One of the toughest things about getting older is watching many of the things you love disappear, and there’s often nothing you can do about it. One of those things, for me, was what I’m going to call the “Cheap Cherokee Era” — a time when true off-road capability was democratized in a way the world had never seen before and has not seen since.
I’m not even 34 yet, but I’m already feeling quite old, especially when I reminisce about where the car world stood just 10 years ago, when I started as a car journalist.
Back then, enthusiasts were still obsessed with brown diesel manual wagons, EVs were barely a thing, and not every car on the road was an expensive crossover. We were at the tail end of many golden eras, but the one I want to talk about today is one near and dear to my heart.
The one vehicle that has stirred my soul more than any other — and that changed my life’s trajectory entirely — was the 1992 Jeep Cherokee XJ you see above, a vehicle that I bought for $1,400 from a Craigslist seller at my college football stadium parking lot. The burgundy machine had 218,000 miles on the clock, rusty rocker panels, and some bad oil leaks, but I didn’t care because it was mine.
That Jeep introduced me to a beautiful world — one of genuine classlessness, a diverse world of people from every walk of life. The Jeep Cherokee democratized off-road capability like no vehicle ever. This is the true story of the XJ; as entertaining as Jason Cammisa’s “The XJ Jeep Cherokee was America’s Favorite Hot Hatch” YouTube video that everyone keeps sending me is, that title does not at all describe the XJ and what it meant to the world. The XJ was the great equalizer. It was the “disposable Jeep.”
Jeep sold over 2.8 million XJs between the 1984 and 2001 model-years, with a bunch of clones in China coming thereafter. It wasn’t until 1987 that the XJ really became the XJ we know and love thanks to the introduction of the “bulletproof” four-liter, though I’d say 1991 to 2001 models are the ones that really gave meaning to the XJ name. These vehicles, especially if equipped in the most popular way (Chrysler 8.25, NP231 transfer case), were mechanically flawless aside from a few cylinder head casting issues on 2001s.
I don’t mean that literally, in that nothing could possibly fail (ask any XJ owner how many crankshaft position sensors, neutral safety switches, rear upper shock bolts, and oil filter adapter o-rings they’ve had to swap). What I mean was that, from a design standpoint, the major mechanical components — the AMC straight six-derived 4.0-liter, the Aisin-Warner AW4 automatic, the Aisin AX-15 manual, the Dana 30 front axle, the Chrysler 8.25 rear axle, and the NP231 transfer case — could quite literally last 500,000+ miles if properly maintained.
The rest of the car — interior electrics, various sensors and seals and the water pump and alternator and radiator on and on — absolutely had a propensity to fail, and the bodies were as rust prone as steel wool in a salt bath, but the main mechanical bits allowed XJs to just keep on tickin’. And with the sheer volume of XJs out there, it meant a truly reliable machine could be enjoyed by all for — in some cases — just a few hundred bucks.
But XJs didn’t just offer cheap reliability; they appended these two qualities with genuine off-road capability to the point where — on a mass scale — the XJ’s off-road capability-to-price ratio became the highest of any vehicle ever.
I don’t mean there literally were no vehicles that were more capable that you could get for less money, I’m saying that, on a mass scale — probably well over a million XJs still driving around in the U.S. in the mid 2000s — there was nothing that you could easily find on any Craigslist in any city that offered this much capability and durability for this little money, particularly if you did minor modifications.
This is also key to what made the XJ what it was. All it needed was a dirt-cheap and simple (thanks to the dual solid axles) junkyard lift kit (you could use Chevy S10 leaf springs in the back) and some 31-inch tires, and it became a formidable monster off-road that, it’s also worth noting, you could reasonably daily-drive.
It had four-doors and plenty of space inside, it offered good power and decent enough comfort — it was an unbelievably cheap, unbelievably off-road capable, unbelievably reliable machine that anyone — truly anyone — could buy for pennies and live with daily.
And that era is over. Its peak was from about 2005 to about 2015 — the Cheap Cherokee era. And my god was it glorious. Look at that giant mudpit I’m driving through in the image above. Check out the off-roading I’m doing here in that same $600 XJ:
I also hydrolocked my burgundy XJ back in November of 2015 while giving too much skinny-pedal in a deep mudpit. It was no matter, though, because the next morning I bought a replacement engine for $120 from some dudes in a barn, who took me late-night off-roading on their property in — of course — a jacked up XJ.
I later ended up flooding my rear diff while off-roading at Drummond Island:
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But that’s nothing compared to what others were doing with their XJs during the Cheap Cherokee era. For one, the XJ became the GOAT of Tough Truck Challenges, flying high off of jumps and rolling over in slaloms:
XJs were also the darling of budget-off-road challenges like my own and like my friend Fred’s:
Very few vehicles throughout history have been beaten on as hard and at as large of a scale as the Jeep XJ, which was flooded, jumped, bashed into trees and rocks, chopped up and just generally hammered by the masses. Because why not? XJs were cheap, and they were going to stay cheap forever:
The below supercut is great, because it includes this caption:
Jeep Cherokee drivers are incredible to watch. They push their Jeeps harder than anybody I know. They work with what they’ve got and beat the snot out of their rigs. I’ve been making offroad videos for six years, and whenever I need more footage for a video I know to look for the Jeep Cherokees. They ALWAYS do fun stuff and disregard their 4×4’s body. Open diffs & missing windows, these guys just go for the skinny pedal. I made this video to give thanks to all guys that don’t care about the chrome- they just want to wheel!
But of course, Jeep XJs didn’t stay cheap. Sometime shortly after I finished my aforementioned $600 XJ series (the finale did over 250,000 pageviews), XJ prices went through the roof and some folks blame me for it:
But while I undoubtedly made the world love the XJ just that tiny bit more with all of my fawning stories, the timing was just a coincidence (and it wasn’t a direct result of Cash for Clunkers, which happened in the middle of the Cheap Cherokee era). XJ values going up was inevitable, because that’s what happens when a beloved, super high-volume, especially-off-road vehicle gets old.
Nice versions become more scarce, memories of all the wacky off-road adventures turn to nostalgia, people like me who were once young become older and better equipped to spend more money/store cars, and in the end values go up. Nostalgia + disposable income + space = high car values.
On some level, I’m happy about that. Dirt-cheap XJs into infinity means all the vehicles would have beaten on until there were none left, but at the same time, I miss the Cheap Cherokee era. I loved being part of a vehicle community that was truly economically diverse and passionate. The XJ was a gateway into the car world/off-road world, and that period when anyone could get one and enjoy its capability truly to the very limit — it was absolutely epic. And it’s making me want to spend far too much money on another XJ, but a nice one. I’m grown up now, you see.
We had 3 XJs throughout my childhood, the oldest strictly for off road use. We’d load the whole family into it and drive up the mountain on old logging roads to pick blackberries.
Thinking about it now, I absolutely get the nostalgia for these Jeeps. The smell, the thunk of the doors, the ignition buzzer, the groan of the 4.0L as it labored in low range. It’s a visceral, multisensory memory, and I’d give anything to be in that back seat on a hot July day again
My S.O. is a rural mail carrier and got his start with a couple of RHD XJs, one of which still sits in the back at his parents’ house.
They’re robust and still sought-after.
I bought a ’97 when I moved up to Denver from Austin in 2011 for $4k. Worked great for 5 years, was a totally rust free single owner vehicle (state of Colorado, I think it must have been a DWR vehicle because the color was Lapis Lazuli). Sold it to an airforce kid in 2016. 200k on it and was still going strong, all I did was put a larger size BFG’s on it and do oil changes. I could fit 2 great danes in the back… but not a baby too.
Great running vehicles but absolute rust buckets.ALWAYS look underneath before buying.
I’ve done this both ways, with a $2k ’92 manual with A/C and 4wd and basically no other options (AM/FM radio, no tape). And took multiple cross country trips, destroyed the rear suspension over loading it, and sold it for $2k with an extra 50k miles on it after a few years of ownership. Then around the time David started writing about them, and predicting some nostalgia with the new Cherokee coming out, I bought a super clean auto 2001, with 100k miles for $7k, and it took 2 years of looking to find. Keeping it forever.
I’m convinced I’ve missed out on owning any 80s midengined car for similar reasons. I keep an eye out for Fieros and MR2s and X/19s and less and less come up for sale, even compared to just a few years ago.
Don’t give up hope Kasey!
I don’t know what part of the country you live in (or even what country for that matter) but if you’ve got more patience than I do for shopping, and you’re not too picky, you can find some sought-after ’80s metal for semi-sane prices. I bought an ’89 240 wagon the day before yesterday, and it’s got (semi-working) AC and a manual transmission, and it’s mostly intact/unmolested. A friend of mine just bought his third first-gen MR2 and is now in the process of restoring it to good, daily-driver quality.
Of course, unless you’re Edwin J. Moneybags (or whatever that little rich guy in Monopoly is named) you’re not going to get a minty, time-capsule car for less than Bring a Trailer money, nor is it likely to be a little-used garage queen. Realistically, 150K miles would be low miles (my 240 has only 167K+, and the nicer looking blue one that I really wanted a couple week ago had almost a quarter million miles) and yes, unless it’s already been restored or is remarkably well-preserved, rubber hoses, trim, wear parts, etc… will all likely all need attention.
But it is possible. Especially if you’re not in rush and bide your time, keeping the necessary cash on hand, waiting/watching for a good one to come up for sale. Use google alerts (or whatever you kids do, where you get an
emailtext message telling you when FB marketplace, Craigslist, etc… have a car you might like come up for sale).Be sure to let us know what you got when the time comes. 😉
I would argue that the era David writes about is over for most cars. Now even base.models are complex, have sensors on their sensors, and are “fancy.”
Cash for clunkers took some of them away, as did the rust (especially here in Canada — good luck finding a Jeep that doesn’t need a ton of metal work).
Now cars often lack anything resembling character and are so expensive as to be punitive.
So true. The cars are objectively better in all performance metrics, from acceleration to efficiency, while being safer and needing far less maintenance. The precision required to implement all these improvements comes at a cost. Very few people will have the ability and tools to work with the new systems. Complex and highly integrated systems are more likely to encounter complex problems and require expensive parts to fix, like the German cars that wick oil into their wiring harnesses and fry computers.
Also, the increased number of parts means that it is far more likely to need a part that has been discontinued. Car makers can’t build those parts forever, and third parties can’t cover such a wide range of parts profitably.
In the end, new cars are impressive but disposable. It is hard to get enthusiastic about disposable products.
Car enthusiasts really need to move on from Cash For Clunkers. A car bought new with that C4C money is now older than the average car on US roads. The junkyard and the ravages of time have eaten far, far more XJs since then. You can’t have a continuous stream of XJs going through the U pull junkyards and still have them be cheap and readily available 24 years after the last one leaves the production line.
Agreed, and there’s a ready A/B test. Look at the survival rates for things like Honda Civics or better yet Saturns from the same years that were a) built to last, b)had car-guy appeal and c) got MPG to high to qualify for C4C. They’re out there, but so, so many of them were just completely driven into the ground.
I had an ’89 4.0 XJ Laredo bought in 2002 or so for $1000 bucks. 190000 miles, but the interior cleaned up nicely. Patched the rust and sprayed with a gallon of cheap enamel in dad’s driveway one evening in October, so FULL ON orange peel. WGAF. It was the best beater I ever owned, I started drving it more than my better cars because no worries about daily (or any) damage. The drivetrain was dead nuts reliable, though I had one Renix issue that almost left me stranded. Hit a guardrail (beacuse Selectrac was better than the brakes) and grafted on the front end from a parted out ’90 Wagoneer. Traded it in in 2005 for $1000 on a 1999 WJ Grand Cherokee. As close to a free car as I heve ever owned.
I got $6500 for my 2000 with 201000 on the clock. At 23 years I was the second owner. First owner was a mom who traded it in at Frontier Ford in San Jose CA for an Expedition back in 2002. Decades later I would still find the occasional petrified Cheerio in some nook in the back. It had nothing wrong with it at all as I had been good about maintenance. Buyer brought a mechanic with him who gave it a thumbs up.
I occasionally miss it but I’m mostly glad it’s gone. I had no practical reason to keep it other than it looked cool parked out front. Buyer was a single young guy who had the time to take it on the adventures it deserved to be going on. I’m older now with kids so I really couldn’t use it.
Those four wheeling videos are so cool. Those old ,car tire having, open differential jeeps I would take all day over the current offering of wannabe crossover off roaders. I saw a Nissan Rogue off-road edition yesterday. Stickers and some ATs does not make it legit. But people buy them so there’s that
Yup. Love XJs and the fun I’ve had with them. My friends and I beat on and hacked up countless XJs in the ~2010-2016 time span. After that the supply of cheap XJs really started drying up, we moved on to other things like Wranglers and Land Cruisers.
I know these are going to be fighting words David, but we have to be honest with here: The reason there were so many cheap XJs that people had no qualms about smashing up, and why there are suddenly none left, was because XJs were kinda disposable trash vehicles to begin with.
Yes they were reliable, but they were outrageously rust prone front-to-back and the early unibody construction made them very difficult to fix rust/rot properly. All of the the u-joints, ball-joints, and bushings would be done by ~150k. So after just 10-15 years, you had a loose floppy vehicle that was rotting apart and economically unfixable. People then dumped them in droves, so they were absolutely dirt cheap to buy, ’cause who wants to buy a car with zip-screwed street signs for floors?
Then on top of rust issues, they were constructed very thin and cheaply in general. The lightest 4WD XJ’s clocked in at 3,150 lbs curb weight, which is ludicrously light for a boxy SUV with cast-iron engines and heavy axles at either end. When you start beating on these things off-road, the control arm mounts often break off, the unibody will start crack and tear in a variety of locations, and you can even get to the point where the doors won’t open depending on how the suspension is loaded.
XJs were never meant to be a super tough “forever” off-road vehicle.
I totally agree with your assessment, but to the XJ’s credit, it does say something about their durability that enough of them survived for there to have been a plentiful stock of cheap, serviceable units. Most cars didn’t (and don’t) actually survive long enough to attain that status. The XJ just happens to be off-road worthy, so thats how people used them up…
Contrast the XJ to another series of boxy, unibody live-axle vehicles that experienced a period of cheap ubiquity- RWD Volvos. Totally opposite scenario: Galvanized bodies, hand built in Sweden. Under-stressed, eternal drivetrain longevity. The vast majority saw good treatment by mature owners.
These vehicles were so well built, they blew well past Volvo’s expected service life, with original owner, dealer maintained, 300k mile examples seeing daily status into the 2010s. The supply of OEM parts and body parts was completely exhausted. These cars were so plentiful, so cheap, in such good condition that it became a meme in the Volvo community to simply buy a $500 Volvo whenever you needed parts, scrap the shell and make $$$. I know of people who ‘consumed’ dozens of the things. Those days are long gone.
Ultimately, when the remaining supply of vehicles far outstrips the demand, values fall. The cars see rough treatment under uncaring owners. The stock is then depleted, and the remaining survivors begin to appreciate.
This is the Way Of Things. Name any antique car and the story is the same.
I had a ’98 2-door XJ for about five years, and it was good for what we needed it for. When my daughter was born it became unusable—accessing the rear seat was painful. It was cheaply made, rattled and creaked worse than my Scout, and got the same gas mileage with 1/8 the cool factor. And the top doesn’t come off. So it was passed along.
I would argue that while it’s pretty normal for most vehicles, it doesn’t usually hold true for off-roaders. Things like Wranglers, Land Cruisers, Big Broncos, Blazers and other similar vehicles never seemed (or seem for ones still in production) to hit the “disposable” price. They retain a high value until the thing is literally completely destroyed and can no longer even function. I think it’s because off-road vehicles inherently appeal to enthusiasts who value them, and will keep them going at essentially any cost.
XJs just hit a weird spot where they still had solid 4wd underpinnings, but they were built, marketed and treated like a family car. And normal “family car” kinda people will usually unload a vehicle before it catastrophically fails, meaning all those 2nd hand XJs still had useful life left for enthusiasts.
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head- The XJ may have been under-built for serious off-roading, but it was still overbuilt for the duty cycle and lifespan of a family car. Hence why the XJ collected in surplus on the used market in a way that simply wouldn’t happen for something like a Chrysler minivan. That sums up the RWD Volvo situation as well, though it seems both brands have since figured out how to build a family car that only lasts as long as intended- Mission failed successfully.
I’m trying to think of some other vehicles that managed to outlive their desirability so soundly. Mercedes 240D? Certain Toyota and Lexus models? Some Nissan products?
Edit: I’ve got one… 2015+ aluminum F150s. They have their problems, but I’ve seen very few that aren’t a good detail and headlight restoration away from looking like a current (ish) truck.They are about as ubiquitous as it gets, and many of the nicer trim 4-doors have spent easy lives as family vehicles. Check back in a decade, I bet a survivor 2015 Lariat will be a killer value.
You’re 100% right, Broncos and FJ40’s were always expensive. In my experience with Scouts, as an orphan domestic brand, I used to be able to find them all day for $1000 in running condition, maybe with some rust in the rockers (I’m in the Mid-Atlantic, after all). I’ve dragged them out of the woods and onto a trailer for less than the trailer rental, then either got them running or parted them out. It’s only been recently, as the other 70’s brands skyrocketed in price, that people started looking at Scouts as the next bargain.
You’re not the reason I bought my XJ, but you are a big part of why I’ll probably never sell it.
My partner and I are redoing our basement, and the first step was a purge of all the stuff collected over 12 years of living in the same spot. We agreed that we would each get a 20-gallon tote to use for all memorabilia. Anything that didn’t fit needed to be a functional item we use regularly, or out it went.
The ability to discard objects that are no longer useful is hugely liberating. The same is true with concepts. The XJ was of a time, and that limited lifespan is a huge part of what made it seem special. Where it can start to go sideways is when we want to wrap up those things to keep them from changing, because the act of doing that denies the real value of them.
Getting a nice XJ out of nostalgia for a time when XJs were inexpensive enough to destroy en masse is like getting a pet who dies, stuffed and put on your mantle.
Man, we so need to do that. Congrats on an open partner… mine bristles at the mere thought of giving up anything, no matter how useless or worthless. I KNOW we would be happier with 1/3 the possessions cluttering our life.
I am fortunate that I don’t need to initiate it at all! If anything, I am the one being pulled along. One way we motivated ourselves was that during the pandemic, we started looking at different homes overseas. The idea of dragging stuff we haven’t looked at for years with us was very limiting. Having less stuff also meant we could be a lot more flexible in the places we could move.
We have come to the conclusion that we have about fifty pieces of art we would like to keep, but other than that, and the one 20-gallon tote, we would be fine leaving our house with a carry-on and our computer bags. Everything else could be sold or donated without a second of regret. Since we both work for ourselves, the only thing keeping us in place is family and friends. We like our house and location, but not being chained to it is a great feeling.
We have implemented a one-in, one-out policy for all purchases. So even a $40 new shirt needs to be balanced by eliminating an old article of clothing. It’s great and has actually made a noticeable difference in our spending as well.
I keep thinking about this, but for the Renault 4. I know so many people whose first car was a Renault 4 that was headed to the crusher simply because they had zero resale value. A neighbour of mine had one of those, a single-owner, low-mileage one that sat for a few months after the gentleman died. When my neighbour found out the widow was about to junk the car, they offered a symbolic amount for it, and she actually declined the money and gave them the car. It came with a very nice vintage Blaupunkt stereo he didn’t need, so years later, he ended up selling it for way more than the sum he offered the lady for the car (which again, she refused).
I think this disposable era for many cars is a fundamental part of what makes them so cherished later on: you have way too many people out there with lots of happy memories of these cars, and once there’s very few left and those people have disposable income, the prices will shoot up for the remaining examples out there.
Thus goes the cycle of car value. Sometime around 20 years after the end of manufacturing, the great vehicles reverse course on depreciation and start appreciating. As the owner of a 1990 Jeep MJ and a 1999 BMW e36 M3, I’m acutely aware of the increase in value these cars have. Luckily my e36 is a beat up car with 207k miles, I daily it, autocross it, and winter beat on it. My Comanche is a fair bit nicer, even though it is at 271k miles, it looks fantastic and I keep it nice, it works in the salt free months, but as soon as the snow flies it gets parked to preserve it’s rareness.
Great! Soon my 7th gen Accord will be worth BILLIONS!!
Buuaahha!!!
Gone may be the cheap XJs but now we have cheap compliance BEVs.
They Leaf something to be desired.
As an aside, if you buy a used Chevy BEV sedan, is it re-Volting?
Man, I was just a tad late to the party that ended in SoCal a good 5 years or so early due to a burgeoning desert culture – by the time I finally put the dirt bike and quad away in the early 2010s to join my XJ friends it was already near impossible to find anything that wasn’t a total heap for less than $7-8k. So I ended up as the one ZJ guy in the crew and still had fun bashing the crap out of my (more capable and comfortable in many ways) toy for nearly a decade.
Now just waiting for my daughter to decide she’s ready for her own car before I take back my extremely-long-term-loan GX470 and prep it for more thrashing…
The cheap trail beaters still exist in the southern and western states where repeated freeze-thaw cycles are rare and the roads don’t see repeated brine baths. For $1400 in Colorado you can still buy that $1400 high-mileage, somewhat rusty, reverse Saudi Arabia XJ on Marketplace right now. The ones that have really shot up are (a) low-mileage, OEM, unmolested examples and (b) any 2D model that has a valid title and isn’t cut up or trashed.
This article could be written about a bunch of different vehicles. In my world – low-budget road racing, autocrossing and street shenanigans – a few stars come immediately to mind. I’m talking about the Mk. 1 & 2 VW GTI. The NA and NB Miata. The Fox-body Mustang 5.0 liter. The E30 and E36 body BMWs. The 1988-91 Honda CRX and Civic Si. Even the humble Dodge/Plymouth neon, preferably with the ACR package. Each of these was once dirt cheap, easily available, and could be built into a nearly endless variety of super fun combinations. But alas, these cars are thin on the ground now. This makes my Gen-X soul sad. Older generations could say the same about a bunch of formerly-cheap-and-available 60’s and 70’s stuff. Sigh.
Yup. When I started with NASA it was mostly your laundry list above. I started with a 220k mile MKII Jetta, moving to an NB Miata as I gained skills. One day I woke up to realize I was surrounded by expensive high horse cars. Of course, the NAs are gone and the NBs are close, and power lets a less experienced driver run in higher groups. But I get your point, the late 60’s musclecars that were disposable when I was in HS seems quite regrettable now.
Oh man, this. I bought a Mk2 GTI for $750 (complete with a hilarious Borla side exhaust) about sixteen years ago from a guy on vwvortex. I went back to that site recently to look at the classifieds section. Nothing.
Anyone with a relatively clean Mk2 is squarely in the ‘I know what I’ve got/No lowballers’ group.
I guess that ship has sailed. Bummer.
Maybe it’s living in a part of the country where rust is a minimal issue, but while inflation has driven everything up there’s still a lot of sub $3k XJs, Miatas, and Fox bodies around here. Not screaming deal territory but still to me in the can scrape that up and not feel bad about immediately going for shenanigans.
I hope everyone who has wrecked an XJ lives an achingly long life so they have plenty of time to regret their actions. We’ve literally run out of affordable street-legal trail rigs in my area because idiots with a lead foot are more effective than road salt in terms of killing cars.
Let the record state that the only Jeep XJ I ever junked had already been ran into a pole sideways and it was completely rusted out.
I’ve got a decade and change on you but I feel the same about A-body Mopars. In the early-mid 1990s, with the exception of a few rare big-block or 340 equiped cars, one could regularly find sub $500 or even “free if you can move it” listings for fairly solid Darts, Dusters, Scamps and Valiants. Heck I got my 67 Barracuda during that time for well less than a grand. Although at the time we were often a bit outcast in the broader Mopar community which already highly valued B and E-bodies, they were my gateway into cars and wrenching; and maybe with the exception of some 4 door cars you can’t touch a good one these days for anything close to that.
If I recall it wasn’t just the XJ getting full sent in the 90s, Suzuki Samurai’s/Sidekicks, S10 Blazers, basically any cheap 4×4 a high school kid could afford would spend the weekends getting beat to heck. It was a glorious time, and now everybody’s doing it with 4Runners so there’s that.
All the 3rd gen 4Runners in my area are sunken in various mud pits so people have moved on to rotted 2007-2009 Jeep Wranglers.
you can do all this and more in a side by side now. yeah they aren’t ‘cheap’ or ‘disposable’ but if you have a halfway decent credit rating you can get one for around 200 a month and you just have to trailer it to the playground.
The baddest SxS on earth isn’t 1/1000th as cool as a $500 XJ held together by duct tape and rust.
Yeah, but having a fun vehicle that you have to haul around on a trailer introduces its own burden. To do that, you need a tow vehicle, and a trailer, AND a place to store it all. So now your daily driver becomes a big, expensive, thirsty, lame-ass pickup truck. No thanks.
i’m sure you could tow one with a normal crossover or like a ford maverick or an old 4runner. they aren’t that heavy.
Yeah I bet one on a lightweight trailer would be easily handled by a Maverick with the 4k lb tow package. You could probably stick one sideways behind a small car in a garage. The annoying item for me would be the trailer – I couldn’t quite afford a property that had all my wants, and RV parking was the first thing I decided I didn’t need.
Just wondering if that Jeep XJ you bought has any rust prior to you owning/touching it? I’m seeing you in a super hero costume and called Rustman. Can turn any piece of metal into rust just by touching it. Of course rust colored tights highlights your rusty balls.
And who is the arch-enemy of Rustman?
The Galvaniser, who can coat the bare-metal of any vehicle with zinc plating which thwarts the powers of Rustman
I feel you there regarding another ’80s icon. Back in 2008 I bought a running and driving 1987 BMW 325 sedan (E30) for $400. It wouldn’t pass smog but was otherwise in fine shape other than scorched clear coat. Today that same car would be easily $2500+.
That car got converted into my 24 Hours of Lemons racer. Part of the reason we chose it was because they were fun but almost disposable. Any self serve junkyard here in San Diego had at least 10 of them to pick parts from.
It ran its final race last weekend. I’ve decided to retire it because it’s getting too expensive to replace parts. I’ve been through at least 2 fenders, hoods, and front bumpers due to racing contact, and back in the day I could pick those up at Pick Your Part for like $30. Nowadays I’m paying $150+ and have to meet some dude from Facebook Marketplace 100 miles away for it.
Also, get off my lawn! *shakes fist*