What a fall from grace. Once the fastest SUV on earth, the Jeep Grand Cherokee 5.9 — a rare, one-year-only hotrod-Jeep that won Motor Trend’s 1998 4×4 of the Year and that we called “The Trackhawk Before It Was A Thing” — used to cost the modern equivalent of $77,000, but now it languishes on Craigslist at dirt-cheap prices.
The Jeep Grand Cherokee 5.9, affectionately known as the “Niner,” is a vehicle you’d assume would be worth something. It’s got a big growly V8 engine under the hood (the biggest ever put into a non-Hellcat Jeep Grand Cherokee), it’s got a bunch of accolades to its name including 4×4 Of The Year, it’s rare, and above all it can say it was the fastest SUV on earth back when it launched for the 1998 Model-Year. Zero to 60 mph took 7.3 seconds according to Jeep but only 6.8 seconds per Motor Trend.
Six Point Eight Seconds!
That may not be quick by modern standards, but in 1998 that was absurd, as many SUVs of the era were pulling off 0-60 in 12+ seconds. The Grand Cherokee’s time bested that of the hot Ford Taurus SHO:
And it matched that of the sporty BMW 328i:
The 5.9-liter “Magnum” V8 was the same one found in the Dodge Ram, Durango, Dakota, and Dodge Vans of the era, and it cranked out 245 hp and 345 lb-ft of torque — 25 more horses and 45 more lb-ft of torque than the 5.2-liter “Magnum” that was up to that point the most powerful Jeep engine ever.
The Niner didn’t just include a beefed up motor, the transmission was also bolstered, and the interior got fancy leather and brown wood trim. From Motor Trend‘s 4×4 of the Year writeup:
The 5.9L engine comes only in the swanky 5.9 Limited, which includes new body cladding, a full-dress leather interior with a rear-seat armrest, a sunroof, trick tunes, and fake wood. Not that those are bad things, but the 5.9 Limited package is a minimum $38,175 wallet knocker; with a few options not netted with the 5.9L, ours ran $38,900.
But even handicapped by street shoes, the 5.9 still ousted all comers in this year’s driving contest. The Jeep scored tops in the Urban, Highway, Sand, and Rockcrawling portions of the Ride & Drive. Other top scores fell under Engine’s Available Power, Drivetrain Performance, Interior Appointments, and Four-wheeling Attributes. Score! Even so, we know the basic platform is capable of more.
By now you get the idea: The Jeep Grand Cherokee 5.9 Limited was a beast, and even today, people haven’t forgotten that; you’ll find plenty of content online in which people praise the 5.9 Limited’s brawn and its place in Jeep history:
And yet, the Jeeps are just not worth much. Hop on Facebook Marketplace, and you’ll find running, driving, high-mileage ones for $3000 all day, and nice 150,000-ish-mile ones go for $5000:
If you want a nicer Niner, 6 or 7 big-ones goes a long way:
And if you need a really, really minty 5.9 with under 70,000 miles on the clock, it looks like you can snag one for between $13,000 and $16,000:
So, what exactly is going on here? Why are such iconic, award-winning, snarling V8, limited-production SUVs going for so little money?
Well, I think there are a number of factors, the first being: These 5.9s aren’t that rare. Yes, they were single-model-year Jeeps, and they represented only about 1 percent of all ZJs ever built, but Jeep sold a ton of ZJ Grand Cherokees between 1992 (1993 MY) and 1998 — 1.5 million! This means there were over 14,000 ZJ 5.9 Limiteds built stateside, with another 5,000ish for other markets. 20,000 cars isn’t that few.
Beyond that, the 5.9’s value demonstrates just how far we’ve come when it comes to quick SUVs. The ZJ may have held the speed crown in 1998, but shortly thereafter the Mercedes ML55 offered over 340 horsepower from its 5.4-liter V8. And then came the BMW X5 4.6is and Cayenne and then we had absurdly powerful Range Rovers and on and on.
So sure, the ZJ was the quickest SUV in the world, but only at the very beginning of the fast-SUV craze; it was very quickly outgunned and left in the dust of automotive history, and though there are plenty of think-pieces about how it was the “Trackhawk of its Era,” it’s still a four-speed automatic, poor-handling SUV that does 0-60 in about as much time as a Subaru Outback XT.
There’s also the fact that the ZJ was the successor to the XJ, an iconic, boxy 4×4 whose styling makes the ZJ’s — with its rounded corners and plastic headlights — look a bit dull.
The truth is, the ZJ has just been overshadowed by its predecessor and by the SUVs that came after it, and its lack of true scarcity, along with its high running costs just add the middling driving experience and styling to yield an icon that has remained affordable for years and will likely continue to do so. That’s not a bad thing! Not every cool automotive icon needs to cost $15 grand.
So if you’re interested in getting behind the wheel of an iconic, V8, relatively daily-drivable Jeep, think about getting the Niner…and instead buy an XJ like everyone else.
My wife and I had a 5.2 ’94 GC. Best mpg we got was 20 from Cleveland to London, ON for our last fun weekend when my wife was 8 months pregnant and I was driving like a limo driver. Driving to the hospital when she was in labor, she wanted to drive so she could anticipate the bumps along the way.
Six weeks post-delivery, I drove it 2700 miles to Seattle pulling a small U-Haul trailer with her stuff and my son’s necessities for new jobs. In 3.5 days. On I-90, I drove as soon as I could in the morning, until I couldn’t anymore and find a motel.
I think it averaged about 14 mpg on that trip. It had a lot of issues that were covered under the 3/36K warranty we chose new, because it had a lot of electrical goodies for the day. And there were a lot. But I guess they were teething issues. Because once we got to that point, it was fine until the water pump started weeping at 94K miles.
Once up on a lift for the first time in Seattle for an oil change, I was shocked by the amount of rust underneath. They use a lot of salt around that part of Ohio. There’s at least one salt mine underneath Lake Erie so big that they can use big excavators that my brother used in CA to build roads to dig up salt and bring it to the surface and distribute through the NE US.
Before I got there, I had an ’86 Accord in CA, that stayed there with my ex-wife and I was shocked to see the amount of rust on the seams of those back east, below the trunk lid. And I worked with a guy with an ’84 Volvo that had steel plates welded into replace the floorboards. I thought the Swedes would have figured that out. Maybe they didn’t use salt in Scandanavia.
I test drove a 5.9L ZJ back in like 2003 and remembered it being quick, though not as nimble as the magazine reviews claim, and those fond memories led to me giving these a serious look late last year before I decided to pick up my TJ. In my area they only come in one flavor – high mileage, beat, and way too much money. Once I started looking into what I’d have to do to replace the stock axles (especially that D44a in the rear) to handle 35-37″ tires, I realized I didn’t actually want to build a ZJ and decided I should just get yet another Wrangler and build what I would actually use.
I had a WJ for a couple years. My first SUV. After I put a bunch of maintenance into it across many months I realized how mediocre it was in every way. I did like the simplicity; any time there seemed to be an issue it was easily fixed with under $80 to rockauto, but it seemed to be twice a month as i don’t like to just let crapcans be crapcans. If I’m driving one I expect to get there safely. I also had a baby while owning the heep, which is what I called it. I ditched it for an Outback XT funny enough, and then bought a Raptor. Lots of upfront money but by then I was ready for it. It has cost me less per year than the Heep did.
I currently have a Stone white 5.9 Limited that I “rescued” a couple years ago. I’m still surprised at how quick it is! Yes, the MPG is shit, and my A/C is currently non- functional. But I am officially in love with “Squeaky” (A/C compressor, see above) and the V-8 noises she makes. And my commute is only about 7 miles now, so the mileage/premium isn’t THAT big of a deal anymore.
The MPG was Nine…er….eleven (city). On premium. Sixteen on the highway.
In 1998, with the average fuel price of $1.06/gal, sure. The 1990s are long gone. We now make TV shows reminiscing about that era.
Today, if you drive 15,000 miles per year (45% highway, 55% city), it costs you what they’re going for on the used market per year for fuel, as per the EPA ($4,650).
Upscale domestic luxury SUVs that plied upper middle class America of the 1990s are what late ’70s Cadillacs were to the next generation of car buyers. What was once an aspirational vehicle smacked into the reality that one the plastic-fantastic sheen got worn off, they were piggy, not super well-built guzzlers that didn’t hold up as well as they should have, given their cost.
Jeep didn’t fall as far as Cadillac of the 1980s and 1990s, but took some pretty solid lumps in the 2000s and 2010s to its brand image.
Maybe you can use them for a cheap off-road platform, now that most of the Cherokees are gone, but they’re just too expensive to run and pretty beat for any more ordinary use. Their prices reflect this.
For reference, the 5.9 is an updated version of the venerable Mopar 360cid V-8 that was often used as a truck and van engine.
Around the time this Jeep was released, there were some rumblings that eventually classic cars would become heavily restricted (or illegal) due to emissions. I thought that if it ever happened I would try to swap a more modern 360 or a 318/5.2-liter into an A-body or E-body Mopar.
With all the talk about shitty mpg, too bad they never offered the diesel on USDM Jeeps!
I’ve always wanted one of these 5.9’s
They are 27 years old and nothing really special. Sure fast in the past when nothing was really fast. But $5k for a poor ride, low mpg, old and unreliable what should they be worth?
I’ve owned two 5.2 ZJs, and those were quick. I can’t imagine driving the 5.9.
They’re pretty sweet!
I think they’re cheap (capability wise) for a few other reasons: Being a Chrysler product of the 90s, people think they’ll be a reliability nightmare.
(Never mind that swapping a tranny out is cheaper and can be done faster than a timing belt in a Toyota)
Still, there’s truth to it. My experience with Chryslers (really all the way back to the 1970s) is if they built 10 cars, 7 of them would be rock solid reliable and make lifelong fans. The other 3 may as well have been land rovers.
Next, the 07-11 3.8 JK wranglers are getting DIRTY DIRT cheap. I found one today for 4500 bucks. It needs a starter and brakes. Insane. Hard to spring 4 or 5 grand on a 98 when you can still finance an 09 for like 150 a month.
There was a third point I was going to make but it’s flown out of my head thinking about that $4500 4 door jk again.
I had a 99 Dakota 5.9 R/T. That thing was hilarious, and got about 13 mpg.
My first vehicle was a 98 Dakota with a 5.2 thing was a hooptie for sure and yup same terrible gas mileage. Was great in Chicago winters though.
As the former owner of a similar year Durango, all I will say is NO. The Durango had so many problems that the dealership was on speed dial at our house. That era Chrysler is just absolute hot garbage.
Garbage Chrysler transmissions dont help either. I bet all these need new ones.
If you were in more of a hurry and didn’t have many passengers, you could also get this engine in a RCSB Dakota R/T. Same engine and transmission (no stick, boooo) and probably 500+ pounds lighter
You forgot the mpg of no. I wanted one,but the downside was brutal. If you liked utility there was better, if you wanted sport there was better. It existed in a gap in the market that was filled soon enough to kill its used sales.
The normal v8 was better as a daily.
The normal V8s in the first-gen ZJs were pretty piggy, as well. When I had a new Limited back in the day, 17 mpg was as good as it got on the highway. It also leaked oil as standard equipment, it was rusting by the end of year two, and the AC evaporator failed just outside of warranty. Yay. The ex-wife got it in the divorce. Hasta la vista, baby.
5.2 was only a little worse than the 4l Explorer I owned. 5.9 was in practice a giant step worse.
Imagine if the v8 Explorer got 460 fuel economy, it would be unpopular.
Personally I’d love to see a lightly turboed i6 or v6 to hit the 250hp it needed. Guess it’s to soon as they are still working on selling a modern i6.
You’re getting better at talking yourself out of these things.