Bay Driver 1 August 2014

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Friday 1 August 2014

Friday 1 August 2014

Friday 1 August

Jeep’s new wild child Cherokee Longitude

Review, page 4

Steve Glover of Steve’s Marine Supplies tries out the load space of the all new 2014 Jeep Cherokee. There’s a famous Indian saying: “There is no such thing as ‘part-Cherokee’. Either you’re Cherokee or you’re not. It isn’t the quantity of Cherokee blood in your veins that is important, but the quality of it…your pride in it…”. We don’t think Chief Jim of the North Alabama Cherokee Tribe was actually talking about the latest Jeep, but his words are eerily

fitting, considering the mixed blood of the 2014 Cherokee. Howls of indignation billowed from the purist Jeep camp when word spread that Chrysler’s shotgun marriage to the crazed Italians at Fiat had spawned a wild child – the iconic Cherokee taking on a radical, new, sleek and funky European styling and Italian refinement of the drive train. Almost as much

outcry as the day Harley Davidson popped out an electric motorbike. Some of the traditionalist Jeep fraternity complained bitterly that the white man ‘speaks with forked tongue’, when trying to pass off the stylish, curvaceous and slippery new design as a real Jeep. After all, the original four-wheel-drives that helped win WWII were boxes with wheels on

the corners, with all the aerodynamic qualities of a flying brick, and drive systems known less for their finesse rather than bulletproof reliability in extreme terrain. And so it was that the Jeep Cherokee, a statelier sibling to the Wrangler, still had some fairly jaunty corners, proudly “robust” mechanics and that ‘Go anywhere’ badge of honour. Continued page 4

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