Want to buy a 3 year old Cherokee, what do you think?

I am looking at buying a 3 year old, high end Jeep product with leather seats and all the bells.

1 Are they reliable?

2 How much would I expect to pay in Canada?

3 Are they more expensive to maintain than comparable luxury SUVs?

4 Is automatic better than standard in terms of reliability. I don't do much off roading, just heavy snow driving.

Thanks

You couldn't get the leather seats with the standard transmission I thought.

Cherokees are viewed as reliable since they were around long enough to get the bugs worked out. There's mixed experiences on Grand Cherokees, which are a much newer model.

Not in my opinion. As a genereal rule, truck parts are more expensive than car parts, but domestic parts are cheaper than imported. Cherokees are common enough that you can get a lot of the parts from auto parts stores rather than dealers.

Neither transmission has obvious flaws like the Ford Explorer ones do / did. As you've probably guessed, the automatic is more common than the manual. The Cherokee automatic is viewed as very reliable, but it is very expensive to have worked on if something does go wrong.

I should add that the Cherokee wasn't really considered "luxury" by most people. I think in later years Jeep considered it more an entry level Grand Cherokee, and buyers considered it either that or a no-frills workhorse. My Cherokee has just about every option except leather and antilock brakes, but really loaded ones are not as common, as most people that wanted and could afford all the toys probably bought Grands.

Monte: I was just up to your City on Monday and bought a 1995Jeep Cherokee Country Loaded And in really Great shape. It has a 3" skyjacker lift,

31:10.50= 15's, fully loaded Green and Gold . One heck of a nice unit. It was shane Burgen's I think was his name. He live's in Burnsville. You might know him?????

I have a 2000 Grand Cherokee for sale with 50K miles bought new... immaculate shape

jsprauer @ sbcglobal.net

Sounds like what you got is similar to mine. Mine is a 93 Country, metallic green with "champagne" trim (I always thought it looked more like "silver"). It's pretty much stock, except for very slightly oversized (235R15) tires and aftermarket CD receiver. It does have limited slip and factory skid plates. When I bought it it there was some rust and "deferred maintenance", but it's in good shape now.

I don't happen to know Shane Burgen. I would like to try off-roading some time, but I've only had a 4*4 for 9 months and more pressing issues came up last summer. So I don't really know anyone in the Jeep "community" around here.

That would be the Grand Cherokee Limited series.

For an off-road vehicle of domestic origin, about par for the course. Note that they are off road vehicles with all of the extra mechanical complexity that implies. It is not a Honda or mall cruiser even tho far too many folks that own one never find out just how nice is is to cruise across a desert waving at all the wrangler types sweating their rear ends off at 112....

The Grand Limited is by any measure a luxury SUV, except that unlike mall queens, it is also an offroad vehicle that may not be a Wrangler, but it isn't a Nissan Murano either.

For most folks the auto is better...few people still know how to drive a stick well, and they tend to buy wranglers. The newer Grands have a 4.5 speed auto that uses a different gearing for climbing up thru the gears and downshifting for passing.