Cherokee Diesel mini-review.

They are horrid, aren't they?

There was me expecting a review of a small BMW FWD diesel in native american tribe speak.

That'd be "Gay bleurghhhh"

Truly. I'm in the predicament of having to use one at the moment, and it's not nice - or much cheaper to run than the Rangie.

I had a look at several before buying the Ford. The Ford's better built and a bit more pleasant to drive. The Jeeps really have rock-bottom interiors IME and the driving dynamics are awful.

I found even on relatively new Jeeps that the interior at 10K looked like the Ford does as 170K. Anything from Jeep with more than a few K on it looks about ready for the breakers yard.

Mind you, if you think the Cherokee is bad, try the Commander. Not jsut cheap build quality but truly incompetent design. For example, the Commander has a sort of cheap plastic tray with a bit of carpet stuck to it all the way across the load access. This tray is made out of nasty brittle plastic. Put a suitcase on it and in breaks. So to load the back you need to be able to clean lift a 25Kg suitcase and then load it at least a foot into the load bay before you put it down. Drop it and you have an expensive bit of stupid plastic to replace.

I quite like the interior of our P reg grand cherokee at work, bit old fashioned but seems to have held up well at 106k, leather is comfy.

They are, essentially, an off-road vehicle (and pretty good at it too. Well the 4.2 petrol ones are). They aren't great on-road. Alas, you now know this.

This one is the infamous R reg diesel with the whiney gearbox. It's done

106k as well, stinks of dogs (Properly Pikey'd up) but otherwise although everything feels like it's about to break nothing appears to actually be broken. Every time I use the indicators the stalk feels like it's about to fall apart.

It will, sooner or later. Ann had to have the one on her Cherokee replaced a year or two back for exactly that reason. What didn't endear the mechanics to me was that I noticed eventually that with the new stalk the cruise control didn't work anymore.

I'd disagree with the latter point, my XJ Cherokee 4.0 was very chuckable. Hate the diesels though.

Richard