It’s a little hard to get your mind wrapped around the Cherokee’s mission in life, but Jeep tries to help by calling it “SportWagon.” It’s a station wagon with extra-functional overtones, an American car in Oshkosh overalls-part car, part truck. The result of the XJ’s rigid and lightweight chassis, and the clever suspension, was excellent ride and handling for a 4×4, with Car and Driver writing at the time: When the 4.0-liter inline-six joined the party in 1987, the Cherokee began cementing its legendary status as a truly affordable, practical, reliable, powerful, daily-drivable vehicle that brought off-roading to the masses and not just to owners of niche, harsh-riding machines.Īnyway, here’s what a 1983 Cherokee looked like (OK, this is from a 1982 brochure, but they looked the same): It was a true breakthrough in the SUV world, and the first-ever five-link coil-sprung solid axle front suspension also played into that. The result was a vehicle that weighed under 3,000 pounds - over 1,000 pounds less than its predecessor (!) - and that maintained 90 percent of its predecessor’s interior volume. And it’s light in weight, but also strong and durable. It provides better ground clearance while maintaining a lower vehicle ride height. UniFrame holds twisting to a minimum under all types of loads and terrain. There’s a new structural design called UniFrame that takes a weight-reduced, conventional frame and welds it directly to the floor pan. Jeep called it the “uniframe” design, and described it thusly: This is not how one should really think about unibody vehicles, as “integrated” frame might conjure thoughts of big parallel rails going the entire length of a body, with crossmembers tying it all together - basically a frame welded to a body, but with the Jeep Cherokee this isn’t a bad way to think of it.
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