Jeep Cherokee: the price of Liberty

The new Jeep Cherokee is called the Liberty in North America, a name which is upsetting a few rugged individuals, writes motoring editor ALASTAIR SLOANE.

The Jeep Liberty, the replacement for the 18-year-old Cherokee, will go on sale in New Zealand later this year. But it won't be called the Liberty. It will continue to be called the Cherokee. The name Liberty is restricted to the United States and Canada. The rest of the world gets the Cherokee.

The story goes that Jeep owners Chrysler wanted to gracefully retire the name Cherokee when plans for its replacement model were being sketched.

The name Cherokee was an icon in North America. It honoured a great native American race - and a great native American vehicle. But only in recent years had the name been exposed to the international market.

Chrysler reasoned that calling the new model Liberty in North America and Cherokee internationally was the best way to ease it into the growing worldwide four-wheel-drive market.

Some Americans didn't agree. The purists wanted Jeep to retain the Cherokee name in North America, too. "Why should the Japanese get the Cherokee and we Americans get the Liberty?" asked one critic. "We built it and named it Cherokee in the first place."

One long-time Cherokee owner told senior Jeep executive Thomas Marinelli at the launch in Charlottesville, Virginia, that the new Cherokee wasn't a Cherokee. "No it's not,"said Marinelli. "That's why we changed the name to Liberty."

Another grumbled that Cherokee was an inspired name, that there had never been anything wrong with it anyway, that Liberty was "milk-toast and mush-mouth and named after that French statue in New York" and that Jeep was going to hell in a handbag.

Jeep was also mindful of the important Australian market, where the name Liberty belongs to Japanese carmaker Subaru and has done so since the late 1980s.

Subaru Australia was forced back then to rename its Legacy the Liberty, because Legacy is the name of the war widows' trust run by the Returned Services League, whose members fought the Japanese in the Second World War.

But the main reason behind the new Liberty handle was that Jeep wanted the vehicle to appeal to a whole new market, to lure younger buyers and car owners - a market the old Cherokee couldn't capture.

It designed the Liberty to reflect this. Gone are the rugged edges and square-jaw look of the Cherokee. The Liberty is curvier with stylised wheel flares. It's larger, too.

But it looks more compact because of the shorter front and rear overhangs.

Gone too is the agricultural handling, thanks mostly to a new independent front suspension. The change, according to one American commentator, has turned the Liberty into the "best-handling Jeep yet, with a body structure that's far more rigid than even the Grand Cherokee."

But with the reinforced body comes a weight penalty. The Liberty weighs 1870kg - 272kg heavier than the Ford Escape - and this is bulk that commentators say is a drain on fuel and makes it less nimble on its feet than lighter competitors.

The tradeoff is that the all-new Liberty retains the Jeep trademark - an ability to perform off-road - and maintains the brand's reputation for toughness.

The Liberty is built in Toledo, Ohio. It went on sale in America on Monday and comes with the choice of two and four-wheel-drive, and two engines, a 2.5-litre four-cylinder and a new 3.7-litre V6. A turbo-diesel from Jeep parent DaimlerChrysler is expected next year.

Two four-wheel-drive Liberty models will go on sale in New Zealand in October - the Sport and Limited.

Both will be powered by the V6 engine, which produces around 150kW at 5000 rpm and about 310Nm of torque, most of it between 2000 and 4400 rpm, says Jeep.

The 2.5-litre engine will not be available here. It develops only 167Nm of torque - not enough oomph in a big vehicle to pull the skin off a rice pudding - and will sit under the bonnet of two-wheel-drive Jeeps.

No word on price yet. The New Zealand dollar is still on life support against the greenback. The top-spec Liberty Limited has a recommended retail price in America of $US22,720 - or about $NZ56,800. That might not be too far off its price here.