Jeep Cherokee 4.0

...been and bought myself a Jeep Cherokee to replace our ailing Renault Scenic. The Cherokee's eight years old this year, but with only 69000 miles on the clock the £4000 price tag was quite attractive. Plus they offered me half that for the Renault, so I didn't have to actually borrow any money to buy it. I could have had the diesel version but that would have cost me almost half the price again, and although the four litre power plant in my petrol ...
...Renault. Bizarrely, mathematically, the Jeep was simply the most economical choice open to me.

What did I get for my money? A purple square box with a baby-poo tanned leather interior. I can hear you all cringing already, but really it's not as bad as it sounds. Dirty, the outside looks nothing other than black, and clean it looks navy blue from a distance; it's only from close up that you notice the purple flecks in the paintwork. ... more

There's something about American cars that I just love. I think it's their crudeness - the obnoxiousness of the way they are built. For example: the Japanese build cars for speed and economy through gizmos and gadgets, technology more powerful than once sent man to the moon; the Europeans achieve speed and frugality through precision engineering, the perfection of machine and hand working together.

Over the other side of the Pond, however, Americans throw away the need for economy by keeping their fuel prices extremely low. They then make a car go fast by simply putting a bigger engine in it. The bigger the engine the faster it'll go, that's Uncle Sam's philosophy. Take the Dodge Viper, for example. It can do the 0-60 dash in a little under four seconds and goes on to a top speed of around 190 miles per hour. It produces 510bhp and looks simply stunning.

But it's built with American ideology and therefore gets all this performance from a gas-guzzling 8.3 litre V10 engine and the weight of such a power plant means it cannot ever hope to go around a corner, which is just as well because America is so big that they don't need corners. And because America has such cheap petrol, the Dodge website doesn't even bother to tell you what sort of economy you wouldn't be getting from the big engine.

The other thing that's wonderful about American cars is their ostentatious interior design. Americans are big fans of creature comforts: an entry level car in America comes with nothing short of a huge engine, air conditioning, electric seats to move their large frames around on, CD player and leather trim; here we'd have to spend twenty thousand pounds to even start to think about such a spec; in America you'd get all of that for less than half that price. Brand new.

Mind you, build quality is not the greatest. Cheap plastic rubs against cheap plastic in all but the most expensive cars, switches click and grate against their subcomponents and the steering is typically weighted so light that even frail old Grandma Goggins can turn the wheel of a hefty Cadillac Eldorado with her little finger.

Yet I love all of that about American cars. It gives them a character that you don't find in sterile German cars or high-tec Japanese ones. Switchgear in American car moves with a curiously satisfying snap, as if it's about to break at any moment but doesn't actually do so. It means that every drive is an adventure, because you're not completely sure of what's going to happen. It always adds a little excitement to your journey when you turn on the indicator, here the * snap * of the stalk in your hand and then the returning crack as it cancels itself after the turn has been completed. I love the fact that the suspension is so soft that every pot hole is marked only by the sound of the wheel crashing through it, the feedback through the steering wheel so vague that you hardly notice you've almost ripped your front left wheel from its axle.

So I've been and bought myself a Jeep Cherokee to replace our ailing Renault Scenic. The Cherokee's eight years old this year, but with only 69000 miles on the clock the £4000 price tag was quite attractive. Plus they offered me half that for the Renault, so I didn't have to actually borrow any money to buy it. I could have had the diesel version but that would have cost me almost half the price again, and although the four litre power plant in my petrol version isn't the most frugal of engines I'm unlikely to spend £2000 more on fuel over the next two years that I intend to own the vehicle than I would have had I stuck with the Renault. Bizarrely, mathematically, the Jeep was simply the most economical choice open to me.

What did I get for my money? A purple square box with a baby-poo tanned leather interior. I can hear you all cringing already, but really it's not as bad as it sounds. Dirty, the outside looks nothing other than black, and clean it looks navy blue from a distance; it's only from close up that you notice the purple flecks in the paintwork. And you get used to the interior quite quickly, too; honestly, the tanned hide isn't as repulsive as it first sounds, plus the leather is soft and supple allowing you a big comfy arm chair to slide in to. The front seats adjust electrically forward and backward, up and down, plus the motors allow them to tilt the base to almost any sensible angle; the backrest adjust manually ala any standard car, but you rarely need to do this anyway. The seating is so flexible, combined with a steering wheel that adjusts for rake up and down, that just about anybody can find a comfortable driving position in this car.

The slab-like dashboard spreads in front of you, the displays providing you with information for speed and revs (naturally), fuel, oil pressure, engine temperature and volt meter for the battery. Equipment wise, this Limited version offers electric windows all around, central locking, radio cassette player (an optional multichange CD player is fitted in the boot), air conditioning and ABS. More than enough for my every day requirements.

Most American cars are fitted with an automatic gearbox (a 'stick shift' is usually an optional extra in the States, the opposite way round to Europe) and this Jeep is no different, fitted with the Daimler Chrysler four-speed auto of the time. It's an okay gearbox. When you select drive it jumps a little bit as the gears engage, but once moving the shift is smooth unless you are really racing the engine. There are no funky paddles or tiptronic style shifts on this gearbox - you can select second and first gears manually if you really wish, only normally recommended for hill climbing or descending, and the standard Neutral, Reverse and Park options are there too.

Being a four-by-four, next to the auto shift is a lever for selecting your four wheel drive transmission options. Unlike the Grand Cherokee I owned up until last year (and reviewed here on Ciao) the standard mode for the Cherokee is two wheel drive. This provides power to the rear wheels only and also aids fuel economy as drive to the front wheels can often prove costly on consumption. You have the option to select Four Wheel Drive 'Part Time' and Four Wheel Drive 'Full Time' simply by pulling on the lever, once for the first option and again for the second. This, according to the handbook, can be done at any 'legal' speed, although I'd recommend doing it at relatively slow speeds to prevent any damage to the transmission system. A third option is available for low-range gearing, providing extra torque to help in really muddy situations, when trying to negotiate rough terrain or pulling another vehicle from a ditch, for example. The low-range option is not at all recommended for every day, normal road use, not least because you really can't get faster than twenty miles per hour in that option.

The first two options are quite flexible though. The Part Time option is for if you find yourself stuck and simply need a quick bit of traction to the front wheels to help you out. The differentials are locked and it wouldn't be recommended to leave them like that for longer than necessary. The Full Time option is just as you would expect: power to all four wheels, all the time. You can drive the car round as much as you like in that mode, but be aware that it will affect fuel economy.

Jeep are renowned for their off-road capabilities, with a heritage that goes back over sixty years to the original Willy's Jeep. It's a tried-and-trusted system, much like the American approach to engineering, and every new Jeep is tested on their rigorous off-road course to ensure it can negotiate almost any terrain.

It's fair to say that this Cherokee is definitely more at home off-road than it is on. It lumbers around the country roads where I live and the steering is woolly, to say the least. Feedback through the column is vague and there is an area of deadness when the wheels are straight forward. I often wondered why BA Barraccus would swing his steering wheel from left to right yet his GMC van would always be going in a straight line and it's because this is another typical trait of American cars. Their lack of corners simply means they don't really care about a dead-centre feel through the wheel.

The noise inside the cabin is reasonably intrusive, too. Wind and rain rattle through your eardrums in bad weather and the small windows and narrow doors make visibility quite poor. The windscreen is very upright and close to your face but the bonnet stretches ahead of you for what seems like miles. It's a very militaryesque machine, more at home in the army or on a farm, but despite all that it's still great fun for the family. You can throw anything you like in it or at it and it just keeps going and in my job and with my family, that is more important than anything else. Boot space is adequate but for some reason Jeep decided to mount the spare wheel on the inside wall of the boot, using up valuable load space. To keep as much room as possible, Jeep fitted a skinnier tyre than the standard ones, so in the event of a puncture it'll have to be a quick trip to Costco for cheap tyres to make sure I can keep the full size wheel on the car.

The car feels big and unwieldy from the inside but it's important to note that the dimensions are hardly any larger than your common-or-garden Honda CR-V or Toyota RAV4, so it's not as scarey a prospect to park as some people think. Indeed, the large box-like frame and sharp corners make it easier, if anything, to figure out where each corner of the car is.

Performance-wise, the Jeep Cherokee 4.0 Limited is not for somebody looking for a fast car with cheap consumption. It's four litre straight six power plant can shift when you ask it to and nought to sixty takes less than ten seconds to accomplish, meaning that it can keep up with any modern-day rep mobile if it needs to, but moving all that weight around does mean it uses petrol. In fact, you can actually hear it being sucked through the pipes when you really accelerate hard. The onboard computer shows fuel consumption figures but it uses US Gallons rather than European Gallons to make its calculations, which gives a false reading. Worked out correctly, over one thousand miles of driving our Jeep has returned an average of just over 20 miles to the gallon; not bad considering it weighs more than two tonnes and all those journeys were short hops around country roads to the cash and carry, the brewery or to the kids' schools. Earlier this week we took it on its first long distance journey to catch up with some family we haven't seen for some time and the figures were much more impressive. The car was comfortable to drive on the motorways and dual carriageways and returned a much better thirty miles to the gallon while cruising; even at a very brief dash for the three figure speeds it was returning 25mpgs and that ain't bad for a fat American.

When it lumbers home to its car port the Jeep swaggers in to place and almost sighs with relief when you shut it down. That's just another quirk of this characterful car that we all love. I've had two Jeeps now, wear a Jeep watch and am waiting excitedly for the launch of the seven-seater Jeep Commander this month.

I'll be saving up excitedly. 

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