Why Jeep?

For me, ever since I've been driving I've been in to speed. I've done the whole high performance/import thing for years and I got kinda tired of it. I used to go to the drag strip every week back when I lived in West Virginia and while I loved racing and had a lot of fun and success with it, two factors changed everything. 1) I was starting to get tired with the people in the scene who would get in huge arguments over what amounted to a couple tenths of a second or a few horsepower, and the people generally being jerks (my car is faster than your car, etc). I had long ago accepted that my car was not and would never be "fast", but I had fun running bracket races and out DRIVING the faster cars. But I made a lot of people mad I guess because they were losing to a slower car. I just got tired of the drama.

And 2) I moved. I had to move to Maryland to find work, and while we have dragstrips here, the ones I've been to are nothing like that one I went to back in WV. What I mean by that is that they're set up for big money high level races, and really have no programs for grassroots people like me who have to work for a living and just want to come out one night a week and have fun. So I got away from that scene.

Around that time, I needed a new vehicle. At first I considered something sporty, but I decided I still had 2 cars (the one I raced and another that was a rare-turbocharged 4WD rally car) that pretty much fit that bill so what would be the point of getting another car like that? So I decided I wanted something different.

Ever since I was a little kid I was fascinated with monster trucks and off road racing. So it finally dawned on me that I should get something that I could take off road. However I didn't really want a pickup truck. I saw a couple Jeeps that looked pretty cool, so that started the fire. I made up my mind that I wanted a Jeep. And I don't regret it at all!
 
I like convertables, it's nice to drop the top on a sunny day and go for a ride down a backroad. It's much better to take the top and doors off, ride down a trail and not only see the wild life but be the wild life! Don't drive one unless your ready to want one.
 

Totally Agree with "Roundeye"

Jeep is the sound, the look and the feel of freedom
 
They have no power windows, no power seats, no power mirror. In other words very little power anything. But also very little to go wrong.
Because it's relatively primitive and takes us back to our automotive roots.
Air conditioned cocoons that do everything automatically become boring. Quirks are what give a vehicle "soul". In a Jeep you can feel what it's doing, which in itself can be an aquired taste and not for everyone.
For the same reason, there are any number of motorcycles that outperform Harley-Davidsons in any way you care to measure and for half the price. But they don't have soul.
 
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Because it's relatively primitive and takes us back to our automotive roots.
Air conditioned cocoons that do everything automatically become boring. Quirks are what give a vehicle "soul". In a Jeep you can feel what it's doing, which in itself can be an aquired taste and not for everyone.
For the same reason, there are any number of motorcycles that outperform Harley-Davidsons in any way you care to measure and for half the price. But they don't have soul.

Good analogy, I've seen Jeeps and Harleys mentioned together several times in different places. There's an old saying about Harleys that suits Jeeps as well. "If I have to explane, you wouldn't understand".
 

Good analogy, I've seen Jeeps and Harleys mentioned together several times in different places. There's an old saying about Harleys that suits Jeeps as well. "If I have to explane, you wouldn't understand".
Pushing a button to raise power windows when it starts to rain just doesn't build character like manually raising a soft top. Driving in the rain with the top down REALLY builds character. :lol:

Knowing where to smack the dashboard to make the radio come on makes you feel at one with your vehicle.
 
Knowing where to smack the dashboard to make the radio come on makes you feel at one with your vehicle.

Funny, my dash lights work the same way when it's cold. Let it warm up, then give it a good rap right above the oil pressure gauge.
 
Reliability, fix-ability, easy to work on and in my case, hauls a helluva payload! (6500lb loads were common in my '73 J4000 before I rolled it) It takes the potholes of the poorly maintained streets without falling apart (unless you have to swerve into the ditch to avoid a horse in the middle of the road!)
 
Gotta agree with Roundeye here. Bear with me, because I'm taking a trip down amnesia lane here, but it's all relevant.

5 hours north of Metro Detroit, or about 30 miles south of the Mackinac Bridge, is Cheboygan County. My family has 11 acres of property up there, all hardwood forest, in a trapezoid shape, the southeastern portion of which, in a beech stand, is our camping area. Now, when I say camping area, I refer to camping in it's purest sense. There is a circle of rocks around a firepit, and that's the only structure up there. You set up the tents, string up the tarps, find a tree if you have to go, haul your water in with blue plastic jugs... True, pure, Up North Michigan.

Back in the day, every summer vacation, we used to go on a family camping trip, for about two weeks. There would be fishing, and hiking, and trips to the historic landmarks, Fort Michilimackinac, Mackinac Island, Fort Wilkins in the U.P., Tahquamenon Falls, Ocqueoc Falls State Park... Cheap cheese curls, and Faygo Redpop. Hotdogs over the fire, and Kraft Mac and Cheese to go with it. Classic rock, and Motown whispering in on the radio. S'mores. As children, we were never bored, hell with Nintendo, air conditioning, or the old Commodore 64. We were perfectly content, with plenty to engage our imaginations, be it helping Dad cut firewood on a hot summer afternoon, or looking for frog-toads in the puddles on a rainy summer morning.

We made these treks, the summer vacations of my childhood, in an 83 Reliant, towing a rowboat. The old Chrysler K-Car never failed to get us down the two-track, a full mile off the pavement, to the property.

In 1994, a logging company came through, doing 'selected hardwood thinning'. We were offered a fantastic amount of money for them to harvest on our parcel, but my parents said no. My dad's reasoning was: how do you get to the 'selected hardwoods', without cutting down the trees in the way. Sure enough, the company clearcut all the parcels around ours. It looked like a war zone. And with all the heavy equipment on an unmaintained backwoods two-track, the road was completely, and irreprably destroyed. My father had gotten a new job, and did not have the vacation time that we were used to. We didn't go to the property that year, but vowed that we would next year.

Next year never came.

In 2001, right after I graduated high school. I decided to make a trip up to the property. All my happiest memories, times of my youth, before bills and insurance and jobs and all that crap that comes with 'growing up', were stored up there, and I was determined to get back to that happy place inside of me. I took my 84 Reliant north, with a trunk full of supplies, and my best friend at my side. Being a mile long two-track in the middle of the woods, the road was never great, but the Chrysler K-car had amazing backwoods prowress! I was doing well, right up until the point where I sunk it in the mud, and bottomed out in two feet of water. We spent the night in the car, and the next morning, after walking to the nearest farmhouse, a mere seven miles down the road, the tow truck came, tore off it's front bumper, and destroyed the rear end of my car before backing down the road to points unknown.

By the time I made it home, the back seat was dragging on the ground (when you have a body that's 95% rust, a rear-end collision does you no favors), and I knew that my hand-me down K-car had seen it's last days. I was so close to my property, and even though we walked to it, and raked it out, we weren't even able to camp the night (the trunk lid was smashed in, unopenable, and containing all our camping gear). I vowed that the first vehicle I bought would be able to get me back to my property!

I had set in mind a nice Dodge Dakota, but then I saw a 1997 Jeep Cherokee on the used car lot of Oakland Dodge. The salesman saw that I was interested, and while I was really liking this vehicle, he said that he had something special in the back that he wanted me to see. Out pulled this beautiful patriot blue 2000 Cherokee, power everything, clean as a whistle, and still under factory warranty with a mere 24,000 miles on the odometer. I fell in love with it instantly. It fit me like a glove, handled like a dream, and the financing was right in my price range. I took it up to my buddy's family's farmhouse in Charlevoix, and it tore up the backwoods like I was driving to the grocery store. The second off-road trip was, at long last, to the property. It was May, just after my birthday, the wet season, when the road is under two feet of water. No sweat. I put it in 4X4, gave it hell on the skinny pedal, and I was finally pulling into the parking place of my property, something no vehicle had done for the better part of a decade!

Generally speaking, you like the vehicle you're driving, but you don't expect to fall in love with it. This little Jeep was able to get me back to my happy place without batting an eye, practically sending me back through time to a time where the biggest concern of one's life was; do you want one or two Hershey squares on your s'more? It reopened a chapter of my life that had been closed for ten years. Since that time, it's taken me back there countless times. It's been on roads in the U.P. where the only tracks were from snowmobiles. It's been down to Texas and back, and a handful of times to Virginia to visit my aunt. It's been West to Grand Rapids, South to Monroe, East to Port Huron, and North to Newberry. It resurrected my late grandfather's shop in Ortonville where, one afternoon, giving it an oil change, I realized that I had, without even thinking about it, named it. It's taken me to every place I thought of going, and gained me countless friends on the trail, and at Jeeper meet-and-greets.

You can help your friends move. You can transport your mom's new dryer. You can fit exactly $287.00 worth of flowers and shrubs in it with the seat down. It holds an entire regiment of landscaping equipment, and still seats five! You can transport a drum kit, two electric guitars, a bass, AND four people, with all their bedding and clothes from Charlevoix to Madison Heights with surprising comfort and ease! There's room under the hood to practically stand in there next to the engine while you're wrenching on it! Not to mention that the 4.0 looks like an engine! Where I pop the hood on my mom's Sebring, and all I see is plastic, I open up the Jeep and see a valve cover, an intake manifold, a battery! You can do all it's fluid changes with a creeper and a crescent wrench. Parts are plentiful, and the whole blasted thing is built on common sense! If movement needs to happen between two points, then there's a big chunk of metal directly making that happen, no silly hydraulics, plastics, or computers!

In all, I suppose I have to answer your question with a question: why WOULDN'T you buy a Jeep?
 
why jeep? it's a american icon! like harleys, john deere, and a few others. you have pround feeling.. it's like being a in a select club... those who have the jeep bug know it... i'm a restoring a 57 willys it gets more looks then my yj or xj and it's not finished.
 

Owning and being in a Jeep ,simply put, is like no other. What other vehicle could you get in and get all warm and fuzzy with a big Grin on your face when you fire it up and head down the road. Jeep is a Go Anywhere, Do Anything vehicle. And like the saying goes. "There is ONLY one". :)
 
Why Jeep? My dad was killed in a Willys MB (WWII army surplus jeep), I have owned a 46 Willys CJ-2a, a cj-5, two YJ's, my brother has a TJ Rub, and I currently own a '54 Willys CJ 3b, and two of my sons have owned YJs. It's because, I, we, are in a "Jeep thing" and can't shake it, it's like an addiction that gets in your BLOOD and jiggles all the GENEs around, so it, yes, I and my brother and sons are proove, affects one's CHILDREN!!!:cry:
 
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Second to none reliability and rugged to. Only other rig i trust is my landcruiser to get me miles in the bush for weeks at a time
 

Hello there, I am taking an ad class ad I am making an ad for Jeep. I guess what I really need to know is what is the one reason you would buy a jeep over any other vehicle?

Thanks

Ultimate off-road, and on road...55mph, head on collision, rolled four times, walked away.
 
Ultimate off-road, and on road...55mph, head on collision, rolled four times, walked away. I am a mechanic 2080 hours a year. No other vehicle has the ability, entertainment, freedom, or safety(airbags, seat belts, and roll cage).
 
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