Oh, the Jeep Grand is the right car for my Wife, it does well for what we need. It is comfortable and has enough room for our stuff. It’s tough enough and has the balls to drive through 2 feet of snow.
But. $7000 dollars in repair ‘maintenance’ for 90,000 highway miles over 5 years is a bit much.
Two starter motors? Two! Shit, the car is young.
Power steering pump? That was $700. You’re shitting me. (My ’76 Chevy plow truck that I beat on has its original pump)
THREE SETS OF FRONT ROTORS! Ahhh… of course we had to many miles on it to participate in the class action lawsuit.
Two windows that won’t operate?
Rear axle seals?
Transfer case leaks?
I’ve owed a number of 4x4’s and have never seen issues like these.
The Jeep mechanics tell us that it is “Always a $1000 for a Grand” Ha ha. What whit.
My last Nissan Pathfinder went over 200,000 miles with no such complaints. I have a new one now. My Wifes last car, a Suzuki Sidekick never had such issues.
And to you Chrysler/Daimler/ Jeep, screw you for taking a good idea and turning it into crap.
Yeah. Jeep’s dead. Sorry. Nothing we could do at the time. Things got cut, it ran on name value. Probably will run on name value for a few more years. Right now, the bad decisions we warned against are coming out. Jeeps with no off road value like the Compass…
Ten years (we’re three-four years into a seven year cycle) and maybe it’ll be good again. Maybe not. Go for a FJ Cruiser.
I have a '98 Cherokee Sport with 146k miles on it and it’s running great. None of the problems you mentioned. In ten years I’ve only had two non-routine maintenance issues: the power locks went out, and the A/C relay needed to be replaced. Both have been fixed. But none of the problems you mentioned. Are the Cherokees generally more reliable than the Grands or have I just been lucky?
That particular automaker is terrible. I have a PT Cruiser that is a work vehicle. Thing is a piece of crap. It has terrible suspension. Driving on the BQE here you drive as fast as traffic will allow which is rarely over 65 anyway. This thing feels like it is going to fly off the road when I hit a bump going around a curve. It’s truly scary. The suspension is so mushy at high speeds. On the other hands, when driving slowly it’s plenty stiff. You have to crawl over a speed bump not to get bounced off the road. It’s terrible in every respect. It has power windows yet manual locks! Seriously, which are you going to use more often, windows or locks? I know I won’t roll down my windows while driving but will always lock and unlock it at least once.
I think Ford and even Chevy are making some final strides to make decent cars, but most Jeeps and Chryslers are terrible. Except for the Mercedes inspired ones.
I have a very high opinion of the normal Jeep Cherokee (Sport, whatever, just the boxy one). I’ve heard that it was very simple, yet it was very reliable and worked well.
Now the Grand Cherokee is another story all-together. From my experience, they are terrible and expensive. Nothing good about them at all.
I know nothing of Jeeps other than that my in-laws bought a used one a couple of years back for their teens, thinking it would be a “fun” inexpensive car for them. Sold it in way less than a year saying it was too expensive to maintain. I think they were talking about regular maintenance and parts, rather than their particular car having problems. They replaced it with a little Nissan or Honda (which probably would have been a more sensible first choice.)
I would guess that the regular Cherokee is a very good car. We use them at work because they are reliable.
I’m a bit sad about the Grand Jeep because it does interfere with our plan. My Wife’s and my plan. New car every 5 years. Alternating. So each car is driven for 10 years.
A new FJ? ehh maybe. Don’t like the suicide doors. But it may be worth a look.
$825 for a 90,000 mile ‘check up’ on the Jeep. I have not seen the break down yet on the Jeep.
The last service on my Pathfinder for all fluids - auto trans, oil change, transfer case, diffs, lube, and flush/fill and check radiator was $367.29.
vs $825 for the Jeep.
And of course the brakes and rotors are crap and need to be replaced every two years.
Oh. And not to forget the little guard under the 4x4 shifter in the center console.
$220.
And $400 for a window that decided not to work anymore.
Perhaps another Pathfinder, or an X-terra. Maybe an FJ. Or 4-Runner. Never again a Jeep.
Wrong. Fucking A, I hate Jeep with a passion. I had a 87 Jeep no frills Cherokee. Not the Grand, just the Cherokee. I had to replace the water pump twice, the starter once, all the damn radiator hoses and fuel lines, and that’s just what I did myself. It was a six cylinder, but the stock water pump they put in the thing was so damn tiny that it probably couldn’t even cool a 4 cylinder. Couldn’t run the air conditioner because the damn thing would overheat. All the parts seemed like they were just randomly grabbed off the shelves at the factory, without any attention to overall design - which is probably why the six cylinder model had a water pump more suitable for a four. I’m guessing that the reason why they’re reliable at your place of work is that you probably have mechanics in the motor pool that baby 'em.
Incidentally, they don’t even make the Cherokee anymore. They replaced it with an over-engineered piece of shit called the “Liberty”. Libertad! Give me the freedom of fresh air, the sunshine on my face, and the wind in my hair as I patiently wait for the tow truck while watching the majestic steam of Liberty pour out of the hood.
I’ve stuck with Fords ever since, but there are some Japanese models I like a lot too.
I must be lucky. I have had two Jeep Wranglers and have been totally satisfied. Bought one new in 99, put on a ton of miles, then traded it for a new one three years ago. crosses fingers
Nah, the FJ Cruiser is a sick parody of the FJ40 Land Cruiser, which, along with the '90s era Defender 90 and the Scout 80 and 800 series, are some of the best true small utility vehicles ever built. The FJ Cruisers look like a baby Hummer, and like the Hummers they seem to have plastic bits prone to falling off of them. The FJ Cruiser is built on the Hilux/Tacoma chassis and powertrain, and is basically a gussied up version of the 4Runner, which is a pretty decent vehicle for both moderate off-road and light cargo/passenger hauling duty, although it won’t have the cargo capacity of the Grand Cherokee. Personally, I like the Subaru Forester for estate wagon-type duty, but the rear seat isn’t suited for long journeys with adults, and while it handles snow and light off-road with aplumb it is by no means an off-road vehicle.
The Jeep Liberty barely deserves to be called an automobile, much less a Jeep. It has such an incredibly bad reputation at this point I’m not sure why people buy them, and in fact, I’m not clear on why anyone would buy one in the first place. Jeep used to make very decent civilian general purpose vehicles which could be readily adapted to off-road use with some moderate aftermarket work. Now after being bought by Chrysler they make Suburban Utility Vehicles for sorority girls and poseurs.
This brings up a good point. The Wrangler has always been a pretty damn reliable little vehicle. I have nothing against the Wrangler. I think Jeep’s problems stem from the other, larger, models. I suspect that they put parts designed for the small little Wrangler, which is actually pretty well designed, in the larger Cherokee versions which need something a little more robust.
A friend of mine still has an ancient Wrangler. It’s a piece of shit now, but that’s from use… a lot of abusive use, and we never had any problems that we could blame on Jeep. “Damn, we broke a strut.” “Well… how fast were we going when you hit that log?” It may be the exception that proves the rule.
If you got a Wrangler, don’t worry. Anything else, sell it as soon as you can.
Interesting. I had an 88’ Cherokee that had a water pump that failed (while I was driving long distance on the interstate) at about four years. But I wound replacing the engine with a remanufactured one and am still driving it with over 170,000 on it. I have replaced the alternator several times, the hoses twice, do the brakes every 6 years or so, and the radiator once but the thing is pushin’ 20 so I don’t think it’s too far out of whack.
Ours is a '99 Grand Laredo, and I do love it, but the brakes and axles just kill me. I’ve been spending about $1500 a year for maintenance. The next major thing, and out it goes. We are at 160K miles, so we got our use out of it, though.
Yeah, I figured that’s what made the difference. (BTW, if you didn’t pick it up in my original post, the failed water pump is what necessitated the new engine) I don’t remember specifically (gosh, that was 15 years ago now), I thought it was a remanufactured version of the original engine.
Oh, and I should qualify that still working fine a bit. The air conditioning quit in 94? and I never bothered getting it fixed.
Ah yesssss……. The FJ40. I’ve spent many a mile in one or another. Broke a winch on one.
With the gusto that only high school motor heads have, I helped drop a 327ci in a ‘72. Those where the days.
Ya know what Stranger? Sometimes I think you’re just reading ad copy, and wonder sometimes how often you have been in the dirt getting a car unstuck.
Have you been in the dirt snow ice up to your waist?
I guess we differ in what we call ‘Estate Wagon Duty’ as I see the Forester as a car that has 4x4. Much more than 12 inches of snow will shut it down. As much as I am pissed off at Jeep for the mechanical difficulties our Grand has had, it could have been a good vehicle. It’s a solid axle vehicle on a ladder frame.
You don’t like the new FJ and that’s OK. But have you looked under any other SUV’s lately and seen the lack of ground clearance?
I’ve an ’06 Pathfinder. To replace my ’93. It is built on the frontier frame. Full box ladder construction even if it is IRS and IFS. Towing up to 5000lb.