Used Car of the Day: 2008 Jeep Grand Cherokee

Tim Healey
by Tim Healey

Today's listing is a no-frills SUV of relatively recent vintage.


Coming to you from my old stomping grounds outside of Chicago, this Grand Cherokee is affordable and has a relatively low 170K miles, but it has minor rust.

It's a Laredo trim with the 3.7-liter V6. We're highlighting this one as an example of cheap transpo. Not every car we highlight will be quirky or rare.

[Images: Seller]

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Tim Healey
Tim Healey

Tim Healey grew up around the auto-parts business and has always had a love for cars — his parents joke his first word was “‘Vette”. Despite this, he wanted to pursue a career in sports writing but he ended up falling semi-accidentally into the automotive-journalism industry, first at Consumer Guide Automotive and later at Web2Carz.com. He also worked as an industry analyst at Mintel Group and freelanced for About.com, CarFax, Vehix.com, High Gear Media, Torque News, FutureCar.com, Cars.com, among others, and of course Vertical Scope sites such as AutoGuide.com, Off-Road.com, and HybridCars.com. He’s an urbanite and as such, doesn’t need a daily driver, but if he had one, it would be compact, sporty, and have a manual transmission.

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6 of 14 comments
  • MaintenanceCosts MaintenanceCosts on Nov 08, 2022

    That era of Chrysler interior is amazingly bad.


    With that said this is not a horrible choice. It will break, but parts are readily available and, unlike all the terrifying German iron from the past few days, it shouldn't be expensive to fix. As always the Grand Cherokee is a socially useful vehicle in America; it fits in in any setting.


  • CoastieLenn CoastieLenn on Nov 08, 2022

    Literally the worst generation of Grand Cherokee, Terrible 3.7L, terrible interior, terrible transmissions. If you're going the budget JGC route, the ZJ (either engine) or WJ (NOT the 4.7) are the way to go. Burn these with fire, piss on them before the fire if they have the 3.7 or 4.7. Hemi was more acceptable.


    • See 3 previous
    • 28-Cars-Later 28-Cars-Later on Dec 05, 2022

      I know there are "Jeep people" but damn man, base model V6 for all kinds of money? Please tell me you are at least going to swap to a better interior.


  • Kjhkjlhkjhkljh kljhjkhjklhkjh A prelude is a bad idea. There is already Acura with all the weird sport trims. This will not make back it's R&D money.
  • Analoggrotto I don't see a red car here, how blazing stupid are you people?
  • Redapple2 Love the wheels
  • Redapple2 Good luck to them. They used to make great cars. 510. 240Z, Sentra SE-R. Maxima. Frontier.
  • Joe65688619 Under Ghosn they went through the same short-term bottom-line thinking that GM did in the 80s/90s, and they have not recovered say, to their heyday in the 50s and 60s in terms of market share and innovation. Poor design decisions (a CVT in their front-wheel drive "4-Door Sports Car", model overlap in a poorly performing segment (they never needed the Altima AND the Maxima...what they needed was one vehicle with different drivetrain, including hybrid, to compete with the Accord/Camry, and decontenting their vehicles: My 2012 QX56 (I know, not a Nissan, but the same holds for the Armada) had power rear windows in the cargo area that could vent, a glass hatch on the back door that could be opened separate from the whole liftgate (in such a tall vehicle, kinda essential if you have it in a garage and want to load the trunk without having to open the garage door to make room for the lift gate), a nice driver's side folding armrest, and a few other quality-of-life details absent from my 2018 QX80. In a competitive market this attention to detai is can be the differentiator that sell cars. Now they are caught in the middle of the market, competing more with Hyundai and Kia and selling discounted vehicles near the same price points, but losing money on them. They invested also invested a lot in niche platforms. The Leaf was one of the first full EVs, but never really evolved. They misjudged the market - luxury EVs are selling, small budget models not so much. Variable compression engines offering little in terms of real-world power or tech, let a lot of complexity that is leading to higher failure rates. Aside from the Z and GT-R (low volume models), not much forced induction (whether your a fan or not, look at what Honda did with the CR-V and Acura RDX - same chassis, slap a turbo on it, make it nicer inside, and now you can sell it as a semi-premium brand with higher markup). That said, I do believe they retain the technical and engineering capability to do far better. About time management realized they need to make smarter investments and understand their markets better.
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