it with the diesel engine. I had the ’06 with the diesel, a lift, 31’s, and a winch. I could take that thing anywhere and it would get 30 mpg on long highway trips at 70 mph. There were limitations offroad with the front suspension, but it could do anything a stock wrangler could do, and some things that the unlimiteds could not do. CRD was unfortunately discontinued after two years due to changing diesel regulations but it sold well in those two years. Sold mine in 2018, but it’s still running around my area. That diesel will last a long time.
All I know about the diesels in those Liberties is that supposedly they share a bolt pattern with a lot of old MOPARs going back to the 60s, so in theory anything with a 318 V8 could be converted to use the Liberty’s diesel engine. Or put a 318 in the Liberty if your state doesn’t care about emissions…
The Liberty and it’s Nitro twin deserved all of the hate and then some.
Go work on the pieces of shit under warranty on flat rate at a Dodge/Chrysler/Jeep dealership and it’ll be one of the vehicle you hate most too.
My mom had a nitro. The thing I vividly remember about that turd was the big hump on the floor on the left side of the passenger foot well. It was like there was a text book left on the floor and they just stuck a carpet over it.
I certainly dislike most of the 00’s Chrysler dreck, but this isn’t one of the cars that receives my ire.
I’ve driven and ridden in a few of these Liberties, and look, I get it, it’s no XJ. But at a minimum I liked the way it looked, and I thought it was perfectly competent for what it was supposed to be. Now the second gen Liberty (and Nitro, lol) deserve a serious amount of scorn by comparison. This version was superior in every single way.
So it had badass lower control arms and a cool swing gate but the engine and tranny (kind of important) that pushed the badass lower control arms and swing gate were trash. So who cares again?
Nah, I think the automotive history has placed this vehicle right where it belongs.
Had an XJ when I test drive the Liberty. Dealer mentioned every XJ owner that test drive the Liberty said no. Liberty was more Compass blacktop oriented.
Dude, no. Drove it as a rental on a couple vacays (I persisted as the first time was underwhelming) and offroaded my buddies’ lifted and upgraded one, thrashing it around Lake Michigan dunes. It’s awkwardly proportioned, weirdly top heavy, has narrow and uncomfortable footwells, a lousy engine, and way, way too heavy for its size and power. So no, it deserves its reputation. Can’t speak for its reliability as I never had the pleasure to own one, but a reliable turd is still a turd.
I say this as an owner at the time of an underpowered, uncomfortable, rattly YJ which I absolutely loved. As a jeep fan looking to upgrade, the brand new KJ seemed a worse choice than my 6yo YJ.
I think I’ve told this story here, but back in 2003 my parents were shopping for a Jeep, mostly for my mom. They test drove a Wrangler (at a dealership that tried to convince them there was no such thing as a hard top from the factory) and a Liberty. For some reason, Dad asked my opinion. I told him I would be glad to drive a Wrangler for a few days if Mom needed to drive my ZJ, but if she had a Liberty it would be hers 24/7.
They bought the Wrangler; Mom is still enjoying it today.
I did finally get a chance to drive a Liberty as a rental, and it really wasn’t bad, but at the time it felt more like a car to me than a Jeep.
I had an 07 Liberty almost from new. I had it until 2023. I put close to 200,000 miles on it. I replaced the water pump twice, and had the transmission partially rebuilt once. Other than regular maintenance and a recall on the power window regulators that was it. It wasn’t the most anything car I’ve owned, but it did everything fine, including soft-roading type trips. My wife loved it and refused to let me sell it until the transmission started to go a second time. I feel like if anything that was the real weak spot.
I agree with David that marketing them as XJ successors was probably a mistake. Even still, when they were new, in Northwest Indiana at least, they were everywhere.
Did you service the transmission at all between breakdowns? Just curious
Did I change the fluid? no. I know. That probably would have helped the first time around. The second wasn’t long enough after the first so I don’t think it would have mattered. Interesting point on this: there was no transmission fluid dipstick, just a cap on the fill neck. Apparently (at least for 07) this was a dealer specialty tool. I did try more than once to get my hands on one but couldn’t justify the cost when I found them.
I’m a dealer mechanic, was just curious. I figure a lot of transmission failures after 100k are due to no transmission fluid changes for 100k miles. And there’s no such thing as lifetime transmission fluid no matter what the manufacturer says.
You can buy a copy of the dipstick online for $20, most of us own a knockoff copy.
Funny enough I just did some training for the 25 rams which are getting a new transmission, the transmission manufacturer estimates it should last 300,000 miles, but the brand says it has a “lifetime” filter.
yah, I learned some lessons from that Jeep for sure. Even with the mistakes I made I still count it as being one of the most reliable cars I’ve owned. It never left me stranded on the side of the highway. I can’t say that for newer cars I’ve had in that same timeframe.
It wasn’t the capability. It was the interior, the seats were horrendous, stuff poked into the passenger compartment everywhere. This made it feel like there was no room at all on the inside. Just like most Jeeps, all the touch points feel cheap. It was a miserable thing to be inside of.
This. I owned a KK Liberty and actually liked it for what it was. There was also a KJ in the family I drove a bunch of times. The KJ was smaller, tighter, held less and felt cheap (which is saying something when comparing it to the KK… which was noticeably better, but not by a lot.)
Then there’s the styling. For the past couple decades, many Jeeps have alternated between the boxier look (XJ, KK, WL) and the more rounded look (KJ, Compass, etc) Almost every time they do something more rounded and softer, the design language often returns to the boxy look in the next iteration… then it goes back again. XJ–>KJ–>KK–>KL is the perfect example of this. The KJ styling in particular didn’t “look” like a Jeep at the time.
I remember Michael Karesh on the now-defunct Epinions (later on The Truth About Cars – haven’t been there in a while) giving the Liberty a mixed review and summarizing it as “if you need a compromise, this is a very good one”. Based on my limited experience, I can confirm the Liberty is very good in the snow.
That guy used the Autoblog comments section as his own publishing platform. Haven’t heard his name for years!
He was like a boring JatcoCVT
Hey, a bunch of folks told TrueDelta that they liked their Liberties!
I’ve always had more respect for these than I did the Compass and Patriot, simply because I actually saw them in use back when they debuted. Back during the days when dealerships actually did promotions instead of just playing a corporate video on their website the local Chrysler Dodge Plymouth Jeep dealer took a few of these and the new for 2002 Dodge Rams out to a local dirt track before a race. Said track had an infield meant for motocross where the whoops and tabletops were still intact after the previous race. They used the Ram to tow things up and over the tabletops via chains (if you’ve had to tow something uphill while going downhill you know how how confident a display that is) and ran the two Liberties across the whoops as fast as they could get up to in the space afforded by the infield, among the other usual mechanical displays of prowess. A few days afterwards when going through a residential street with speed bumps I asked my grandfather why he wasn’t doing the same thing with his truck, and he explained he didn’t want to tear it up. As I got older, rode ATVs and dirtbikes myself, had a few runs on motocross tracks, and learned more about suspension and metallurgy the more I wondered if they did something to those Liberties to make them survive that. The fact that I’ve seen KJ Liberties survive going mudding long after everything else in their segment has died has me thinking that no, no the dealership employees did not modify those Liberties.
My wife had one. Even getting rid of it was a pain in the… We decided we’d sell it to CarMax after work one day after it giving us oh so much misery. I had a conference call to wrap up and told her to go ahead and drive it there with the plan for me to follow behind a few minutes later. Fast forward 5 minutes, and she called me from the side of the interstate as it was running incredibly rough. I dropped the call and drove to her. I cranked it, and it was clearly firing on 5 of 6 cylinders. I told her that I was driving it to my go-to shop and didn’t care I blew the engine trying to get there as I had had enough of this car. I put the hammer down hard with it continuing to misfire and shimmy, but it made it there. They couldn’t deal with it until the next day, but it turned out to be a coil pack that just decided to give up on that vindictive stinking pile. I then took it to CarMax and, fortunately, got far more than expected as I had spent the time to meticulously detail it. May it Rust In Pieces.
I like the part about the detailing to add value. Some people don’t seem to realize that a $100 detailing and quick engine shampoo will literally add thousands to the value of a vehicle.
The first company I worked floor after college had a group of engineers with TJs that took an annual trip to the silver lake dunes. I went with one year in my own TJ that I had never really driven off road before.
One other engineer who didn’t own a jeep rented a Liberty for the trip. If someone was nearby with a camera, they could have created a nearly identical picture. He ended the weekend with some minor damage. I never heard what the rental company said when he returned it.
I don’t have strong Jeep opinions, but I will say, I wish they’d kept the name “Liberty” instead of going back to a certain culturally-appropriating name.
The Liberty name would be viable if it weren’t for the second gen being a total flop.
This is the folly of the American brands. Introduce a model that flops, never use that name again.
That’s bullshit.
A: Make the car good enough that it’s not a punchline.
B: Have some spine. Fix the problems with the vehicle from generation to generation.
Otherwise, I don’t want to hear the whining about how you’re always behind the competition and hemmoraging cash. Do you know how expensive it is to establish a brand? It’s like an order of magnitude more than a new VERSION of an existing BRAND. Brands are sticky. We still call them “Dodge Rams,” right? That brand is a 5th grader.
Put the money into the car, not the name. Corolla has been around more than 50 years. Civic and Accord are in their mid-40s. How many models have been sprayed into those same segments by domestic brands in the same time?
If they’d gone through the trouble to establish the Liberty name, they would have been smart to stick with it.
They resuscitated “Compass” and the first gen Compass was way worse than any Liberty.
And the current Compass is pretty good! But yes, exactly
Bragg?
That’s kind of funny. I started at Ford in 2013… what a glorious time it was to be in the American automotive landscape. So many new and exciting products, money being funneled into development, and an overall optimistic outlook. I’m glad I got out when i did, though.
I reserve judgement until LiteBrite releases their videos off roading four of them this summer.
Everyone talks about the XJ as if it drives on water.
FFS, at least half its model run it had TERRIBLE engines. It launched with a 2.5L Pontiac 4 or the 2.8L GM V6 from the X-cars. Gutless. Oh, you could get one with a Renault diesel for a hot minute, as well.
The debut of the 4.0 fixed a lot of what was wrong. But even then…there’s nostalgia clouding reality. XJ was space inefficient, fuel inefficient, and while it became the darling of a few different demographic sets, it wasn’t anywhere near as perfectly refined as what the legend says.
The ZJ was an AMAZING update that was basically ALL AMC – that was a killer product.
The XJ was actually VERY space-efficient. It improved upon its SJ predecessor by offering 90 percent of the interior volume in a much smaller exterior package that weighed over 1,000 pounds less!
Not only that, it offered an industry-first five-link coil sprung solid front axle suspension (“Quadra-Link”), which has become a standard (rear) across the industry even to this day! (4Runner, Bronco, G-Wagen, Wrangler, etc etc. all use it).
The early 2.8-liter V6 engine was hot garbage, but the AMC four-cylinder was actually quite good! The transmissions were bad until the AW4 and AX-15 came around in the late 1980s, which is when the 4.0 joined the mix. Its RENIX years were a little problematic, but by 1991 the XJ was dialed in. Aside from some cylinder head castings in 2001 and Dana 35 rear axles if you’re doing hard-core off-roading (and some piston skirt issues here and there, plus a bit of an undersized cooling system), ANY XJ between 1991 and 2001 is an absolute masterpiece. Insanely lightweight, insanely off-road capable, insanely reliable — truly a legend.
The ZJ has a bad reputation due to bad transmissions once the AW4 and AX-15 of the early years bowed out (AW4 in the first 6mo of ’93, AX-15 offered in ’93 and ’94), but I own a manual and I think it’s a major improvement thanks in part to better materials, a better rear suspension, a better cooling system, and just generally improved NVH. It’s not QUITE as capable off-road as an XJ, but it’s close, and the ride improvements make it worth it. It’s much more livable, and feels less like a rattle-trap. I’m a huge fan.
All the facts! XJ was great at the time. Despite its gains, though, the dawn of the mainstream SUV in the early 90s, which the XJ sparked to a large degree, saw it quickly eclipsed by less capable, more comfortable and commodious vehicles.
You don’t have to agree with the hype but at least have your complaints be based in fact.
The XJ debuted in 1984. The 4.0 Debuted in 1987. Three model years out of 17. Let’s work on those fractions. The ride quality, power, and fuel economy was as good or better than the competition when it was a new design. It’s by US definition a compact car. Smaller than a Prius. Turns on a dime. It’s hard to get more space efficient than a box on wheels.
Car and Driver still has plenty of period reviews from the late 80’s and early 90’s where it was still a reasonably new model. Give some of those a read and avoid the rose tinted glasses of nostalgia and articles written to enhance hype of BaT auctions today. You’ll find it was still well liked for exactly the the things you say it’s bad at.
Whether you agree with hype or not, it had the right mix of charm and practicality to outlive the ZJ that was designed to replace it. Was it an anachronism by 2001? Yeah. It also had one of it’s best sales years in 1997 and was still selling nearly 200,000 a year until 2000.
Come on now, no need to be patronizing. We’re all friends here!
So we’re clear – I like the XJ a lot; it’s just one of those things like recording your band on magnetic tape – the magic you imagine isn’t the magic that is.
For its time and contemporary set, the XJ was an improvement. And then the market caught up to it and eclipsed it.
I was exaggerating a bit on how long it had bad engines vs. good, sure, but we can all, I hope, agree that we love the XJ and wish for it to be properly understood.
This reminds me of the conversation my wife just had with her brother regarding our F-150s. He was complaining it was a terrible vehicle; my wife said ours has been great. Then he started going through the list of everything that had gone wrong with his, and for virtually every item, my wife said “yeah, ours had that too”.
Funny how the same set of facts yields so widely different perspectives.
My wife drives a RAV4, and his wife drives a Giulia – you’d think we’d be the ones with higher expectations for the trucks’ reliability. Then again maybe they’re just oversaturated with repair issues. Who knows.
I don’t hate the KJ, honestly. The KK on the other hand…
The Store Manager of the grocery I worked at in college drove one of these to work every day. He made well over six figures but kept the Liberty and an old Datsun pickup. I admired his tenacity to continue driving the both of them, but if you saw him driving the Datsun it was always because the Liberty needed repair.
Its not on fire? How strange.