Although early off-road vehicles can pass through many rough roads through four-wheel drive, due to the use of non-load-bearing bodies and overall axles, the vehicle is too bumpy in driving, and the comfort is too poor; and the larger weight also leads to high fuel consumption. At the same time, off-road vehicles pursue high passability, so the chassis has a large distance from the ground, resulting in poor stability when driving at high speeds.
As a result, Jeep launched the Cherokee XJ in 1984, catering to the needs of most people, and sold 78,000 vehicles that year, resulting in a new type of car , the SUV , the multi-purpose sports car. Moreover, this SUV is a real off-road car, and it has become the object of imitation and transcendence by many car manufacturers in the future, creating a myth in North America and Europe. But the pioneering status that the Cherokee XJ wields isn't the only reason for its success and popularity.
In the early eighties, the whole impression of off-road vehicles or home sports cars that were then improved with pickup chassis was high fuel consumption, lack of power, and poor comfort. The Cherokee XJ completely changed this "crotch pull" fact.
The Cherokee XJ achieves comfort close to that of a sedan by adopting a suspension system close to that of a sedan, while having near-off-road vehicle passability, good visibility and interior space performance, and stability at high speeds. And a few years after the Cherokee XJ was put into production, Jeep installed an inline six-cylinder 4.0L AMC engine for it, although this engine is not advanced in the current view and has long been discontinued (it does not have variable valves, the compression ratio is very low, the cylinder does not have today's multi-valve design, and there is no booster), but if you look at the level of the eighties, the inline six-cylinder engine is the mainstream configuration, Jaguar uses it for top models, and Jeep also relies on it to establish its own reputation. Every household in the United States has at least one such family car or pickup truck. At that time, in China, the vast majority of cars were still using carburetor engines. And the Cherokee XJ's four-drive system is also powerful enough, so the Cherokee has won the praise of a large number of users.
Despite this, the "reputation" of the Cherokee XJ model in china is not very good. In 1985, Beijing Jeep Automobile Co., Ltd., a joint venture between Jeep and Beijing Automobile Manufacturing Plant, began to produce the Cherokee XJ model, which we know as the "Beijing Jeep" or "213". At that time, there was a saying called "Santana that can't be broken, Cherokee that can't be repaired", which shows that many people have a lot of criticism of the reliability of Cherokee. The reason is that in China in that era, the jeep was considered a tool car, far less high-end in status, and the main users of the Cherokee in the eighties were government agencies, state-owned enterprises and other institutional customers, their maintenance of official cars was not satisfactory, and at the same time incorrectly used and unprofessional maintenance, resulting in the later Cherokee failure was falsely rumored. Coupled with the high sulfur content and impurities of the early domestic oil products, improper use and maintenance, resulting in serious carbon deposition in the engine, easy failure of the sensor elements in the car, etc., these have also led to an increase in fuel consumption and failure rate. And, if the Chinese auto market is as keen on SUV models as it is now when the Cherokee is introduced, then it will surely become a generation of god cars.
In fact, the American positioning of the Cherokee XJ is higher than the Gep's main model CJ6 (the predecessor of the Wrangler) of that year: its appearance is hard, the performance is balanced, the modification potential is huge, the accessories are easy to obtain; not only the price is relatively cheap, the market ownership is also large. So in fact, the Cherokee XJ has a good reputation in the domestic off-road enthusiast circle, and once became one of the most popular models for players.
At the end of the day, the Jeep Cherokee XJ is far from perfect. There are also more options in the market. It was either more comfortable, more powerful, and more off-road capable, or more affordable, but it all came together, and at the time, only the Cherokee XJ was there.