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From: martinb@idirect.com
Date: 10 Oct 2001
Time: 15:34:26
Remote Name: 216.208.96.66
Y'all know how stupid they look, but has any one of you actually driven a Liberty? I did. Here's what I found:
Much smoother ride on the highway. Quieter. Much choppier ride on city streets. About the same turning radius. Scarier speed cornering, mostly due to the higher center of gravity. Less visibility. Less room. Less storage space. Much less ground clearance. Much less power in the 3.7 vs. my 4.0. No torque. No traction. Cheap, plastic-y "feel". In other words, a few pluses, but all minuses when it comes to the things you buy a Jeep for.
I wouldn't ever dare take this yuppie toy off-road ...I wouldn't even trust it in the snow.
Somebody mentioned the Kia Sportage?. I also test-drove one of them for my wife. It's a piece of crap and it's *still* twice the vehicle of a Liberty at a fraction of the price.
I have to wonder at the wisdom of Daimler-Chrysler -- they scrapped the SUV that all others imitated, and replaced it with a cheap imitation of an imitation. The focus group on this one must have been entirely populated with 16 year old Japanese girls. I'm surprised the Liberty doesn't come in pink.
Here's what everybody should do: go to your local "Jeep 101" or "Jeep College" off-road circuit, take out a Liberty, and roll it. Then threaten to sue the @ss off D-C for attempting to put their best customers into crapwagons. If enough of us do this, then at the very least we'll put enough of a dent in their inventory that they'll begin to notice what their customers *really* think.
In the meantime, I'm hanging on to my '89 and '97 XJs.
Bruce in Toronto