Issue Nine
Twitter made me do it, Part One of Five: why are Jeeps so unnecessarily unreliable vehicles?
Twitter made me do it, Part One of Five: why are Jeeps so unnecessarily unreliable vehicles?
Twitter made me do it, Part One of Five: why are Jeeps so unnecessarily unreliable vehicles?
This is a different kind of blog post for myself. Whereas everything you've seen in Maison Staples thus far has circulated around architecture, art styles, and introspective looks at myself, this is going to go in a direction I have not touched in years.
And Twitter is to thank for that.
This trend, specifically:
See, at first I was treating this trend as a joke. If you give me enough gin an tonics in a bar, these five topics are what you are most likely going to catch me rambling on about. But then after tweeting it, I began to think about these five topics. I began to visualize myself in a space where I was asked to talk about one of these five for 30 minutes. That's a whole lot of time. Could I actually do it?
So that inspired me to start a miniseries of blog posts within Maison Staples. Over the next five-ish weeks (or ten-ish), I'm going to go down this list and write a post about it. These five topics are, after all, things I can talk about at a bar — so why not talk about them in a blog? Each topic will get its own issue, and today, we're going to start with Jeep. So enjoy!
(And if this isn't your cup of tea and you want me to get back to architecture, just wait until I start writing about mass timber.)
Part One of Five: why are Jeeps are so unnecessarily unreliable vehicles?
I, unfortunately, know quite a bit about Jeeps. My first car was a classic: a 1986 XJ Cherokee (Pioneer Edition), in a beautiful, metallic bronze color. Around the same era, my mom's vehicle of choice was a 2013 JKU Rubicon (aptly named Rubi), top of the line at the time.
Both vehicles were wildly different in so many obvious ways. Mine was shorter, older, browner, slower, gas-guzzling-er, and American-er. Hers was taller, off-road-ier, newer, Fiat-ier and, somehow, more fuel-efficient. Yet they both had some unusual similarities between them.
They were both guffawed at by the enthusiasts, for one.
In its second generation — as it split away from the larger, grander Grand Wagoneer body type — the Cherokee was a "family" SUV. It was popular, absolutely, but was a clear turn away from the roughnecking, wilderness-exploring Jeep lineup that existed before the 80s. Meanwhile, the 2013 model my mom had was so big and so full of features, it too felt the same burn, just at the other end of the spectrum. The JK and JKU models picked up the "pavement princess" meme-ification (it's important to note (in case my mom reads this (hi mom)) that not all Jeeps of this generation were strictly treated to pavement.)
Second, both were disrespectfully unreliable vehicles.
I sometimes wonder if the "Jeep wave" is more of a show of sympathy than one of familiarity. As if to say, "Yep, I've been there. I know exactly how much money it has taken you to repair what you have and I'm sorry about it." My poor XJ was such a money pit, I wrote about it in 2019 as I was trying to sell it. The saga ended when I was handed a check for $20 as a tow truck showed up to my apartment to haul it to its final resting place: a junkyard. My mom's jeep wasn't haunted like mine was, but would like to throw a new sound or shake or vibration or rattle or leak or bolt every few thousand miles, just to keep things interesting.
We both had to develop rules for how to drive our vehicles.
For mine: "okay now as you come to a stop, you need to put it in neutral (it was an automatic) or the engine will die."
For her's: "you can only feel the rocking from the rear if you're driving between 40 and 50 mph, so speed up."
But the real quandary for both is: "why?" Why are both of these completely different models so much the same in the wrong ways? Why
Well, I have a theory.
Now it's important we pause here just so I can disclaim that I have absolutely no idea if this theory is accurate. It's subjective and it's based on my own experiences. Like any gin and tonic fueled rambling, I invite anyone who knows more about Jeeps to please, please call me on my bullshit. And if you write it down, I'll even update this post in the future with your take as an appendix.
Jeeps are unreliable because… they've struggled with their identity for decades.
See, in the beginning, Jeep was a vehicle literally made for war. When America got involved in WWII, there was a need for troops abroad to have transport that could carry them wherever they needed to go.
Jeeps were cheap to produce, highly modifiable, and shipped in a fucking crate. Their identity at the time was being a jack-of-all-trades military vehicle.
And as their production turned to a civilian audience after the war, they still held onto their military-backed heritage. They were true utility vehicles and could hold onto their roots as they were used for damn near every kind of off-road use.
But they just kept jumping from manufacturer to manufacturer. Willys was bought by Kaiser Motors. Kaiser was bought by AMC. AMC was bought by Chrysler (in 1987, which is important to remember in a few minutes). Chrysler was bought by Fiat (in 2014, also important). And in 2021, it was sucked up into the automotive vacuum that is Stellantis.
At each crossroad where the rights to Jeep were handed from one suit to another, the brand held onto less and less of what made it so iconic. They lost their identity because they were just tossed from boardroom to boardroom like a game of hot potato.
For the purpose of relevancy, there are two handovers that stick out to me. As you might have already guessed, the Chrysler acquisition in 1987 and the Fiat acquisition in 2014 line up pretty well with the model years both my mom and I own. And thus, the crux of why both my XJ and her JKU were so ungodly unreliable.
My Jeep, for example, had two keys. Now this in itself isn't uncommon for vehicles in the 1980s and earlier. One key would be able to open the doors, while the other would go in the ignition. However in my case, one key was branded with the Chrysler logo and one was branded with the AMC logo. Of course, neither were needed to open the doors to my car. In fact, you could use anything flat, thin, and stiff (a butter knife was a fun party trick), to turn the busted locks.
On a more practical level, the gripes of inconsistencies can go on and on: half of my vehicle's bolts were metric and the other half were imperial. The 2.5L four-cylinder engine was so weak and poor, I went through three. Parts that needed to be replaced weren't anywhere near where the vehicle's manual said they were. My theory is that, somewhere between AMC and Chrysler, papers were shuffled and notes were smudged and somehow nothing mattered.
Now, my mom's Jeep certainly didn't have the same issues as mine. But the pain felt of owning a vehicle whose model year falls in line with an acquisition was still the same. Take the "simple" maintenance task of replacing spark plugs, for instance. For my four-cylinder, replacing the spark plugs was always straightforward. But do you know what engine runs in a 2013 JKU Rubicon? A 3.6L Pentastar V6. For those that don't know, those words mean nothing. But to those that do, those words should be bleeped out on broadcast.
The Pentastar has its fair share of quirks (it drinks oil like Homer Simpson drinks Duff), but chief among them in my book is how one goes about changing the spark plugs. The first three, located on the passenger side of the engine, are (relatively) easy to get out as long as you have a long enough socket extension. But to replace the other three, YOU HAVE TO DISASSEMBLE THE TOP HALF OF THE CAR'S INTAKE MANIFOLD. ARE YOU KIDDING ME. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME.
Created by Chrysler, the engine has cemented itself as a catch-all in a wiiiiide variety of vehicles. And since its ownership exchange, it even found itself under the hood of some European brands. And this, in itself, isn't a bad thing. But you can't simply be a catch-all engine and produce the same level of performance in every vehicle you touch. And it's in my opinion that Jeeps actively reject the Pentastar with all it's quirks and features like a mismatched organ donation. It's the wrong engine for the wrong car and it's all Chrysler's and Fiat's fault.
Does any of this actually matter?
No, of course not. None of this matters. This wasn't written in order to explain reason or appeal to anyone's good senses or even to educate others. This is, at its core, me bitching.
HOWEVER! This is a topic that I believe I have truly proven I can talk at length about. It's a topic that I invite any and all to ask me about over a drink. You will regret asking me about it and we will get into an argument about it. But that's the spirit of the tweet.
For the next part in this miniseries, we'll make a return to conversations about architecture as I detail my utter love and fascination with mass timber. I'll see you all then.
This is a different kind of blog post for myself. Whereas everything you've seen in Maison Staples thus far has circulated around architecture, art styles, and introspective looks at myself, this is going to go in a direction I have not touched in years.
And Twitter is to thank for that.
This trend, specifically:
See, at first I was treating this trend as a joke. If you give me enough gin an tonics in a bar, these five topics are what you are most likely going to catch me rambling on about. But then after tweeting it, I began to think about these five topics. I began to visualize myself in a space where I was asked to talk about one of these five for 30 minutes. That's a whole lot of time. Could I actually do it?
So that inspired me to start a miniseries of blog posts within Maison Staples. Over the next five-ish weeks (or ten-ish), I'm going to go down this list and write a post about it. These five topics are, after all, things I can talk about at a bar — so why not talk about them in a blog? Each topic will get its own issue, and today, we're going to start with Jeep. So enjoy!
(And if this isn't your cup of tea and you want me to get back to architecture, just wait until I start writing about mass timber.)
Part One of Five: why are Jeeps are so unnecessarily unreliable vehicles?
I, unfortunately, know quite a bit about Jeeps. My first car was a classic: a 1986 XJ Cherokee (Pioneer Edition), in a beautiful, metallic bronze color. Around the same era, my mom's vehicle of choice was a 2013 JKU Rubicon (aptly named Rubi), top of the line at the time.
Both vehicles were wildly different in so many obvious ways. Mine was shorter, older, browner, slower, gas-guzzling-er, and American-er. Hers was taller, off-road-ier, newer, Fiat-ier and, somehow, more fuel-efficient. Yet they both had some unusual similarities between them.
They were both guffawed at by the enthusiasts, for one.
In its second generation — as it split away from the larger, grander Grand Wagoneer body type — the Cherokee was a "family" SUV. It was popular, absolutely, but was a clear turn away from the roughnecking, wilderness-exploring Jeep lineup that existed before the 80s. Meanwhile, the 2013 model my mom had was so big and so full of features, it too felt the same burn, just at the other end of the spectrum. The JK and JKU models picked up the "pavement princess" meme-ification (it's important to note (in case my mom reads this (hi mom)) that not all Jeeps of this generation were strictly treated to pavement.)
Second, both were disrespectfully unreliable vehicles.
I sometimes wonder if the "Jeep wave" is more of a show of sympathy than one of familiarity. As if to say, "Yep, I've been there. I know exactly how much money it has taken you to repair what you have and I'm sorry about it." My poor XJ was such a money pit, I wrote about it in 2019 as I was trying to sell it. The saga ended when I was handed a check for $20 as a tow truck showed up to my apartment to haul it to its final resting place: a junkyard. My mom's jeep wasn't haunted like mine was, but would like to throw a new sound or shake or vibration or rattle or leak or bolt every few thousand miles, just to keep things interesting.
We both had to develop rules for how to drive our vehicles.
For mine: "okay now as you come to a stop, you need to put it in neutral (it was an automatic) or the engine will die."
For her's: "you can only feel the rocking from the rear if you're driving between 40 and 50 mph, so speed up."
But the real quandary for both is: "why?" Why are both of these completely different models so much the same in the wrong ways? Why
Well, I have a theory.
Now it's important we pause here just so I can disclaim that I have absolutely no idea if this theory is accurate. It's subjective and it's based on my own experiences. Like any gin and tonic fueled rambling, I invite anyone who knows more about Jeeps to please, please call me on my bullshit. And if you write it down, I'll even update this post in the future with your take as an appendix.
Jeeps are unreliable because… they've struggled with their identity for decades.
See, in the beginning, Jeep was a vehicle literally made for war. When America got involved in WWII, there was a need for troops abroad to have transport that could carry them wherever they needed to go.
Jeeps were cheap to produce, highly modifiable, and shipped in a fucking crate. Their identity at the time was being a jack-of-all-trades military vehicle.
And as their production turned to a civilian audience after the war, they still held onto their military-backed heritage. They were true utility vehicles and could hold onto their roots as they were used for damn near every kind of off-road use.
But they just kept jumping from manufacturer to manufacturer. Willys was bought by Kaiser Motors. Kaiser was bought by AMC. AMC was bought by Chrysler (in 1987, which is important to remember in a few minutes). Chrysler was bought by Fiat (in 2014, also important). And in 2021, it was sucked up into the automotive vacuum that is Stellantis.
At each crossroad where the rights to Jeep were handed from one suit to another, the brand held onto less and less of what made it so iconic. They lost their identity because they were just tossed from boardroom to boardroom like a game of hot potato.
For the purpose of relevancy, there are two handovers that stick out to me. As you might have already guessed, the Chrysler acquisition in 1987 and the Fiat acquisition in 2014 line up pretty well with the model years both my mom and I own. And thus, the crux of why both my XJ and her JKU were so ungodly unreliable.
My Jeep, for example, had two keys. Now this in itself isn't uncommon for vehicles in the 1980s and earlier. One key would be able to open the doors, while the other would go in the ignition. However in my case, one key was branded with the Chrysler logo and one was branded with the AMC logo. Of course, neither were needed to open the doors to my car. In fact, you could use anything flat, thin, and stiff (a butter knife was a fun party trick), to turn the busted locks.
On a more practical level, the gripes of inconsistencies can go on and on: half of my vehicle's bolts were metric and the other half were imperial. The 2.5L four-cylinder engine was so weak and poor, I went through three. Parts that needed to be replaced weren't anywhere near where the vehicle's manual said they were. My theory is that, somewhere between AMC and Chrysler, papers were shuffled and notes were smudged and somehow nothing mattered.
Now, my mom's Jeep certainly didn't have the same issues as mine. But the pain felt of owning a vehicle whose model year falls in line with an acquisition was still the same. Take the "simple" maintenance task of replacing spark plugs, for instance. For my four-cylinder, replacing the spark plugs was always straightforward. But do you know what engine runs in a 2013 JKU Rubicon? A 3.6L Pentastar V6. For those that don't know, those words mean nothing. But to those that do, those words should be bleeped out on broadcast.
The Pentastar has its fair share of quirks (it drinks oil like Homer Simpson drinks Duff), but chief among them in my book is how one goes about changing the spark plugs. The first three, located on the passenger side of the engine, are (relatively) easy to get out as long as you have a long enough socket extension. But to replace the other three, YOU HAVE TO DISASSEMBLE THE TOP HALF OF THE CAR'S INTAKE MANIFOLD. ARE YOU KIDDING ME. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME.
Created by Chrysler, the engine has cemented itself as a catch-all in a wiiiiide variety of vehicles. And since its ownership exchange, it even found itself under the hood of some European brands. And this, in itself, isn't a bad thing. But you can't simply be a catch-all engine and produce the same level of performance in every vehicle you touch. And it's in my opinion that Jeeps actively reject the Pentastar with all it's quirks and features like a mismatched organ donation. It's the wrong engine for the wrong car and it's all Chrysler's and Fiat's fault.
Does any of this actually matter?
No, of course not. None of this matters. This wasn't written in order to explain reason or appeal to anyone's good senses or even to educate others. This is, at its core, me bitching.
HOWEVER! This is a topic that I believe I have truly proven I can talk at length about. It's a topic that I invite any and all to ask me about over a drink. You will regret asking me about it and we will get into an argument about it. But that's the spirit of the tweet.
For the next part in this miniseries, we'll make a return to conversations about architecture as I detail my utter love and fascination with mass timber. I'll see you all then.
This is a different kind of blog post for myself. Whereas everything you've seen in Maison Staples thus far has circulated around architecture, art styles, and introspective looks at myself, this is going to go in a direction I have not touched in years.
And Twitter is to thank for that.
This trend, specifically:
See, at first I was treating this trend as a joke. If you give me enough gin an tonics in a bar, these five topics are what you are most likely going to catch me rambling on about. But then after tweeting it, I began to think about these five topics. I began to visualize myself in a space where I was asked to talk about one of these five for 30 minutes. That's a whole lot of time. Could I actually do it?
So that inspired me to start a miniseries of blog posts within Maison Staples. Over the next five-ish weeks (or ten-ish), I'm going to go down this list and write a post about it. These five topics are, after all, things I can talk about at a bar — so why not talk about them in a blog? Each topic will get its own issue, and today, we're going to start with Jeep. So enjoy!
(And if this isn't your cup of tea and you want me to get back to architecture, just wait until I start writing about mass timber.)
Part One of Five: why are Jeeps are so unnecessarily unreliable vehicles?
I, unfortunately, know quite a bit about Jeeps. My first car was a classic: a 1986 XJ Cherokee (Pioneer Edition), in a beautiful, metallic bronze color. Around the same era, my mom's vehicle of choice was a 2013 JKU Rubicon (aptly named Rubi), top of the line at the time.
Both vehicles were wildly different in so many obvious ways. Mine was shorter, older, browner, slower, gas-guzzling-er, and American-er. Hers was taller, off-road-ier, newer, Fiat-ier and, somehow, more fuel-efficient. Yet they both had some unusual similarities between them.
They were both guffawed at by the enthusiasts, for one.
In its second generation — as it split away from the larger, grander Grand Wagoneer body type — the Cherokee was a "family" SUV. It was popular, absolutely, but was a clear turn away from the roughnecking, wilderness-exploring Jeep lineup that existed before the 80s. Meanwhile, the 2013 model my mom had was so big and so full of features, it too felt the same burn, just at the other end of the spectrum. The JK and JKU models picked up the "pavement princess" meme-ification (it's important to note (in case my mom reads this (hi mom)) that not all Jeeps of this generation were strictly treated to pavement.)
Second, both were disrespectfully unreliable vehicles.
I sometimes wonder if the "Jeep wave" is more of a show of sympathy than one of familiarity. As if to say, "Yep, I've been there. I know exactly how much money it has taken you to repair what you have and I'm sorry about it." My poor XJ was such a money pit, I wrote about it in 2019 as I was trying to sell it. The saga ended when I was handed a check for $20 as a tow truck showed up to my apartment to haul it to its final resting place: a junkyard. My mom's jeep wasn't haunted like mine was, but would like to throw a new sound or shake or vibration or rattle or leak or bolt every few thousand miles, just to keep things interesting.
We both had to develop rules for how to drive our vehicles.
For mine: "okay now as you come to a stop, you need to put it in neutral (it was an automatic) or the engine will die."
For her's: "you can only feel the rocking from the rear if you're driving between 40 and 50 mph, so speed up."
But the real quandary for both is: "why?" Why are both of these completely different models so much the same in the wrong ways? Why
Well, I have a theory.
Now it's important we pause here just so I can disclaim that I have absolutely no idea if this theory is accurate. It's subjective and it's based on my own experiences. Like any gin and tonic fueled rambling, I invite anyone who knows more about Jeeps to please, please call me on my bullshit. And if you write it down, I'll even update this post in the future with your take as an appendix.
Jeeps are unreliable because… they've struggled with their identity for decades.
See, in the beginning, Jeep was a vehicle literally made for war. When America got involved in WWII, there was a need for troops abroad to have transport that could carry them wherever they needed to go.
Jeeps were cheap to produce, highly modifiable, and shipped in a fucking crate. Their identity at the time was being a jack-of-all-trades military vehicle.
And as their production turned to a civilian audience after the war, they still held onto their military-backed heritage. They were true utility vehicles and could hold onto their roots as they were used for damn near every kind of off-road use.
But they just kept jumping from manufacturer to manufacturer. Willys was bought by Kaiser Motors. Kaiser was bought by AMC. AMC was bought by Chrysler (in 1987, which is important to remember in a few minutes). Chrysler was bought by Fiat (in 2014, also important). And in 2021, it was sucked up into the automotive vacuum that is Stellantis.
At each crossroad where the rights to Jeep were handed from one suit to another, the brand held onto less and less of what made it so iconic. They lost their identity because they were just tossed from boardroom to boardroom like a game of hot potato.
For the purpose of relevancy, there are two handovers that stick out to me. As you might have already guessed, the Chrysler acquisition in 1987 and the Fiat acquisition in 2014 line up pretty well with the model years both my mom and I own. And thus, the crux of why both my XJ and her JKU were so ungodly unreliable.
My Jeep, for example, had two keys. Now this in itself isn't uncommon for vehicles in the 1980s and earlier. One key would be able to open the doors, while the other would go in the ignition. However in my case, one key was branded with the Chrysler logo and one was branded with the AMC logo. Of course, neither were needed to open the doors to my car. In fact, you could use anything flat, thin, and stiff (a butter knife was a fun party trick), to turn the busted locks.
On a more practical level, the gripes of inconsistencies can go on and on: half of my vehicle's bolts were metric and the other half were imperial. The 2.5L four-cylinder engine was so weak and poor, I went through three. Parts that needed to be replaced weren't anywhere near where the vehicle's manual said they were. My theory is that, somewhere between AMC and Chrysler, papers were shuffled and notes were smudged and somehow nothing mattered.
Now, my mom's Jeep certainly didn't have the same issues as mine. But the pain felt of owning a vehicle whose model year falls in line with an acquisition was still the same. Take the "simple" maintenance task of replacing spark plugs, for instance. For my four-cylinder, replacing the spark plugs was always straightforward. But do you know what engine runs in a 2013 JKU Rubicon? A 3.6L Pentastar V6. For those that don't know, those words mean nothing. But to those that do, those words should be bleeped out on broadcast.
The Pentastar has its fair share of quirks (it drinks oil like Homer Simpson drinks Duff), but chief among them in my book is how one goes about changing the spark plugs. The first three, located on the passenger side of the engine, are (relatively) easy to get out as long as you have a long enough socket extension. But to replace the other three, YOU HAVE TO DISASSEMBLE THE TOP HALF OF THE CAR'S INTAKE MANIFOLD. ARE YOU KIDDING ME. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME.
Created by Chrysler, the engine has cemented itself as a catch-all in a wiiiiide variety of vehicles. And since its ownership exchange, it even found itself under the hood of some European brands. And this, in itself, isn't a bad thing. But you can't simply be a catch-all engine and produce the same level of performance in every vehicle you touch. And it's in my opinion that Jeeps actively reject the Pentastar with all it's quirks and features like a mismatched organ donation. It's the wrong engine for the wrong car and it's all Chrysler's and Fiat's fault.
Does any of this actually matter?
No, of course not. None of this matters. This wasn't written in order to explain reason or appeal to anyone's good senses or even to educate others. This is, at its core, me bitching.
HOWEVER! This is a topic that I believe I have truly proven I can talk at length about. It's a topic that I invite any and all to ask me about over a drink. You will regret asking me about it and we will get into an argument about it. But that's the spirit of the tweet.
For the next part in this miniseries, we'll make a return to conversations about architecture as I detail my utter love and fascination with mass timber. I'll see you all then.
© Joe Staples 2024