Jeep’s ‘XJ’ Cherokee, built between 1984 and 2001, was one of America’s great automotive designs: a chisel-edged slab of practicality that arguably set the template for every SUV that followed. A shape as recognisable, as genre defining, as the 911 or Mini.
So when it came time, in the early Noughties, to replace the XJ, obviously Chrysler – fresh from tying the knot with sultry European paramour Mercedes – decided to do the sensible thing, and retain that iconic shape while overhauling the Cherokee’s underpinnings.
Only this was Chrysler, and this was the early Noughties, so obviously it didn’t do the sensible thing. For the ‘KJ’ generation Cherokee (called Liberty in the US, because to hell with badge allegiance) it did the exact opposite, binning everything beloved about the XJ…
