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-SRT 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 (it required premium fuel and got 14 MPG combined — 13 MPG adjusted for today’s EPA methods) 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.
It was never the fastest (I presume you really mean quickest) production SUV. A half-dozen years before it was built, GMC Typhoons were running 0-60 in about 5 seconds, stock. Of course those were no longer in production by the time the top ZJ hit the showrooms, but they still existed.
The older 4.0 wasn’t much slower, were far more common and those were quite fast for the time too, 0-60 in ~8 seconds. I suspect that’s part of why these aren’t commanding any premium. You could already get a really fast Jeep for far less when these were new. The 5.9 wasn’t even that much better in it’s own time.
I bought a minty one in deep slate back in 2003 with 36K on it. Loved it but probably because I only kept it six months or so. These days I scratch my old-school boxy SUV with bad gas mileage and questionable reliability itch with a P38 Range Rover. Proof that age and wisdom is not always an intersecting Venn diagram.
I had a 5.9 ZJ as a company car back in my Chrysler days. Loved driving that beast, especially since I wasn’t paying for the gas. I even wrote a “Holy Grail” submission about the 5.9 ZJ that was published here a while back.
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That being said, the interesting thing is how our perceptions of what was fast has changed over time. A 6.8 second 0-60 time as tested by Motor Trend was quick for the day. It certainly felt quick at the time, as in almost no one could launch as hard as that Jeep.
Today, my humble Bolt EV would show tail lights to a 5.9 ZJ on its best day. We live in an amazing time, performance wise.
I’d have to imagine both the ol’ 401 and AMC 360 (gotta make sure you say AMC lmao!) made more power net then the Magnum 318 did new.
Maybe I’m wrong though?
I owned one, in the exact dark slate gray color as the pic at the top of the article. I think it was around 2010 that I found one for sale. I had already had a 4.0 98 ZJ a for a few years, and wanted a top of the line model. With clear coat failing on the bumpers, wheels that were so scratched and gouged up that I suspect some sort of raccoon involvement, I made a deal on a low mileageish (70K) 5.9 Limited. About a thousand dollars later, the bumpers were repainted, the wheels were refinished, and new tires were mounted.
I owned it for about two years, and I remember having to have a solenoid replaced in the transmission, and also had to have the rear axle rebuilt. Something failed in the diff, and that led to all new gears and new bearings on both axle ends. Then the shop f’ed up the bearings ( I think they did not set the preload correctly, IIRC) and had to have those both replaced when they failed in dramatic fashion.
There used to be a website dedicated to modding the 5.9 Limited, but my memory has failed me and my google-fu has come up short. Seems like it was “speed freaks.net” or something like that.
Clean ZJs are better deals than clean XJs these days. For beat up ones prices are similar still.
I think the 4 speed in these was definitely an issue. The Weird programming and less than stella execution of adding an OD unit tot he 727 nearly broke the dodge truck progress. I also recall the Diffs had some issues….were they aluminum or something?
Also I hear they even with factory hood vents they are tough to keep running cool.
The 46RE in these was substantially better than the 42RE that came in the rest of the non-tow pak equipped 4.0/5.2 ZJs.
Growing up with one, just a single band adjustment and keeping the speed sensors clean was enough to chirp second consistently past 100k miles