Junkyard Find: 1989 Jeep Grand Wagoneer
Back when I wrote the Automotive Survivors series ( Part I and Part II), I specified that I was only considering cars built for 20 or more years, and I included boldface text stating NO TRUCKS! NO TRUCKS! Naturally, I got barraged with weeks of hate mail from the Land Rover Jihad (because Land Rovers were being slapped together out of mud and sticks by Celtic tribesman circa 600 BC and thus my cars-only restriction was fatwa-worthy), but that was nothing next to what I heard from the Wagoneer Jihad. Legendary industrial designer Brooks Stevens drew up the original SJ platform-based Wagoneer for Willys-Overland in the year 1905 (OK, the early 1960s), and Kaiser-Jeep, AMC, and Chrysler kept building great big SJ Cherokees and Grand Cherokees until the sun collapsed and became a red giant (OK, until 1991). That meant that Chrysler was building AMC 360s in addition to Franco-Swedish PRV V6s into the 1990s. And, just as you could buy Super 8 movie film at ordinary stores until the early 1990s, so could you buy Jeep SJs with Simu-Wood™ plastic woodie siding. Here’s an example I found last week in a Denver self-serve yard.
Would you believe that this truck was built only 23 years ago?
The “wood” trim looks fairly convincing from 100 feet away. Up close, not so much.
These things rode like early-60s trucks, and they drank gas like early-60s trucks. Still, they were competent and generally reliable machines, and there was no reason for anybody to stop building them as long as customers craved the SJ.
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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I had a bunch of friends whose parents had them. Some were crude strippers and a couple were loaded. Most of these people worked at Jeep, or had family that did, so it made sense. They rusted pretty quickly, but one hung around, having been rustproofed for over 20 years. It was a stripper with an AM radio and an auto and that was it.
If I could, I'd buy this Wagoneer, upgrade the suspension and install a 3G Hemi for more power. :)