Jeep has spent several decades cultivating a unique brand image. For many, the Jeep name is one associated with off-road vehicles that conquer the wilderness unlike anything else. Buying a Jeep gets you into a club of folks who love freedom, passion, and adventure. Two decades ago, Jeep betrayed its own image and its fans with the Compass. This was a Jeep that was an economy car under its skin and didn’t even get the iconic “Trail Rated” badge at first. It also marked a turning point.
Last week, I wrote about the unfortunate life of the Jeep Commander. Back in the 2000s, the SUV and crossover had worked themselves deep enough into American culture to become status symbols. In decades past, the buyer of an SUV likely wanted it for its off-road capabilities. Everyone wanted an SUV from so-called soccer moms to the rich and famous.
America’s SUV culture became so rich that there was everything from the cheap and cheerful SUV to the performance SUV and the luxury SUV. There really was a sort of SUV for everyone, even unexpected SUVs from brands like BMW, Volkswagen, and Porsche. Even Honda properly got in on the madness. At some point, SUVs and crossovers were dominating so hard that it perhaps became foolish not to sell as many SUVs as the market would buy.
Jeep, which was then owned by DaimlerChrysler, went on an all-out SUV offensive. In 2000, Jeep’s lineup had just three vehicles, the Cherokee, Grand Cherokee, and Wrangler. Before the decade ended, Jeep managed a great expansion of its models. The Cherokee became the Liberty, and the rest of the lineup was joined by the additions of the Commander, Patriot, and today’s subject, the Compass.
Jeep then had a variety of SUVs for every buyer, too. But there was one problem: To get there, Jeep had to throw away so much of what its fans loved.
Made For A New Movement
This story takes us back to the first half of the 2000s. As WardsAuto notes, Jeep noticed a change in those who bought SUVs. Everyone loved the rugged looks, the high ground clearance, and the luxury features of the SUVs of the 2000s, but few people were actually using their SUVs’ capabilities.
Most people drove their SUVs around suburbia, and there was a growing number of people who wanted urban-friendly SUVs. The most “off-road” that these SUVs ever saw was a dirt road or maybe jumping a parking space stop block at the local strip mall. Few people were ever really using their four-wheel-drive systems.
This put Jeep into a bit of a pickle. As I noted above, Jeep had spent decades building a brand image of being the automaker you go to when you want to beat the Rubicon. But Jeep had to face a reality. According to Michael Berube, then Jeep marketing senior manager, the compact urban SUV market was about to explode. According to forecasts at Chrysler in 2006, the compact utility vehicle segment was going to double to around 600,000 units by 2010, and then triple to more than 814,000 units by 2016.
This was something Jeep itself had predicted prior, and that forced the company to come to the harsh reality that, if it wanted to keep with the trends, it had to build SUVs for people who want a Jeep badge, but may never actually take their Jeep off-road.
Two products would come out of this effort, the Jeep Patriot and the Jeep Compass. Both made their debut in April 2006 at the New York Auto Show, and both even have the same platform. But Jeep decided to target two different customers with these vehicles.
These two vehicles didn’t come out of nowhere. Back in 2002, Jeep came up with an idea for a concept. What if Jeep had an entry-level vehicle that was designed for people who didn’t really care about Moab? The Jeep Compass concept launched that year and it was an oddball. It had a design that looked like a little bit of Audi with AMC sprinkled in. This concept borrowed much of its mechanicals from the Jeep Liberty, including its V6. However, the vehicle was much lighter duty, featuring only AWD and not a proper 4×4 system.
The Compass concept had big wheels, thin tires, and hit 60 mph in under 9 seconds. It was closer to a hot hatch than it was a typical Jeep. According to Car and Driver, it was joined by a competing unnamed off-road-oriented concept in 2003. But then Chrysler Group CEO Dieter Zetsche didn’t choose one and greenlit both concepts for production.
A Jeep For Non-Jeep Buyers
The Compass concept made a return in 2005, this time joined by the Patriot concept. Both vehicles appeared ready for production, and some big changes happened along the way to these concepts. The Compass was no longer based on the Jeep Liberty. Now, it shared its bones with the Dodge Caliber. Its sibling, the Patriot, followed the same course, robbing its platform from the Caliber as well.
According to DaimlerChrysler, the Patriot was designed to be a nod to Jeep’s past and what was then its presence. The Patriot was supposed to feel like a bit of a spiritual successor to the Cherokee XJ with Jeep’s then-current design language. A press release notes that the Patriot was designed to appeal to those who wanted to continue to embrace Jeep tradition, but have it in a smaller package that was still 4×4 and Trail Rated. Even its name, Patriot, tried so hard to make you think that this was the freedom-fueled American Jeep you know and love. Jeep’s marketing practically bludgeoned you in the head with how much it worked to make the Patriot a big deal.
On the other hand, the Compass went in an entirely different direction. Berube told the press that “the Compass appeals to non-Jeep buyers,” and this was proudly displayed in its design. The Compass did away with Jeep’s iconic boxy looks and didn’t even pretend to be an off-roader. The standard model was front-wheel-drive with a CVT and up to just 8.4 inches of ground clearance. It didn’t even get a Trail Rated badge.
According to Autoweek, it went even deeper than that, as Jeep more or less wanted to attract men to the blocky and masculine Patriot and women to the soft Compass. I suppose this also assumes that Jeep thought that women don’t care about wheeling and just want something cute to drive around town in.
The unfortunate truth is that the early version of the Jeep Compass ended up not attracting a ton of buyers of any gender.
The Compass Pointed In The Wrong Direction
The Compass seemed like a promising proposition. At only $15,985 ($25,913 in 2025), it was the cheapest and most efficient Jeep money could buy. A 2.4-liter four resided under the hood with a punch of 172 HP and was bolted to a five-speed manual. Buyers got traction control, stability control, and even side curtain airbags. If you wanted all-wheel-drive, that brought the sticker price to just $17,585 ($28,507 in 2025).
The Jeep Compass also had trendy features of its day, like a holster for your iPod, a built-in MP3 player, and a nine-speaker sound system. You were even able to get the Compass with tailgate-mounted boombox speakers so you could use your ride for a block party. The Compass also had an air-conditioner-based drink cooler that other DaimlerChrysler products had during the day. If you didn’t like rowing your own, you could have also gotten the Compass with a CVT. In other words, the Compass tried to be a cooler, more hip Caliber.
Check out the so-called Chill Zone, as it existed in the Caliber:
Meanwhile, the Patriot tried its hardest to pander to the kind of person who lamented the death of the Jeep XJ. The problem was that the Compass seemingly failed in its mission. Autoweek eviscerated the car:
Sharing a platform with the Dodge Caliber, Compass blends homely looks with unrefined manners to a degree not seen since the unlamented Pontiac Aztek. That this Compass Limited stickered out at $26,180—an easy $10,000 more than the base price of a Compass or that of a Caliber SXT—simply set its shortcomings in stark relief. The day water leaked into the cabin from the sunroof switch, drips splattering onto the sadly misguided CVT “automatic” transmission’s lever, we figured the polarization on the Compass’ needle was reversed. This thing’s headed due south.
It has become cliché among automotive journalists in the 21st century to note that there are no truly bad cars anymore—nothing so dimly regressive as the unreliable Yugos and Peugeots on which many of us sharpened our fangs 20-odd years ago. For the most part, that’s true, but if this particular Compass was representative, it’s the exception that proves the rule.
[…]
Most complaints centered on the misbehaviors of the aforementioned CVT, a $1,150 option that got similarly poor reviews in the Caliber. But in this 4wd Compass, hauling more mass with the same 2.4-liter, 172-hp four, the CVT was even more overmatched. If the ratios are “continuously variable,” one has to wonder how it can be engineered to deliver such jarring and jolting through the entire driveline when it decides to shift down. You can choose ratios manually by using the autostick feature, engaged by simply moving the lever sideways from the “D” position, but this does not improve things—the jerks and jolts are only more predictable. The CVT is supposedly worth 7 percent to 8 percent more fuel efficiency than a torque converter automatic—being generous, call it 2 mpg. Better you should learn to shift a manual.
Most of the time, I’ll quote a section of a review where a journalist highlights a few positives and negatives, but Autoweek‘s review of the 2007 Compass never stops taking swings at the poor little car. Here’s another paragraph:
Having a clutch pedal would do nothing for the ride quality. Catch a moderate-size bump with one rear wheel, and the Compass dances like a politician asked a controversial question. This may be down to the 4wd system adding unsprung mass that the suspension is challenged to control, or maybe it was the $825 18-inch chrome wheels highlighting a lack of refinement. If the aim was to mimic the harsh ride of an off-roadable truck, mission accomplished.
The exterior design supposedly did well, especially among females, in consumer clinics. Judge for yourself, but know that the same was said for Aztek. We usually applaud the Chrysler Group for daring to produce love-it or hate-it styling, but to our eyes this wafts of mediocrity.
Consumer Reports took similarly harsh swipes at the Compass when it put the micro SUV up against the likes of the Toyota Rav4 and the Honda CR-V, saying:
We found the Dodge Caliber unimpressive in the Sept. 06 test and the Compass follows suit. Its noisy 4 cly engine delivers decent fuel economy thanks to the CVT but interior materials are cheap and poorly assembled in many places. Overall ride comfort is acceptable.
[…]
Driving: Compass absorbs bumps reasonably well but has a lot of quck body motions…suspension noise makes ride worse than it actually is. Road noise is loud and engine drones constantly. Any acceleration makes matters worse. Handling is adequate but not impressive with linear but not particularly quick steering and pronounced body lean. In emergency maneuvers, it tended to plow ahead, reducing steering ability despite the standard stability control. The 4 cyl delivers avg performance. Braking distances were fairly long. Headlights had good illumination.
Inside the cabin: interior is drab and looks cheap. Interior panels are made of hard, mismatched plastics with unappealing textures and poor finishes with sharp edges. The driving position is narrow but has good head, leg, and foot room. The steering wheel does not telescope but most drivers found it a comfortable reach away. Big head restraints, thick pillars, and a low windshield compromise visibility.
Car and Driver took the wheel of a Limited, or a high-end Compass with a starting price of $20,140 for a front-wheel-drive model. The publication was nicer, but still noted problems:
Bred for suburban streets (but tested on washboard and in proving ground mud bowls, says Liddane), the Compass slaloms like a car. The mellow suspension tune toned down big impacts while keeping the body above its keel with reasonable roll control. It found its way through Hells Canyon’s switchbacks with focused steering, a trait not often associated with Jeeps. Fuel economy averaged a thrifty 24 mpg over hill and knoll.
[…]
By far the Compass’s biggest disappointment is its interior. Injection-molded out of flinty plastic with all the passion of a rubbish-bin lid, the dash has barely a whiff of the polish of the CR-V and RAV4 and none of the design spirit of the PT Cruiser. The plain gauges and the center console rise to a high mesa, squeezing the vision forward in concert with thick A-pillars. It’s a gaffe, considering that Berube expects 60 percent of Compass buyers to be women.
Do women want regular reminders that they bought an inexpensive car? Jagged mold-part seams are easy to find. Some gaps are huge, others are wavy. The one-size cup holders appear to have been formed by ramming two beer glasses into soft plastic. A deep dash cubby, handy for sunglasses and other detritus, looks like vacant real estate, as if the passenger airbag had moved to a better neighborhood (it’s in the dash top).
As always, the legendary John Davis of MotorWeek found something to like about the Compass:
MotorTrend was nicer than Car and Driver was, but complained about the vehicle’s hard plastic interior and Jeep being so aggressive with cost-cutting that the base model Compass didn’t even have air-conditioning, power locks, or power windows. In the end, MotorTrend concluded by saying that the Compass feels more like an economy car than an SUV. Ouch. But hey, at least they were rated to get 29 mpg on the highway!
A Slow Start
Unfortunately, the Compass wasn’t initially the home run that Jeep was expecting. In 2007, the first full year of production, Jeep sold only 39,491 Compass models, making it the slowest-selling model of the Jeep lineup. Surely, this would change in the Great Recession, right? I mean, it gets 30 mpg!
Unfortunately, the early Compass never had better sales than what it got in 2007. In 2008, sales sank to 25,349 units before further sliding to 11,739 units in 2009 and 15,894 units in 2010. During the height of the Great Recession, when many Americans downsized, more people actually bought other, more expensive and thirstier Jeeps over the thrifty and cheap Compass. The one bit of good news was that women Compass buyers outnumbered men Compass buyers 51 percent to 49 percent.
For some, the early Jeep Compass represented a betrayal. Jeep was a brand that you could count on to build a hardcore, off-road-capable vehicle. Yet, the early Compass was none of that. It didn’t even have the looks of a regular Jeep, either. Sure, the Commander guzzled fuel and required your third-row passengers to pretzel themselves to fit, but it still looked like a Jeep and went hard like a Jeep. To some, the Compass and the Patriot were representatives of a Jeep that had gone soft.
[Ed note: The Jeep Compass was a betrayal to true diehard Jeep fans like myself. This was the very first front-wheel drive Jeep, the very first with a fully independent suspension, the first with a continuously variable transmission, and it was the first four-wheel drive Jeep not to offer low-range gearing. To Jeep people, this was a car, not a Jeep. It was a massive departure from anything Jeep had made in any real volumes (The old Jeep Surrey and Willys Jeepster were two-wheel drive, but those were niche convertibles), and the fact that the execution was so poor just made it even worse in Jeep diehards’ eyes.
To be sure, the fuel economy was an improvement over any Jeep up to that point, and the ride was relatively OK. But the thing is, the fuel economy wasn’t that good, the ride wasn’t that good — so the Compass sacrificed its Jeepness for things that it didn’t even excel in relative to the competition. And then there was the “MCM” (Material Cost Management)-driven interior made of, essentially, stone, and there were plenty of CVT and manual transmission durability issues. Put it all together and you have the most hated Jeep of all time.
And look a lot of this is a little silly. If a brand wants to build a watered down car that departs from its history, it has every right to. Lots of automakers have done that, and even Jeep currently makes similarly “soft” products. But the latest ones are at least somewhat competitive. The Compass was a betrayal in that not only did it give up something so valuable to diehard Jeep fans — “Jeepness” — but it did so only to be a mediocre product. The juice wasn’t worth the squeeze. -DT].
It’s not hard to find early Jeep Compass haters online. There are folks on Cars.com complaining about their CVT transmissions failing, and people on Reddit telling others to avoid a Compass at all costs. It doesn’t seem as though the Compass was any less reliable than other DaimlerChrysler products of the era, but that slapping a Jeep badge on what’s still nominally a Dodge Caliber wasn’t exactly a hit with buyers.
Truth be told, I was one of the seemingly few fans of the Caliber, so I bet I’d get along with a Compass just fine. But I get why people didn’t like the Compass.
If you’re interested in an early Compass, you can find them all over your local classifieds for dirt-cheap prices. It’s not even hard to find one for under $2,000.
What’s interesting is that Jeep never really gave up on its cheaper, more road-friendly vehicles. The Patriot remained in production until the 2017 model year. The Compass got a pretty comprehensive facelift in 2011, and sales almost tripled in just that year alone. Sales would then slowly gain momentum until the 2017 model year, when the first-generation Compass finally bowed out. The improved second-generation Compass seemingly corrected the faults of the first model, and it showed in sales, where the Compass finally exceeded sales of 100,000 units for the first time in 2018, when 171,167 copies went home.
The Compass remains in the Jeep lineup today and enjoys pretty solid sales, so Jeep has found a way to build a cheaper, less capable vehicle, and keep buyers in the showroom to buy them. It just took a while to get it right.
I’ll admit to owning a Patriot with the 5-speed and AWD.
I knew when i got it that it had zero off-road capability but I was OK with that. I just wanted a manual daily that could haul some stuff and seat 4 adults in a pinch. It did that.
The only reason I went with AWD instead of FWD is because… nostalgia. I wanted an XJ manual so bad bad in the day and this was a pretend version that could manage our gravel road in the snow and not much else. AWD got me that fake 4×4 badge on the back which made me think it was a real Jeep.
Its gone now because it was… boring. I’ll just stick to my minivan for hauling duties and got something properly fun and impractical to fill the manual spot in the garage.
Oh, and did you know if the battery dies (even when it’s moving down the road) the thing won’t run? Learned that the hard way when it decided to randomly shut the engine off and would only run with the jump box connected (couldn’t just start it and drive home). Fun times waiting on a tow.
I think I drove one of these as a service loaner? It was the one that had the little Loch Ness Monster on the rear window, and a lizard shape molded into the plastic shroud under the windshield. It worked well enough as a loaner, and I guess it was better than the Chrysler 200s that were also used as loaners at the time.
My mom says her father used similar reasoning when selecting a vehicle for her post-college – “women don’t drive Jeeps.” And that’s how she ended up with a malaise-era heap with hidden damage from an unreported wreck.
Preach sister! The Compass and the whole “trail rated” badging in general are a betrayal of Jeep heritage. As I like to say “a Jeep that can’t 4-wheel is no Jeep”.
OK, I know I’m a huge dork for harping on this, but: Autopian image captions are all over the place author-to-author, and here just a bit more info would be so helpful.
The photos jump from Compass to Patriot to Compass Concept to Caliber to 2nd gen Compass… and they all just say “Jeep” in the caption.
Mercedes, you’re the research queen! Help us out!
One holiday season when I was living far from home, I came back and my DaimlerChrysler service trainer dad kindly offered a Compass that he had as a training vehicle. It was a fully loaded Limited model so the techs could see all of the possible systems/features they could run into on that car, and it was just as miserable to drive as the reviews say. Visibility could be kindly described as “limited,” the interior felt like it was from the dollar store, and the poor 2.4 L engine was utterly strangled by the CVT. I put my foot down to accelerate onto the highway, and was met with a lot of noise but next to no acceleration. It was simply the worst post-1990 car that I’ve ever driven.
I hated these two Jeeps as soon as I saw them. The Compass and Patriot looked like fisher price plastic toys that someone tried to force into looking like a Jeep. Junk from top to bottom.
The first PM/MK cars were terrible. I was a quality engineer at Chrysler in the mid-2000s, working on FWD platforms, and reading about these takes me back. The cars were mid-pack at best right out of the gate, with loud a thrashy drievtrains, a middling Jatco CVT, and absolutely terrible interiors. The interiors were just the worst.
The funny thing about the “iconic” Trail Rated badge is that it was actually developed to anticipate the arrival of the Compass and Patriot. Prior to 2005(maybe 2006, don’t quote me on that) the badge never existed. Jeep knew it was going to get flack for creating this…..thing…..so they branded the Grand Cherokee, Commander, Liberty and Wrangler with the Trail Rated badge immediately, regardless of trim packaging because they were body on frame vehicles with transfer cases and full time four wheel drive. Certain trims of the Patriot received the badge, but only with the correct packaging.
Jeep saw the future and branded themselves around it.
DT gets it right. It’s one thing to deliver a diluted product for the sake of bringing in more people into a niche brand. It’s another thing to deliver a diluted product that simply sucks ass, and basically makes no one happy.
One of the many issues for the Compass was that the Patriot was basically the same car, slightly more practical packaging and what I considered to be a pretty nice design for a Jeep despite it’s obvious car underpinnings. Jeep sold a bazillion of those around here. The Compass just looked cheap and crappy both on the inside and outside.
I also think that this sort of car, the kind of ugly pug cheap vehicle of the brand with a semi-rugged image and cheap materials, can work. But it has to be DURABLE. If Jeep had put in an automatic that wasn’t a horrific POS, maybe this would have eventually developed a reputation as being the “cheap, but surprisingly rugged and resilient Jeep” sort of like how Foresters were back in the 00s.
Back when Car & Driver did a comparison test or a review of the Compass (not sure if it was the review mentioned above or another), in the spot at the end where they used to do Pros/Cons/Summary, the final comment was:
“A box of automotive sadness.”
The big problem I have with these compact SUVs is you their footprint seems so big in contrast to their often times cramped interiors. And then there’s the premium you have to pay compared to even a sedan that depending on the vehicle is roomier.
But I’m not the target audience lol.
I see a decent number of KJ and KK Libertys on the road still. Weirdly, I actually see several Commanders pretty regularly as well. But I can’t tell you the last time I consciously saw a 1st-gen Compass that wasn’t a fleet vehicle. I suspect it’s a combination two things. First , the Compass was so incredibly mediocre that the demographic that did buy them also maintained them in the same fashion Nissan Altimas are maintained. Second, they weren’t reliable. Other Jeeps at the time (like now) wouldn’t be considered reliable either, but perhaps higher purchase price meant folks were more willing to maintain and repair those, where the Compass just wasn’t. The Compass was cheap, disposable, and forgettable. That it’s a favorite of MDOT to house construction zone cameras isn’t a coincidence.