It’s now the mid-1990s, and we are living in Washington, DC and driving a 1993 LHS and a 1994 Miata.
For a few years now we had been making long weekend trips to stay at The Guesthouse Lost River, a small LGBT-friendly resort in the mountains of West Virginia about 125 miles west of DC. We would go up there several times a year with friends to relax and escape the stress of our job. The guys who owned the guest house also did real estate; they had put together the Lost River Valley development, which covered the mountains around the guest house. The entire development had become something of a Mecca for the DC-area LGBT community. A lot of couples stayed at the Guest House, liked the area, and ended up buying property. And to that list was added one more: During one visit the proprietor of the guest house took us to look at one property, and we fell in love.
The cabin sits atop a mountain ridge with a gorgeous view of the surrounding valley. It was a a one-bedroom, one-bath home with a loft sitting on five acres of land. The owner was in the military, and was being transferred, so the deal included all furniture. It was just what we’d been looking for, and the price was right, so we put in an offer which was accepted.
We knew from experience that the Lost River area could get a lot of snow; in 1994 we were snowed in for three days at the Guest House. The cabin lay at the end of a mile-long dirt road with a couple of steep sections as you approached the ridge, so we figured we’d need to get something with four wheel drive if we wanted to use the cabin during the winter. I still had a year to go on the lease of my Chrysler LHS, and Rick had just bought his Miata and didn’t want to give it up, so a new SUV was out of the question. A friend tipped us off to a used 1987 Jeep Cherokee being sold by a tenant in his office building. He wanted $1,000 for it, which was ridiculously low. I did a quick check on the vehicle and it seemed mechanically OK, albeit a bit tatty inside. So we bought it.
Not our vehicle, but the same color as ours.
The Jeep Cherokee was the last entirely new vehicle marketed by American Motors prior to the Chrysler buyout in 1987 (I’m not counting the AMC/Renault Alliance or Encore, since those were Renault designs). It was smaller than the original Wagoneer/Cherokee, which dated back to 1962, and considerably more fuel-efficient. Ours had the stolid AMC 4-liter inline six and part-time 4WD. You could shift on-the-fly into 4WD, though this range was intended for off-road use and not for normal highway driving. This was the feature we wanted: something that would get us to and from the WV cabin in the winter, since neither the Miata nor the Chrysler was any good in snow.
The car needed a thorough detail; it smelled of stale tobacco smoke and grime. There was also no radio—apparently someone had broken in and stolen the radio/tape deck combo before we bought it. So I spent some time cleaning the car up, and the first weekend we took it up to the cabin we spent a day going down to the Crutchfield Stereo retail outlet an hour south in Harrisonburg, VA. I purposely didn’t give my name when I purchased the new radio/tape player; I just handed them my American Express card. The cashier looked at my name, and said “Are you related to Bill Crutchfield?????” I said probably, though he was not an immediate relative. I grinned and asked if I could get a family discount. All I got was the hat you see here:
The Jeep gave us reasonably good service for a couple of years. During the summer we left it up at the cabin since the AC didn’t work well and we had no garage to store it in back in DC. The only time it gave us trouble was when the catalytic converter went bad on the way home one weekend and the car drove like it had a Citroen 2CV flat twin instead of an inline six—it wouldn’t go above 45 mph and barely made it up hills. We knew the lease was ending on my LHS, and I didn’t want to rely on the aging Cherokee as a daily driver. In 1996 the lease was up the LHS, so we decided to get a new SUV with 4WD instead of another sedan. We sold the Jeep as-was to the friend who led us to it in the first place, and went car shopping.
Our first thought was to buy a Jeep Grand Cherokee. It would give us the 4WD to get up to and from West Virginia, and was more spacious and comfortable than a Cherokee. We started our search at the Chrysler-Jeep dealership where we got the LHS. The salesperson we were assigned showed us what was available on the the lot. He must have figured out we were a gay couple by the good-natured bickering between the two of us about what color and which features each vehicle offered. He must have been bothered by us, since he walked off and left us standing there. I walked into the manager’s office and complained about the homophobic treatment we received, and told him “We came here prepared to write a $35,000 check for a new vehicle. You just lost a sale.” And left in a huff.
Again, not ours, but this is the “Dusky Rose” color of ours.
A few weeks later my credit union held a new car sale for members, with immediate financing available. They offered a good price on a new 1996 Grand Cherokee, which was just what we wanted. We weren’t crazy about the color, which was officially “Dusky Rose” but looked to us like “Moldy Purple.” Still, it was otherwise fine, so we signed the papers and drove it home. Unfortunately, the contributing dealer that would service the warranty on the vehicle was the same one we had just stormed out of. Oops! Still, we figured we wouldn’t need to deal with their sales staff, so that was that.
So we now had a new and reliable vehicle to get us to and from the cabin. At first we liked the Grand Cherokee. It rode well, handled the snow during the winter with aplomb, and had super comfortable seating. That was important: I have lower back issues, and when I was having a spell of back pain I’d actually go sit in the car because somehow sitting there made the pain go away. Go figure. The car had a 5.2-liter V8, and was considerably more peppy than the six in the old Cherokee. The mileage wasn’t great in town, but we did very little in-town driving and got maybe 16 MPG on highway driving to and from the cabin. Ours came Selec-Trac 4WD, which meant we could use 4WD on the road in wet-snowy situations.
For awhile things were fine…until the warranty was up. The transfer case began leaking oil and had to be fixed. The padding in the rear door interiors pulled away from the molding. The speedometer cable broke and had to be replaced. We had to replace the battery twice. At times the oil pressure gauge would drop to near zero. It was an intermittent thing, and multiple trips to the dealer failed to find anything wrong. The car became difficult to start in wet weather. The air conditioning system sprang a leak; after recharging the system, in six weeks there would be no cooling. So after the car had been paid off, Rick and I decided to relegate it to winter duty and store it at the cabin over the spring and summer and go shopping for something more reliable.
What we decided upon will be covered in my next installment.
COAL № 1: Buicks Aplenty; a Fiat, and a Pontiac • The Early Years.
COAL № 2: 1958 Plymouth Custom Suburban • Dad’s Biggest regret.
COAL № 3: 1965 Buick Sportwagon • My first car.
COAL № 4: 1967 Datsun 1600 • The first car that was legally mine.
COAL № 5: A Pair of Pintos.
COAL № 6: 1983 & ’87 Toyota Celica • What’s the Plural of ‘Celica’?
COAL № 7: 1987 Ford Taurus MT-5 • Tragedy, An Unexpected New Car, And Two Midlife Crises
Further reading:
Curbside Classic: 1984 Jeep Cherokee – AMC’s Greatest Hit, Thanks To Renault
A fellow I worked with bought a new GC around that time, also with the V8. I borrowed it once because it had a trailer hitch and I needed to rent a piece of equipment. I remember thinking that I could really be happy with one of those. Unfortunately, it was just not roomy enough for our family of five and I could not justify spending GC-money on something that could not be our main family car.
I have to say that as nice as that GC was, these never made me want one the way the older XJ Cherokee did (and still does). That is a vehicle I would still consider buying if the right one came along.
Your example also kind of falls in line with my 94 Ford Club Wagon in being a really nice vehicle that had far more service issues than it should have had. That was the last time I spent real money on an American car, because the two new Asian vehicles I later bought never caused me anywhere near that level of repair expense.
I hear ya JP. I never had any trouble with my Celicae. And for what it’s worth, my Chrysler LHS gave me absolutely ZERO trouble in the three years I leased it. As I’ll relate in future COALs, I had real woes with both BMW and Mercedes.
Reading this post about how comfortable the 1996 GC seats were and how it well it handled itself in snow, I thought, gee – we should have gotten a GC in 1995 instead of the sleek but trouble plagued Eagle Vision TSi. After all, we bought the Vision from a Jeep Dealer; their lot had a bunch of Jeeps on hand.
But then your list of mid-1990s post warranty Chrysler/Jeep troubles started and my thoughts that you got a good one disappeared.
Jeeps. especially big Wrangles, are still popular in my neck of the woods but I think many of them are leased and swapped out before the warranty expires.
JPC’s note (above) on the Ford Club Wagon is a story for the ages – one probably studied in business schools all over the world. I do wonder however if that lesson has been really learned.
We were given short shrift by a Toyota sales person in 1990 who considered my wife and me to be know-nothing New Yorkers in an Avis Dodge K Car and let us feel we’d be lucky to get a new Camry wagon even if it was running rough and seemed like it needed a wash.
No big scene, but we did walk away and later that same day we spent our money on a Mercury Sable wagon instead.
Having not purchased a new car since 2006 – where the experience was less than happy, there was a fair bit of being treated like an idiot, and ultimately the same old “sit and wait while I go run this by the sales manager” stuff – I have no idea if car sales may have finally gotten over some of the old nonsense. But I doubt it.
Two years ago I found a great Lincoln Town Car at local Ford dealership. Spent hours going through salesman to supervisor to manager BS. Really wanted THAT car, so played the game and got the Lincoln. NOTHING has changed. New toilet, SAME shit! See my original post (first part) for a laugh 😃.
I’ll add “Let me run this by the sales manager, but I don’t think he’s going to go for it. so if you can….”
In my early days out of college, which in the early/mid 1980s basically guaranteed no actual prospect of a job, I in fact applied to be a salesman at a car dealership (I think it was a VW dealer…can’t recall). I was rejected after my initial interview.
I guess they were on to me (so they in fact knew a thing or two about human psychology). Good thing. Things have turned out much better than they could have.
Which, basically seems to be one of the overarching themes of many of our COALs 🙂
Shortly after I got my first (running/driving) car, I walked into a Chrysler-Plymouth or Dodge dealer one day to fetch one or another part for my Valiant, and was shocked to see one of my 5th-grade teachers there among the rest of the salesmen. “Mister Halladay…! What are you doing selling cars‽” His answer: “Tryna make a living!”
Hey Steve, Always good to see your posts. There is a supposedly true story about a farmer going in to a Chevrolet Cadillac dealership with cash 💸 💰 enough to buy the Cadillac he had always wanted. Snotty salesman tried to sell him a Chevy. When farmer insisted on the Cadillac, salesman laughed in his face and walked away. Next day the farmer bought the DEALERSHIP and fired that salesman! 😳 👍. As I’ve said in other posts, our preferences in vehicles are very different. But life experiences are very similar. Hope you had a great Memorial Day weekend. Used to be special, with exs birthday and IML. Best always to you and your Rick. Happy PRIDE.💪🏳️🌈 💪
I went to IML once. Ho hum. But I did get some yummy recipes and caught up on the latest opera gossip. :). Shoot me an email addy and I’ll give ya this to-die-for quiche recipe.
Hell, can’t even manage this! See my response which got posted as new,rather than response! 😠 😡 😤.
Love the XJ. My 2001 (which is scheduled to be my Chap 19) is close to the end of production. It rolled off the line in June and the last XJ rolled off the line in August. The stale tobacco smoke in mine was strong enough that I replaced the entire interior (carpets, seats, headliner) and dissembled the ventilation system to clean all of the ductwork. I completely rebuilt the AC (the evaporator had a leak which was the other reason to disassemble the ventilation system) and it’s still anemic.
The best seats I have ever encountered were in my AMC Eagle Limited. AMC/Jeep really had that aspect dialed in, not to mention the whole 4×4 thing.
Thanks for responding. I’m NOT very experienced with tech. Only have had this tablet for short time! Old 🐕. You can contact me at rykr6235@gmail.com. any time. Don’t know how to do what you suggested! IML was always fun for me, but last time I went, like everything else, was not the same. Those were the days. 💪Happy you two are still making new memories. ❤.
My SIL and her husband bought a used GC as their first car together, and it was a real pile. Endless problems. I already knew they were problematic at the time, but they didn’t ask me for advice.
I loved our ’85 Cherokee, but it had its share of issues, and the GC was just that much more complicated and troublesome.
That cabin and property sounds fantastic. I’ve only been to West Virginia once back in the 80’s. I was on a cross country motorcycle trip and rode the Blue Ridge Parkway and Skyline Drive. I don’t have any experience with Jeeps, but I noticed that even their smaller vehicles don’t get very good mileage.
In the summer of 1975 I worked for a few months in the mountains of Virginia near Front Royal, in what looks like a similar environment to your WV cabin. There was a small cabin development, with a few year-around locals but mostly DC folks who used them as summer cabins. One of those DC folks was my grandfather who was trying to develop more property in the area, and I came out from California at 17 to help clear land. I lived with another student employee in a small hilltop cabin, and aside from a lot of cultural and climatic adjustments, had several great automotive experiences as well.
As for GC’s, I seriously considered one in 1995 when we decided to make the plunge into an SUV. I test drove two, both with the 4.0; one a used ‘93 with the rare 5 speed manual and one a new ‘95 with 4.0 and automatic. In the end I decided it was too small and we got a Land Crusier 80 Series which proved reliable and capable for the next 13 years. The guy I sold it to is still using it 15 years later. In 1998 we rented a GC for a week long vacation on the East Coast. It was comfortable and returned MUCH better fuel economy than the Toyota but was oddly harsh and unstable on a few gravel forest road excursions I took it on the White Mountains of Vermont. And quite tight with five plus luggage. I walk right past GC’s now but I always check out XJ’s. A brilliant design in my opinion.
Green Mountains. The Whites are in New Hampshire.
Oops, but now I can’t remember if it was in VT or NH; we visited both states plus Mass, Conn and NY on that trip. Either way, it wasn’t the dirt road limo that I expected.
I’m very familiar. With Front Royal. We drove past it on I-66 every time we went to or from the cabin in WV…. It’s about 50 miles due west of there.
I had a very ugly car mishap in Front Royal. It will be in my next installment 😛
Your mileage may vary applies here. Bought a 95 Grand Cherokee new with the 4.0/6 and Select Trac Transfer Case. Other than the usual Jeep leaking from the engine, transfer case and dif, it went 267K on the original engine and trans with normal repairs. It was the best car I ever owned and we used it as our primary family car for years.
Followed it up with my current DD a 2013 Jeep GC bought new and now with 119K. Have done nothing to it except some minor repairs and fluid/filter changes. Has original brakes. It is the same Wild Berry Color as Jeep in article.
Bought my son a 1998 Jeep GC with 140K miles when he was in High School. Now reaching 191K 7 years later and is going strong, albeit with more work than my old one, but still not too bad. His looks new with great paint and interior.
Brothers all own Jeeps with tons of miles as well their kids.
That’s the problem with modern cars. Some cars can be real pieces of crap. The same car someone else bought runs 200k miles without a problem.
My next CC COAL will cover that. My 2002 BMW 525xi gave three years of wonderful driving with nary a problem. My 2005 BMW 528xi (Same basic car, just a visual update and displacement bump) was a total turd sandwich that I dumped after the warrantee expired.
As you say, “Your mileage may vary”.
How do you reckon this is a problem with modern cars? This what you describe was much more a problem with cars of the past. Across the board, car quality and durability are far better and more consistent than ever before. Way, far better than when the Jeeps we’re talking about were built roughly three decades ago. The average age of a vehicle on US roads is trending relentlessly upward, and that wouldn’t be happening if there were a problem with inconsistent durability in modern cars.
Almost any vehicle can be kept running as long as one wants, with money, time, and work. Who gets to define what counts as normal repairs, normal maintenance, basic upkeep? Those kinds of phrases are sometimes trowelled on like Bondo when fans feel as though their pet marque is being discussed in other-than-glowing terms.
(see also: I had 324,000 miles on my ’69 Valiant with original engine. Got 32 mpg every day, uphill in the snow at 70 mph! Original cap and rotor and breaker points and carburetor! Never gave me a moment’s trouble! They just don’t make ’em like they used to! etc)
Normal repairs on my Jeep meant, radiator, water pump, alternator, brakes, shocks, catalytic converter, tune ups. Not out of the ordinary for a car with over 250K miles.
A guy I worked with bought a V8 Cherokee for his wife I forget the exact trim level, but it was savage on fuel and at $10+ per imp gallon did not stay in their fleet long, it went great he reckoned but you couldnt keep gas in it.
Hey Steve, received your message yesterday and responded. Please let me know if you got it. Somehow it got marked as a draft! Told you I was tech challenged.😟
Always enjoy your COAL posts. BTW, if that’s you in the Crutchfield cap, I think you bear more than a slight resemblance to a young Richard Dreyfuss!