I’m At A Cheap Motel 850 Miles From Home Staring At My New 1992 Jeep Comanche And It’s So Perfect

I’ll admit that part of me was starting to question purchasing this 1992 Jeep Comanche. Time has become such a rare commodity in my life, I have a family at home that needs me, and I already have far too many vehicles. But tonight, about an hour after my plane from Burbank, California touched down in Boise, Idaho, I find myself in a dark Super 8 Motel parking lot getting my first look at the machine I flew all this way for. And I’m in love.

The mind of a diehard car person — especially one whose job is to write about his car hobby — is a tortured one. The world is full of amazing cars — from vintage Nashes that you can get for free to old Plymouth Valiants that only cost $2000 to Valiant Utes in Australia to diesel manual minivans in Germany to $700 4×4 5spd Chevy Trackers to Holy Grail 5spd Jeep ZJs and on and on. How do you decide which cars to own? How do you decide which white hot deals to pass up on?

For the longest time, the question of “which white hot deal do I want to pass up on” was: Literally none of them. And the result was, well, this:

That’s not a bad result, to be honest. I loved owning 14 cars, even if it was sometimes challenging. It forced me to learn how to repair cars, often in adverse conditions. I remember welding up a Jeep XJ unibody in the middle of the winter while it was snowing. I remember pulling a rusted-out axle from a junkyard in 20F weather. I remember doing oil changes in deep snow. This was all character-building, and I regret none of it.

These days, life has become so absurdly complex. I almost cannot believe how quickly this has happened. Two days from my family feels like an eternity. Co-running a business is a shockingly time intensive and mentally-taxing endeavor. As a result, my car-buying tendencies have had to change. I just gave away my Nash Metropolitan to Stephen Walter Gossin’s friend, I just sold my Willys CJ-3B, and I’m in the process of trying to consolidate my fleet in perhaps the most illogical way possible — a way that brought me here to Boise.

“Mental gymnastics,” some may call it. I think that’s fair; like I said, my mind is a tortured one trying to keep at least one toe in the “fun” pool while the other nine rest firmly in the “serious obligations” ocean. A few months ago I bought a Chevy K1500 to potentially replace my Jeep J10, which is a fantastic truck with a bit too much rust and an engine that will never pass SMOG. The K1500 hasn’t quite scratched the itch that the J10 scratched, so I considered doing a 4.0-liter engine swap to get my J10 SMOG legal, only to realize that, actually, I could just buy the Jeep truck that came with a 4.0 in the first place.

With the Jeep Comanche, I’m hoping to hit a three-run homer. Not only do I hope it will replace my J10 in cool factor, but I also want it to replace my K1500 in driving comfort/reliability and I want it to potentially replace my first Jeep — my original 1992 Jeep XJ — for nostalgia-factor. That’s right: I’m hoping this one vehicle can take the place of three, leaving me with the following manageable fleet:

1. 1992 Jeep Comanche (truck)
2. 1994 Jeep ZJ 5spd (overlanding Jeep)
3. 1991 Jeep YJ (convertible rock crawler)
4. 1966 Mustang (classic cruiser)
5. 2001 BMW i3S (daily driver)

Those parenthesis are entirely pointless, because really they should all be replaced by “(a cool car that I just want to own).” Nobody needs five vehicles; one 2005 Corolla would be a much smarter move in so many ways.

But this is the burden I bear. I really love cars. The way they connect people. The way they make you feel when you drive them. The way they make you feel when you look at them. The joy you get when you fix them. Few things in this world can bring joy to people from completely different backgrounds like cars can. There’s music, babies, food, movies, sports, and there’s cars.

Here I stand in this dark sketchy parking lot, looking at a truck that seemingly everyone loves. The enthusiasm I see in forum posts, on Reddit, in comments here on The Autopian, on YouTube, on Twitter — everywhere — was surprising to me until this very moment. This Jeep Comanche is special.

Sure, it’s just an XJ Cherokee with a bed, but that’s the whole point. The Ford Maverick is somewhat like a Ford Escape with a bed, but people love it because small trucks rule. The world is full of big, ostentatious pickups, and when a small pickup that can bat above its weight class comes along, it’s hard not to adore it. And that’s what’s happening here, right now, in this parking lot. This MJ Comanche is tiny, and it’s in far better shape than I expected. It’s a vehicle that isn’t trying to be macho or tough like perhaps my J10 and K1500 are — it’s just happy to be here, lending its 7’4″ bed (that you can easily reach into) for your hauling needs.

It’s simple, it’s reliable, it’s capable, and it’s friendly.

I know it’s odd to assign a personality to a car, but I think we all do that inherently. And I think that’s why the Comanche draws so many people in. It’s capable and powerful and quick, but without being so in-your-face about it. It’s a Golden Retriever, and if it drives anywhere near as well as I hope, I could see it becoming a permanent fixture in my fleet, replacing two, maybe three machines, and thus simplifying both my driveway and life.

Anyway, it’s late, and I’m not sure any of that^ made any sense. But I’ll keep you all posted on how this Boise-LA drive in my new Comanche goes. Initial impressions couldn’t be better.