Junkyard Find: 1991 Jeep Cherokee Sport
The XJ Jeep Cherokee was made for approximately a thousand years (OK, 32 years, counting the still-in-production BAW Knight S12), and these trucks are still extremely easy to find here in Colorado. Nice XJs still command good prices here, but used-up ones fill the local wrecking yards. Since I shared a junked Grand Cherokee last week, it’s only fair that we should admire a discarded Colorado Cherokee Sport.
We’ve had a number of these trucks in the 24 Hours of LeMons race series, where I toil as Chief Justice, and it turns out that they do shockingly well on a road course. Yes, independent front suspension is overrated!
This truck is a rusty Sport version, with 4.0-liter AMC straight-six engine, four-wheel drive, manual transmission, and snazzy-looking orange-and-red tape stripes galore.
Not a huge number of miles, but enough that the rust wasn’t worth attempting to fix.
The 4.0 version of the American Motors L6 engine has a lineage stretching back to the 232-cubic-inch version used in the 1964 Rambler Classic and is (presumably) still being made to this day in China.
The Cherokee Sport helped cowboys establish romantic relationships with their horses, according to Chrysler’s marketers in 1993.
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 remember a much hyped drag race in 1990 between fellow hs classmates, a poverty spec base 89 XJ (his dads car) and a rich kid in his brand new S10 Blazer 4DR with the then new 4.3 Vortech, both slushboxes. The Jeep put bus lengths on the S10
I am the proud owner of an 01 Limited in Desert Sand metallic (iirc). Pre 01 versions with a high pinion front Dana are a little more desirable if you plan on a big lift ,but there are no deal killers on the post 97 XJs for me except rust. I lucked into mine locally about 3 yrs aho now. It lived its previous life as a county vehicle for a neighboring county highway department. It was strangely well optioned for this lifestyle in limited trim with all option boxes checked except for electric seats, go figure. It has a youthful 178,000 miles and save for needing the steerung gearbox replaced i wouldnt hesitate to drive it to across the country! Im not letting this one go Ive learned my lesson well in my 50 yrs as a car guy about letting go of the good ones! ;)