All of you who talked smack about the New Jeep Cherokee, take note: Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne believes in this car, so much that he predicts Chrysler selling more than 800,000 Jeeps worldwide in 2013.
At the Geneva Motor Show, Marchionne told Reuters: (Read More…)
The 12-person protest that took place at Chrysler’s Warren, Michgan truck plant got little notice in the automotive news cycle, save for a couple of mentions on the usual aggregators. In truth, it’s not the juiciest story to sell in this click-driven wasteland, though these stories tend to raise the most interesting questions. This example highlights an issue that is going to dog the UAW for some time – how will the UAW control their workers when they are also the owners?
“So, I ordered myself a Jeep.”
“Awesome! What did you end up getting?”
“Loaded Sahara Unlimited, Gecko Green, tan leather, six-speed manual, just like you suggested.”
“Well, that is what I suggested alright… but…”
“But what?”
“I didn’t think you were actually going to do it.”
The decision by former Chrysler design chief Trevor Creed, approved by the company’s product planners and subsequently reaffirmed by Sergio Marchionne and his team of Fiat managers, to produce two compact Jeep SUVs, the Compass and the Patriot, has always confused me. Why spend money developing two different cars based on the same platform for the same market segment? Wouldn’t it make more sense to make one good car instead of two not quite as good cars?
Of course in the corporate mind at Chrysler, the Compass and the Patriot were not really supposed to compete with each other. The Patriot was supposed to be a compact Jeep for traditional Jeep owners, with styling derived from the XJ Cherokee. The Compass was supposed to be the compact Jeep for women people who’d never consider buying a Jeep. It had rounder, softer shapes, and was the first Jeep to be sold that could not be bought in a configuration that would earn it Jeep’s coveted “Trail Rated” branding. (Read More…)
Remember the Jeep Cherokee rendering we posted last month courtesy of Car and Driver? Well, we had it on good authority that the rendering was very accurate. Turns out our sources were right. Jalopnik has photos of the new Jeep Cherokee undisguised and it is dead on. The styling is polarizing, to say the least. Some day it looks like a Jeep Juke, but I see more Cayenne.
My youth and inexperience may sometimes be a liability. Sometimes, I haven’t been on this earth long enough to place certain events and new model introductions in their proper context, ala Jack Baruth. But what I am good at, is listening to rap music. Today, the countless hours of pretending to be an inner-city drug dealer can finally be monetized, as Jeep’s Twitter account was hacked by some hip-hop loving cyber-vandals.
TTAC alum Justin Berkowitz hit the jackpot with Chrysler, managing to make sense of the umpteenth new product rollout they’ve announced since getting in bed with Fiat, and posting the most accurate rendering of the new Jeep Liberty replacement (according to TTAC sources, it is dead on).
After I found the very rare Audi-engined ’79 AM General DJ-5G “Mail Jeep” in a Denver junkyard, I thought I’d go back to ignoring most junked DJ Jeeps. They’re very common in Colorado, and this series has always been more about historically significant vehicles than just plain old ones. However, DJs built before AMC bought Kaiser-Jeep, and featuring the nearly-forgotten Chevrolet Nova four-cylinder engine, deserve some attention. (Read More…)
Even though the DJ Jeep was two-wheel-drive, Coloradans must really love them. I see DJ-5 “Mail Jeeps” in Denver-area wrecking yards all the time (for example, this ’82 and this ’72). I’ve mostly stopped photographing them for this series, because how much can anyone say about the steel box on wheels that delivered our mail for much of the 1970s? However, a Jeep with a factory-installed Audi engine is interesting, so here we go. (Read More…)
The big news to come out of Jeep today: DIESEL. And we aren’t talking about some HD truck diesel from a Ram pick-up. No, a proper fuel-sipping one, in the form of a 3.0L V6, will be available on the Grand Cherokee starting in the 2014 model year.
Whoa, I think I just experienced the weirdest deja vu…
It’s time to make a confession to the good folks at TTAC.
The mileage game is rigged.
How so? Well, approximately two-thirds of the vehicles that reach the 300k+ mark at an auction I attend will usually belong in one of four categories.
Self-concious auto shoppers looking for a cheap, Italian-made vehicle need look no further than Jeep; Fiat announced plans for a $1.3 billion investment in an Italian plant to build a subcompact crossover for Fiat and Jeep.
Pursuant to our continued discrediting of the “Jeeps built in China” lie, Donald Trump took to Twitter to further propagate that falsehood. And the Donald ended up getting a virtual earful from Ralph Gilles, head of Chrysler’s SRT Division.
Poor reporting by unscrupulous bloggers is nothing new – there’s even a book about it. We try and stay above the fray and simply write accurately the first time around. But a story regarding Jeep and Chinese production has been making the rounds with such speed that TTAC readers have been emailing us for clarification. It got so bad that even Mitt Romney got things wrong.
The first American automobile built as a joint venture in China could soon be built at a China joint venture again. Fiat plans to bring Jeep production back to the Middle Kingdom, Bloomberg says. (Read More…)
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