Jeep Grand Cherokee 4.0

...as I pushed my Tonka Jeep Commander around the mud piles that made up our un-landscaped back garden, that I wanted a big metal car just like my Tonka toy when I grew up.

Many years later, with arrogant executive saloons and boy-racer sports cars behind me and with a family to accommodate, I found myself in a position where I needed to buy a new car. My wife wanted me to buy a seven-seater MPV, but such a car – with two more seats than ...
...mine.

The Jeep can trace its history back over sixty-three years to the Willys-Overland brand that produced the General Purpose Vehicle, nicknamed “Jeep” by the US Army who commissioned the vehicle as the only one who could answer its needs. With accolades to its name such as the World’s Best Off-Roader, amongst others, the Grand Cherokee seemed like a vehicle with history and capability.

Inside, the Grand Cherokee is ... more

Fisher Price are renowned for their “My First” toys; Tonka are renowned for their durable tin toys. When I was a kid I had Fisher Price and Tonka toys and I remember thinking, as I pushed my Tonka Jeep Commander around the mud piles that made up our un-landscaped back garden, that I wanted a big metal car just like my Tonka toy when I grew up.

Many years later, with arrogant executive saloons and boy-racer sports cars behind me and with a family to accommodate, I found myself in a position where I needed to buy a new car. My wife wanted me to buy a seven-seater MPV, but such a car – with two more seats than we really needed – struck me as an attempt by her to find reason for yet more children to be created.

To the pretty blonde you’ve been smiling at while stuck in traffic on the M25, a Volvo estate screams “safe-and-sensible-dad-of-two”, while an MPV shows a lack of understanding for the need to carry luggage as well as the family, not to mention the drabness of most underlining the fact that you have a very limited sense of style. If I needed to have a car that was big and durable to accommodate the family then it also needed to be something that could be fun and entertaining, in a way different to the myriad of Lexus, BMWs and Subaru WRXs that had adorned the front of my house over the past few years. Most of all it needed to say “free spirit”, even if that blonde could see the kids’ seats in the back. Memories of that Tonka toy came flooding back and it hit me, like an epiphany: buy a four-by-four.

I’ve never had the need to drive off-road in my life, but the desire for such a car overrode any sensible argument not to buy one. My wife, recognising the glint in my eye that said I couldn’t be swayed, immediately started searching 4x4 directories for models with seven seats, but not one matched the Tonka toy image in my head. If I was going to do this I needed My First 4x4, a vehicle with big simple buttons that were easy to understand the function of, yet it needed to be almost indestructible, like my Tonka toys were.

The executive in me recognised that the needs of my job meant many motorway miles would be piled onto whatever was purchased so it needed to be comfortable and well-specked, but the traditionalist in me said that if I was buying a 4x4 it needed to have a history, it needed to be capable. I wasn’t going to be accused of just doing the school run in this thing: it was going off-road under my ownership.

Scouring the magazines, reading the websites, getting the brochures, the conclusion seemed inevitable. They all lead back to the same thing. A 4x4 that had a history; a 4x4 with proven off-road reliability; a 4x4 with comfort and a good level of specification. No, I couldn’t afford a Range Rover Vogue, so it had to be the next best thing: a Jeep.

More to the point, it had to be the Grand Cherokee, and my local second-hand dealership had a 2000-model in the latest shape on their forecourt. If ever there was an opportunity for an impulse purchase, this was it; within an hour of walking onto the forecourt I’d fallen in love, my wife had rolled her eyes at that glint in mine once more, and I’d handed over the deposit. She was mine.

The Jeep can trace its history back over sixty-three years to the Willys-Overland brand that produced the General Purpose Vehicle, nicknamed “Jeep” by the US Army who commissioned the vehicle as the only one who could answer its needs. With accolades to its name such as the World’s Best Off-Roader, amongst others, the Grand Cherokee seemed like a vehicle with history and capability.

Inside, the Grand Cherokee is more Gentlemen’s Club than Pick-Up Truck, with a full-leather interior and copious amounts of faux wood adorning the dashboard and doors. The specification list is high, with dual-zone climate-control, heated seats with electric memory positioning, an onboard computer, CD player and cruise control all part of the package. The executive in me was happy, but the child within me was happier as the fist-sized transmission lever and large round buttons clearly depicting their jobs matched my Fisher Price ideals.

The wife might have sulked at the missing two seats she so desired, but a smile soon spread across her face as the Grand Cherokee completed its first major task soon after we took delivery: a replacement washing machine for the knackered one at home was loaded, fully-packaged, on its side into the boot of the car with no need to fold down the rear seats, thus meaning we could bring the children home with us as well. To her, this example of load space meant the extra shopping she could now carry home made up for the lack of more passengers.

Out on the road, the Grand Cherokee’s ride is okay. For a driver who had literally stepped from a rally-bred Japanese supercar into a car that stands five inches taller than my 5’9” frame (with roof bars attached), the Jeep’s ride at first felt soft and lumpy: a little unsettled over pot-holes and unrelentingly wobbly when forced to make rapid lane changes or turn quickly at junctions and the four-litre straight-six power plant felt woefully slow pulling away at traffic lights, though in its defence it feels like it could actually tow Snowdon without batting an eyelid.

However, all of these things you soon get used to as you realise that it’s not actually built to be a race car, and out on the open road she’s as well-mannered as any other modern day car. The seats are exceptionally comfortable, if perhaps a tad too soft and the spongy suspension forgivable; the stereo is of good quality and you don’t have to shout at your passenger to be heard above the wind-noise, though it can become a little intrusive at high speeds. With Radio 4’s Today programme informing you of current affairs, the clever infrared climate control keeping the sweat from your brow and the cruise control maintaining a polite legal speed, the M6 Toll is as nice a road to be on as any.

But the Jeep wasn’t built to just be a big family motorway cruiser. It was designed from a history harking back to the forties, from a desire to be able to go anywhere, even where tarmac hasn’t been laid, and the Grand Cherokee handles off-road terrain with incredible aplomb. To be honest, it would be fair to say that it feels more secure off-road than it sometimes does on. The quirky wobbles and shakes you feel when making unexpected manoeuvres on-road seem to disappear and blend into the car’s overall character as you negotiate it carefully up slippery stone-peppered hills and down the other side again.

On a recent trip to Wales, a get-away-without-the-kids affair, I talked to our hotelier about green lanes and he pointed one out to me that ran just two miles behind where we were staying, bringing you from the Glyntwrog pub on the A4086 over the hills and into the back of Llanberis. It was an easy run, ideal for novices, but with a steep(ish) descent at the end; it sounded fun, and the following morning we were off before the locals had chance to eat breakfast.

The route led us up some mild and muddy hills potted with muddy-water filled holes and small rocks to negotiate. At the top we stopped to admire the beautiful views over the Welsh mountains and it occurred to me that if we broke down there and then the AA would never be able to get to us. Slightly nervous of our vulnerability we carried on, reaching the steep descent and wondering what came next. Selecting the car’s 4-Lo option on the Quadra-Trac II transmission and 1st on the automatic transmission, we crept forward until we were facing down, feeling the pull of the seatbelts against our torsos. Virgin off-roaders that we were, we looked across at each other and said a silent prayer before I released the brakes… But the Jeep took it all in its stride, and whilst we worried and fretted over steep angles and obtruding rocks, the Grand Cherokee smoothly traversed the lot, almost feeling at the end as if it was saying “is that all you’ve got to throw at me?”.

I’d brought second-hand to lessen the financial blow if I’d found I didn’t like it, but as I stare out of the window at the gleaming behemoth waiting patiently for me to start it up once more, I find myself filled with that childish excitement and I can’t wait for the next opportunity to take my Tonka toy into the mud again. With Jeep shortly to bring out an updated version of the Grand Cherokee I’m already checking the contents of my piggybank, hammer at the ready.

For now, she’s parked outside: my Fisher Price car, my Tonka toy. My First 4x4.

**

I have edited this review - originally I had written a comedic episode of one early morning stuck outside with the Jeep; I will rewrite that under a more appropriate category. The above article had originally been of interest to 4x4 Magazine but was ultimately unpublished; a few further attempts to get it published in appropriate Off-Road magazines proved unsuccessful, so I have now posted it here in place of my original article.

Incidentally, the Jeep mentioned here is currently for sale on eBay (as of today, 4th January '05) for one week if you want to have a look. After seven days it will be removed from eBay but this paragraph might not be removed from Ciao - sorry! You can see the car by clicking on the Auctions list in my profile.
 

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