Imagine the public reaction if someone in government decided the Statue of Liberty needed "updating." Maybe have the old girl doff her flowing robes and get into a pair of tight-fitting jeans and a Pepsi-logo T-shirt.
Or how about injecting a little pizazz into Mt. Rushmore? Thomas Jefferson could be depicted high-fiving Abraham Lincoln, or George Washington could put on a happy face.Sacrilege? No doubt. But that's the way it is when you mess with history, and that's the tricky task that faced Chrysler Corp. when it undertook the latest updating of what is probably America's most sacred automotive icon: the Jeep.
I'm not talking about the Jeep Cherokee or Grand Cherokee. Those sport utility vehicles are extremely popular but they aren't icons. I'm talking about the real Jeep, the vehicle that won World War II.
You know, the little runabout with a convertible top and removable isinglass side curtain "windows" that you unzip instead of roll down. The one with the grille that looks like a mouthful of tiger teeth. The car that virtually every GI of the past 55 years bounced around in at Iwo Jima, the hedgerows of France or the jungles of Vietnam.
Yep, that's the one. So go ahead, Chrysler designers. Fix it up. Modernize it. Make it more civil. But if you get it wrong . . . If you somehow misplace the Jeep's essential Jeepness . . . Well, does the phrase "lynch mob" mean anything to you?
Happily, no one at Chrysler has to worry about having his neck stretched. The all-new 1997 Jeep Wrangler - they skipped the 1996 model going straight from '95 to '97 - will not be mistaken for anything but a genuine GI Joe Jeep despite the fact that 77 percent of its components are new.
Moreover, I suspect that only true Jeep connoisseurs will be able to distinguish the '97s from the long gray (and red and blue and green) line that has gone before, despite the $260 million that Chrysler spent on the rehab job.
Since I do not count myself among the ranks of the true believers, however, (I have no nostalgia for my own days spent bouncing around Forts Leonard Wood, Lee, Sheridan and Carson in Jeeps in the early '60s) the fact that Chrysler has remained true blue to the Jeep heritage does not make my heart soar.
For example, I like windows that roll down, preferably at the touch of a button. After breaking two fingernails battling with the Jeep's zippered plastic side curtains I gave up and resorted to simply opening the door to perform such tasks as inserting my card key to get in the parking lot.
I also like cars that have trunks capable of holding more than two sacks of groceries laid on their sides. And I favor cars that get better than 15 mpg in city driving (18 highway) and whose decibel level at 65 mph is somewhat less than a 747 on takeoff.
In other words, the Jeep Wrangler is not for me, and if I were to review it here from a purely personal standpoint you would think that Chrysler had fatally blown the '97 redesign. They didn't. Compared with the last Wrangler I reviewed in 1990, the new Jeep is better in many ways and no worse in the others.
Most improved is the steering. Here's what I said six years ago about my experience in the 1990 Jeep Wrangler Laredo: "I've driven a lot of cars but never have I taken the wheel of anything quite like the Jeep Wrangler. When you make a turn in the Wrangler, you don't just release tension on the wheel and let it self-center - the way you do every other car I've driven. With the Wrangler you must return it back to center manually - something that takes a lot of getting used to."
That's no longer the case. The new Wrangler's steering self-centers just like any other car, and I didn't have to worry about making a U-turn when I meant to make a left turn.
Ride and handling also are vastly improved. Here's what I said about the '90 Wrangler: "Pounding" is the operative word here. You don't just make monetary payments on a Wrangler, your kidneys make payments too."
Again, much improvement in the '97, although no one will ever mistake the new Wrangler's ride and handling for a BMW, or even a Chevy. Credit goes to the new Wrangler's coil-spring suspension, used in the front and back of the Jeep Grand Cherokee, in place of the semi-elliptical leaf springs found in the previous models.
I really panned the steering-column-mounted automatic shifter in the '90 Wrangler Sahara as a pretty poor excuse for a transmission in what is supposed to be a rugged, macho "image" vehicle.
Well, the auto shifter in my test Jeep this week was down on the center console where it belonged, but it is still a pretty poor excuse for a transmission in a sport-utility. The 3-speed tranny was ill-suited to getting the most out of the engine's power band, and the lack of a fourth gear made the car feel as if it were locked in second gear and badly wanted to shift down but couldn't. Stick with the manual shifter, just like GI Joe.
Speaking of the engine, the 4.0 liter six cylinder is a hefty power plant for such a small vehicle, but the Wrangler seemed a bit slow off the line. I guess I'll blame the transmission, although the Jeep is a fairly heavy vehicle for its size, and that may be part of the problem.
I had to chuckle when I read what I wrote in 1990 concerning the Jeep's price: "I am amazed (appalled?) at the $17,000 and change that Chrysler wants for a Wrangler."
Six years of sticker shock later, I am not particularly amazed at the $21,415 bottom line of the '97 Jeep Wrangler Sport I've been testing this week. But I have to wonder if the market niche for this car isn't getting a bit squeezed.
My view of the typical Wrangler buyer would be someone 18-20 years old, an outdoorsy, free-spirit type who maybe does a lot of fishing and hunting and wants people to know that he or she is a little wild and crazy. But I wonder how this young, devil-may-care soul can handle the payments, not to mention the insurance, taxes and fuel bills for this car. Maybe I'm completely off-base on the Wrangler's target market.
One thing's sure: Once I got behind the wheel of the Jeep, I was seeing Wranglers everywhere. It's typical suddenly to notice similar cars when I am testing one but there really are a lot of Jeeps out there.
Maybe I misjudge the popularity of off-roading, the main reason for the Jeep's existence. I'm not a skilled off-road driver, and I have this thing about dinging up other people's cars by driving them hard in the outback, so I tend to evaluate all vehicles, even sport-utilities, on their merits in the daily commute (which is where they spend most of their time anyway). And in that environment, Jeeps leave a lot to be desired for all but true believers.
I can't leave you without a few words on the Jeep Wrangler's status as a "convertible." It's true, sort of. I'm sure that with practice I could reduce the process of going topless to less than 5 minutes but I can't imagine buttoning it up again in less than that. Also, once you have all the vinyl and plastic stripped away you are still encased in a rather massive roll cage that tends to dilute the top-down experience.
While wrestling with those zippers and Velcro I pined for the BMW 325i convertible I evaluated last year. You just reached up and turned a single handle, pushed a button on the dash and, voila!, open-air motoring.
But I suspect that Jeep owners are a lot like owners of British sports cars. Suffering is part of the total experience, and they sneer at effete types like me who like push-button windows, cruise control and one-button drop tops.
A final word on price. Base sticker of my Wrangler Sport (there are also the plain Wrangler and the Wrangler Sahara models) was $16,682. A long list of options, including cloth seats, convenience group, anti-lock brakes, automatic transmission, AC, fog lamps, upgraded tires and wheels and a stereo with CD player and destination added a hefty $4,733, boosting the bottom line to $21,415.