Mid size it was- three seat belts in front, a seven foot bed (one foot longer than S-10/Ranger) and a choice of 4 and 6 cylinder engines along with 4X4 options that made it an all things/all people type pickup. Not as small as an S-10 or Ranger, not as big and thirsty as a F-150 or Scottsdale. The Comanche was to be marketed as a “mid size” pickup. (The full size J-10 on offer had been essentially unchanged since it was first sold as the Gladiator in the early 60’s. This gave the product planners at Franco-American Motors (after the de facto takeover by Renault) the idea that a light pickup would be an easy way to flesh out the line beyond two models for very little incremental cost. We won’t revisit that here, other than to note that this monocoque design was extremely adaptable to the needs of a wide range of configurations (2WD, 4WD, 2Door, 4Door V6, I4, etc). It was to be a make or break product and its writ ran large.įorests of trees have been felled to produce the history and praise of the ’84 Cherokee. The company’s salvation would be using the “halo” of the (still) magical Jeep brand to launch a line of smaller, lighter four wheel drive “sport utility” vehicles that were of sensible size, returned reasonable fuel economy and could use existing mechanical bits to appeal to a nascent thirty-something market that wanted to drag their expensive canoes to the lake on the weekend, haul the kids to soccer games during the week and throw a golf bag in the back for a quick nine holes at the country club. The passenger cars were a dead end and everyone knew it. The company was dying and radical surgery was needed, or the patient was a goner.ĪMC was a hodgepodge of obsolete Spirits, Concords and Eagles in the twilight days of malaise-era motoring. The company was still building CJ 5s and 7s but every year there were fewer customers for crude designs that had been on the showroom floor practically unchanged since they had come back from WWII. Ailing parent American Motors had gotten by for years by wits, guile and David Copperfield–type accounting, but the endgame was in sight if there wasn’t a modern replacement for the hoary old Cherokee and Grand Wagoneer. By the early 80’s Jeep was on life support and the power was flickering. Rambler dealers understandably didn’t want two compacts in the same showroom)įirst, some background. (The other is the Hudson Jet after Hudson shacked up with Nash in 1954. In fact, the Jeep Comanche was probably one of only a couple of cars that its dealer network actually asked to be discontinued by the parent company. That said, I’m still at a loss to explain why today’s CC was not a runaway smash on the sales charts. And calling what we drive on a parkway and what we park on a driveway. Giving politicians power and authority when most of them are silly fools. Like the odd ratio of hot dogs to buns on offer at the supermarket. (first posted ) Some things just make no sense whatsoever.
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