Here's Why Everyone Loves the Jeep Cherokee XJ

This is a 2001 Jeep Cherokee, better known to car enthusiasts as the Jeep Cherokee that you're just following a normal old used suv, if you know about cars you know t

here

are obsessive fans for these things and people sometimes fight when t

here

are really clean cars for sale online today. I'm going to show you why

everyone

loves

this. Well, I'll start with the style. Now I borrowed this xj

cherokee

from my friend Andrew here in Denver, Colorado, and it comes from the final model year 2001, the most refined of the xj

cherokee

s, but it doesn't really matter what year you are.

This car went on sale in 1984 and for 17 years until 2001 it had basically the same design with only minor updates. It had that same distinctive, boxy, upright look that this vehicle was so well known for and which isn't just special to the XJ. cherokee is the fact that no one makes boxy suvs anymore for those of us who don't like our suvs with flowing lines and sexy curves like most modern crossovers, which includes me, the xj cherokee simply represents something that You can't get it anymore, in fact. I still consider the 2001 Cherokee to the 2002 Jeep Liberty to be the worst redesign in automotive history.

Jeep gave up this beautiful distinctive styling and well-known brand for an ugly new car with an unknown name. Fortunately, Jeep realized the mistake of their When it came time to redesign the Liberty, they went back to being boxy and a few years later they dropped the Liberty name entirely and brought back the Cherokee, but it's not just the styling. Another reason XJ Cherokee people love this car is because of its simplicity. It has a design rooted in the 1980s and there isn't much that can break or go wrong, there aren't many modern gadgets. Here's a beefy 4-liter inline 6-cylinder engine that that Jeep used for years and is known for being largely unbreakable and easy to repair when it breaks, but it's not just the mechanical simplicity that people about the XJ Cherokee

loves

this car.

This car is simply simple in a way that other vehicles simply are not. So today I'm going to show you the xj cherokee and show you that. simplicity and I'll also show you the rest of its quirks and features and then I'll take it out on the road and see how it drives and then I'll give it an excellent rating and for more of my thoughts on the xj cherokee click the link below to visit autotrader.com oversteer, where I've also compiled a list of the best preserved 90s suvs currently for sale on autotrader. Now I'm going to start with simplicity and Specifically, I'm really amused by how much you can take this car apart with a screwdriver or wrench.

It's absolutely incredible. Most new cars, all the little screws are hidden behind little panels or trim pieces and when you get to them, you have to grab them. Take out a special tool and this is simple, take a look at just the cargo area, for example the little piece of trim here has exposed screws all over it, just grab a screwdriver and then you can remove the piece of trim and replace what need. Are they everywhere in the cargo area and that's just one example? A better example is brake lights, tail lights, and removing brake lights on cars is usually so cumbersome that you have to get into the decorative panels and remove several things, and it is always a challenge. in this car you walk up to it remove those bolts and then the brake light goes off anyone can remove the brake light and change it on this car this was also true inside the xj most cars do everything everything possible to hide everything. the screws to make it look like everything is perfectly assembled, but this is almost a source of pride.

How much you can disassemble with a screwdriver. It's like this car is Lego. Take a look, for example, at the small sill plate. Take it out if it is too worn and put in a new one. There are exposed screws in the doors. The seat rails everywhere you look. There are exposed screws on this car that you could just take your screwdriver to and go to town wanting to upgrade. That part isn't a problem, it's incredibly easy for people who want to work on a vehicle themselves, but the simplicity on this car isn't just about being able to take it apart and put it back together, it goes much deeper than that.

Take a look, for example. on the turn signal stock, I've been in a few cars with some really complicated turn signal stocks and this is not one of them, you push it down to turn on the turn signal or up, you pull it in for the high beams, that's it, it's just That also funny

jeep

didn't even bother to finish the back of the turn signal, so it's not a circle,

everyone

else would have gone to the trouble of doing this, but the Jeep thought to keep it simple and the Cherokee people around here appreciate it too.

Of the turn signal stock, another interesting thing worth noting is the gauge cluster as I get into newer cars I notice the gauge clusters are becoming more and more complicated for the most part. I think it's good that you get more and more information without having to take your eyes off the road too much, but look at how simple you become in this thing and it's almost hard not to feel a little nostalgic because when everything was really easy, you just had six gauges on your odometer and a couple of warning lights, that's it, it's simple too, take a look at the center console of this car, it's just this big piece of gray plastic with three levers sticking out of it, the brake parking, the four-wheel drive lever and, of course, the transmission lever.

I've always found this car fun, it's just a post that brings it up to you and then at the top there's the little part where you press the button to change gears; no automaker could get away with a shifter. so simple in 2017, but back then it was totally fine, there are also molded plastic cup holders and the overall look of this is not beautiful, but it is functional and it is simple, although fun, although simplicity is one of the main reasons why The ones I think people love the Cherokee today, it had a huge impact on the automotive world despite its relatively basic design and that's another quirk of the Cherokee.

This is ultimately one of the first crossovers and perhaps the first. The first unibody designed SUV. It was also the first SUV. Those kinds of people taught you that you could have an SUV in the suburbs or the city before Cherokee SUVs were full-size pickups like the old Chevy Blazer and Dodge Ram Charger. This was the first smaller personal model he gave birth to. To all the crossover and SUV movement we have today anyway, the Cherokee's quirks go far beyond its simplicity, so it's time to dive in and move towards the rear, something I've always found interesting in recent years. of the

jeep

xj cherokee. to spell the engine displacement 4.0 liters, except they spelled leader, the British English way of writing it ends in re, so it didn't really make sense considering most of these were sold in the United States, frankly I don't think make sense Anyway, it details the engine displacement at the rear of the car, since most consumers buying a car have no idea what a 4 liter engine is, but they did and misspelled it.

Another interesting quirk on the rear of the Cherokee, the door handles on this car. They're pretty weird instead of grabbing them and pulling them you have to press a little button and that opens them up and then you can open them. I remember even as a kid seeing them on the road and thinking it was a bit strange, the strangest. The part though is that the rear door handle on the tailgate is normal, so it's not that they didn't know how to make normal door handles, they just didn't want to move on, another interesting exterior quirk of the Cherokee is how small it is.

The vehicle is seriously, you've normalized this design and its proportions because you've seen thousands of these over the years, but this vehicle is only 167.5 inches long, making it more than a foot shorter than a Modern Honda Civic, now obviously in part. that's because it was designed in a different era, but in part I also think it's because they decided to steal a lot of space from the rear passenger. Take a look at the doors. The front door appears to be a normal size. The back door, I mean, is very small. check this out, there's like 14 inches of space in the back door between the front door and the rear wheel, there's no room back here.

The jeep made a two door version of this and it's almost like they had to begrudgingly convince them to make a four door as well. door version, so they simply robbed the rear passengers of any kind of comfort and that certainly seems true when you get into the back seat, the best example of that is not the legroom in the rear, which is clearly minimal , but the fact that there are no rear seats. headrests and it's not just that the rear headrests were removed on this one or that they didn't put them on this trim level, there are no rear headrests on the cherokee, they were never offered and it wasn't like there weren't any research done at the time That this came to light showed that head restraints were tremendously effective in preventing whiplash, that research already existed I just didn't want to do it, but the Jeep did something really good for the rear passengers of the Cherokee, namely they gave them power windows.

Now many people mistakenly believe that rear doors often have windows that don't go all the way down for safety reasons so their kids can't jump out of the back seats, that's not true. The reason most rear windows and doors don't go down all the way is because they hit the wheel arch and so can't go any further into the door. Now Jeep countered that by just sticking in this giant fixed window that takes up about a third of the window space and that made the part of the window that slides down smaller so it could roll all the way down, so if You were traveling in the back of a Cherokee, you had no headrest and you had no room. for your legs, but now you can stick your head out the window.

Another interesting thing about the back seat in the Cherokee. This is not a split folding rear seat, so you can fold part of it at a time, but the entire bench does fold down. and can be folded for a larger cargo area. Interestingly, when you lift up the bottom of the bench seat and a Cherokee, you'll discover that that's where they put all the tire equipment you might need to change a tire, the jack. and the tire iron, this is a really strange location for these things and I had to wonder why they did this, why they didn't put them under the cargo area floor like every other car and then I realized it's because there It's not under the cargo area floor, like I said before, this is a small car and the jeep had no room underneath, under the cargo area floor is the bottom of the car and that would explain why back here you normally have the spare tire.

It's placed in that space under the cargo area, but not on this car, they had to stick it here next to the rear window. It's mounted up here, it doesn't stay here so it can roll away if you have an accident. and it's really not the best place, as it steals some cargo space. Interestingly, jeeps sold a lot of these in the uk, they sold right hand drive poster versions and when they sold right hand drive cherokees they didn't bother moving the tire so If you drive a car with right hand drive On the right, he looked over his shoulder into his blind spot to change lanes and what he saw was a tire, not really the best idea, but again, simplicity is not always our friend.

Some other interesting interiors. quarks worth mentioning in the xj cherokee, starting with the stereo. Now you know, when I review luxury cars, I always talk about how cool it is that you can place the attenuator using the screen exactly where you want the music to sound best. do it on the xj cherokee, except it's not a screen, it's a little joystick. You want it slightly to the left and slightly in the back seat. Well you can of course when you go over the bumps presumably that joystick just gets sent all over the place and the sound goes somewhere else but it's the thought that counts also interesting on the stereo this stereo has 10 radio presets but you only see five preset buttons, look at this, you are hearing preset number one, press it a second time and now you are hearing preset number six,you hear preset number two, press it a second time and now you're hearing preset number seven, if you tap each preset twice it turns on the next preset that was hidden from view and talking.

Of the stereo it's worth noting that the center console of this car was quite useful it had slots for CD and cassette tapes the CD slots are arranged vertically the cassette tapes are arranged horizontally but it's worth noting that you couldn't do both if If you had CDs in there, the cassette tape slots couldn't be used and vice versa, so you had to choose whether you were a CD fan or a cassette tape fan. Another interesting thing about this car's stereo if you drive at night. You turn on the headlights, obviously all the lights on the dashboard come on like in all cars, but if you're driving on a day and, for example, you enter a tunnel, there are three buttons that are always on on the stereo, those three are the knobs that adjust the bass, midrange and treble.

Jeep has decided to keep them on constantly at all times, but not the volume, not the radio presets or the seek button, just those three because apparently they thought you would adjust them frequently. It's also worth noting that they've done the same thing on the driver's door panel for the power window switches, but that makes a lot more sense, you need to look and see them, I'm not quite sure why they chose them on the radio and , speaking of strangely lit things inside this car, in my opinion, the strangest thing would be on the sun visors, now that you put the sun on.

There are visors down there, like normal visors, you open the mirror and it's a lighted mirror like in many cars, but in this one it has a dimmer, so if you want to look at yourself with full brightness, you can do it with a little less brightness or a little . less brightness, it's so strange, this is a car they didn't even install rear headrests and yet there is a dimmer switch on the sun visor mirror and it's the same on the other side, there is a dimmer switch on both sides so you can look at yourself. a variety of different lighting conditions as you drove down the road, the next change was more interesting and unique.

I've always found the hazard light switch in this car quite strange, it wasn't a button you pressed like in any other car. It was a small switch that you flipped to the left and it turned on the emergency lights. If you wanted to turn them off, you moved it to the right. Interestingly, this was quite common on many older cars, but it's not something you see. today also always loved the window lock button on these, the window switches, the door locks were pretty normal but the window lock button is like I don't really know what to do so I just They did it with this oval shaped button that says press window lock.

It and the windows are blocked so that the rear passengers and the front passenger cannot roll down the windows. Something else that is interesting, although it has fallen out of favor. Many cars at that time had a lighter and an ashtray, but with Cherokee simplicity. It is key and it was optional. This car doesn't have that option, but it does have a small storage tray about the size of an ashtray; However, unlike an ashtray, you can't take it out to empty the ashes, so it specifically says no. smoking, if you throw your ashes there you will never be able to get them out.

You weren't supposed to smoke in this Cherokee. Also interesting is the headlight lever, now like many older cars the headlight lever is removed. To turn on the headlights, that's not so unusual if you've been around older vehicles. What's unusual about this car is that if you turn it all the way to the left, the dome lights you should know about will come on. which doesn't say that anywhere, but if you know and want to turn on the dome lights, you can do it with the headlight switch. Finally, in the glove compartment of this Cherokee you will find something quite interesting that would have belonged to the original owner. manual and has a couple of interesting quirks, for example the bag it comes in doesn't say Jeep or Jeep Cherokee, it says Daimler Chrysler Corporation, just a reminder of the giant merged company that sold you this car.

It's interesting to me that on the outside of the owner's manual it doesn't have a picture of the vehicle or even the jeep logo, it's like a picture of Utah. You want to take this out and that's a place you can go with it, but there's no photo of the car there, so you probably had to park it at the visitor center and then walk around to get this photo and the last interesting item in the car manual. owner. I have the owner's manual right now and on page 184 it tells you what causes the rust. and corrosion now gives you five causes take a second and think about what you think causes rust and corrosion what jeep says causes it are the following: number one on the road, salt, dirt and moisture buildup, for Of course, number two, salt in the air near ocean locations, obviously, number three stone and gravel impact it is also true that numbers four and five are a little unusual four are insects, tree sap and tar, insects that cause rust and finally number five, atmospheric rain, so if you don't want your cherokee to rust, keep it away from atmospheric rain and insects and the normal causes of rust and those are the peculiarities and characteristics of the jeep cherokee xj and now it is the Time to take it out on the road and see how it drives, unfortunately I won't be able to take it off road, but it's worth noting that's another thing people love about the xj cherokee: the ease with which it can be modified to travel all terrain.

This car had serious four wheel drive systems, much better than what you'll get in your regular Ford Escape or hyundai tucson one of the reasons nice xj cherokees are so sought after when they appear for sale online is that the People are always looking for a good starting point to build an off-roader and if you visit jeep forums you will see that the sky is the limit for how far and how severely you can modify them to tackle the trails, but anyway, now is the time to see how this works on the road, okay, driving the xj cherokee, now the first thing i notice while driving this is that the steering feels heavy and the car feels more substantial than i expected in terms of the steering feel, Everything almost feels like a mid-size or larger SUV.

I love driving these old boxy suvs looking out and you see everything everywhere I made fun of. They don't have headrests, but they do have a benefit, in fact there is a safety benefit that I can see for days behind me. I mean, it's almost unbelievable because there's no headrest to impede my vision and because all the windows are huge in this car and of course, that's probably due to the fact that there are no side airbags or anything like that, but the The reality is that when you look around you you can see and see and see.

Now I'm not going to say this car is fast. under no circumstances is it fast, it's not fast, uh, it's not really anything from the sword, it has a bit of torque at low revs and some power, they've obviously tuned the throttle when you press it to respond instantly, so it gets faster. It goes fast, but this car is not a vehicle with a lot of passing power, the ride quality is not as bad as I expected, it's not great, but it absorbs bumps better than I would expect considering what this thing was designed for, you know?

Early 1980s, now I like heavy steering. Many people prefer light steering. It is easier to turn the steering wheel. Whatever. I like cars with heavier steering. Surprisingly it's not lazy. The vagueness in the center is there, but when I turn it is predictable. uh it's linear and one of the reasons I really like this car and another reason I think people like this car is the size uh it's just smaller. SUVs have gotten bigger and bigger and obviously with that has come big improvements in fuel economy. so you can get a bigger SUV without sacrificing gas mileage and there are all these safety improvements that have made vehicles bigger crumple zones, that kind of thing, however some people just like the smaller vehicles, you know, and this one is immensely maneuverable and you can park it, uh and you can drive it in all situations and I really like that and I think a lot of people really like that.

Surprisingly composed in terms of road and tire noise. In fact, I'm surprised. I don't hear the road. I don't really hear. Tires don't hear. Other cars are quite good in that sense, what is not composed is the engine noise. I'm actually quite surprised at how much engine is coming into the cabin and you can hear that you don't get that kind of engine noise in modern vehicles. It's also hard not to. While I like simplicity, I'm actually someone who a lot of car enthusiasts say, oh, I hate all the technology and screens. Actually, I'm someone who likes screens and I like all the new features, I like to try them and use them. them and I think they are often very useful some of them are too many but many of them are very useful um however you can't go into one of these and no, oh remember when you didn't have to, you know, press a screen to change the controls of weather or you know, I wanted to see my odometer, I didn't have to go through several different menus, you know, I think a lot of these things are advances, but at the same time you get in a car like this and you're like a guy, yeah, the times They were simpler back then and that is the famous XJ Jeep Cherokee.

People love simplicity that is no longer available. People love the boxy style which is no longer available. People love the small size and all-rounder. A skill that is increasingly difficult to find and frankly, people love Jeeps and the XJ Cherokee was a quintessential Jeep. It was also a big factor in many people's childhoods due to the fact that the Jeep was on sale for basically two decades. you know this is a 2001 model from the last model year, it's been 16 years since you could buy one of these as a new car and yet they are still very desirable, very sought after, especially cherokees xj in good condition and it's hard to believe there.

There will ever be a time when that's not the case and with that in mind, on Doug's score, starting with the weekend and style categories, I love the boxy design and I don't care what you say, I give it a seven out of ten it's an icon, next is acceleration and I don't know what the exact figure is from zero to sixty but it lasts over seven seconds and therefore gets one out of ten. The handling is very predictable and not dangerous, but it's not even the slightest bit sporty and gets a three out of 10. The cool factor is debatable, but I personally think these things are cool and they only get cooler as the good ones get rarest and gets a 5 out of 10.

However, the importance is greater, this is an important car for the from the auto industry to SUVs, Jeeps and many North Americans, and it easily gets a 7 out of 10, which raises the Total score for the weekend at 23 out of 50. The following are the daily categories, starting with features. The xj cherokee has all the essentials but nothing more and gets a 3 out of 10. comfort is okay not great but not too harsh and gets a 4 out of 10. quality is a mixed bag the cherokee is notoriously reliable but No one would exactly call this card as nice as a luxury car, so I give it a 6 out of 10.

In practical terms, it has 69 cubic feet of cargo space and gets a 9 out of 10. Finally, it has value if you act quickly when see one listed, you can still buy a nice xj. Cherokee for around $10k, which is a good deal for an automotive icon, especially one that's the ideal size for city driving and just as comfortable on off-road trails. It gets an 8 out of 10, bringing its total daily score to 30 out of 50. Everything is set and Doug's total score is 53 out of 100, which isn't too bad for a 16-year-old SUV that you can get for less than 10 grand even if it doesn't have rear headrests.