1993 Jeep Grand Cherokee Rewind Review: Tomorrow's SUV, Yesterday

It's been three decades since we first met the Jeep Grand Cherokee, and back then we had a strong suspicion we were looking at the future: a sport-ute with the off-road ability of a truck (for trucks is what most SUVs were) and the driving characteristics of a car.

Today we're face to face with another 1993 Jeep Grand Cherokee, an 8,700-mile original from Stellantis' heritage collection. We're here to find out if we were right. Was the ZJ of the 1990s the SUV of the future?

We are immediately struck by irony: Today's automakers try to make cars look like SUVs, but the Grand Cherokee is an SUV trying to look like a car. Although its hulking presence belies its diminutive size—today's Honda HR-V casts a bigger shadow—the Grand Cherokee looks like it's sucking in its gut to hide its mass. There's no spare tire hanging off the tailgate; it's hidden away in the cargo bay, where it eats up an unforgivably large chunk of space. Even the body-side cladding, today a staple of crossovers trying to look tougher than they really are, is applied as an optical trick to reduce the Grand Cherokee's visual mass. There is precious little chrome, and in fact few adornments at all. Like most great car designs, the ZJ's style is in its shape.

Opening the door reveals odd proportions: The lower half is short like a car door, while the window frame seems absurdly tall. We step up to get in, but unlike a modern SUV, we don't drop down again, because the floor is as flat as a sheet of plywood and not much thicker. The chunky center console topping the tall transmission tunnel reminds us just how tightly the Grand Cherokee is wrapped around its machinery.

We climb in, and the steering wheel seems to shove itself into our chest. Welcome to the first-ever SUV with a driver-side airbag—and no, we cannot move the wheel farther away, as it tilts but does not telescope. On this particular ZJ, a red light indicates an airbag malfunction. Good. These old-school bags packed one mother of a punch.

The dashboard is a collection of 1980s-style boxes arranged into a streamlined '90s motif. There's no garish plastiwood trim, though you could get some on the top-of-the-line Grand Wagoneer model. The gray and black plastic might look chintzy to modern eyes, but they're downright classy compared to the XJ Cherokee's materials. We look around: stick-thin windshield pillars and acres of glass. Is this an SUV or a terrarium? With no back-seat headrests, the cargo bay is very much a part of the cabin, with the big spare hulking in the corner like an uninvited guest.

We turn the key. The sneezing-cat sound of the Chrysler starter is familiar, but the muttering idle of the old AMC 4.0 is straight out of a time machine. We lean forward to grab the massive transmission shifter and pull it into drive, which engages with a lurch. We ease into the throttle, and the ZJ takes off with the coarse grumble that only a domestic straight-six can make, backed by the ghostly whine unique to American automatic transmissions.

We don't expect much, given 190 horsepower against the Grand Cherokee's 3,650-pound curb weight, but that's because we've grown used to high-revving, four-valve motors. Back in late '92, we timed the six-cylinder Grand Cherokee to 60 in 10.0 seconds, rapid enough by the standards of the day and, critically, slightly quicker than the archrival Ford Explorer. In the here and now, this old cam-in-block two-valver isn't shy with its 225 lb-ft of torque. It has as much mid-throttle boot as any modern-day turbo-four.

But the engine is noisy, and—oh, who are we kidding? It's downright crude, as if it were chosen not because it was the best option but because it was the only option. Which it probably was. The ZJ's foundational engineering was done by American Motors, years before Chrysler's 1987 takeover. AMC's shoestring finances dictated use of an engine that traced its roots to the 1964 Rambler American.

We pick up speed, bracing ourselves for the bounce and jiggle of a 1990s-era truck, but it never comes. The Grand Cherokee's ride is taut and responsive, firm but not hard. It's becoming obvious why our early-90s forebears at MotorTrend were so fond of this thing. The steering has a pleasant heft and surprisingly sharp response, the mile-wide on-center dead spot notwithstanding.

Under the glaring eyes of the ZJ's keepers and within the confines of Chrysler's Auburn Hills, Michigan, headquarters—a mall-like edifice gestated at the same time as the Grand Cherokee—we must maintain a veneer of prudence. Still, these are car guys, and no one's going to stop us from going a little faster. We goose the throttle and yank a little harder on the wheel, and the Grand Cherokee responds with a guttural roar from its engine and sharp, flat directional changes. We marvel as we remind ourselves that we're riding atop not one but two solid axles. What must it have been like for our contemporary test team, whipping through the slalom, crunching the numbers, and discovering this thing was 0.5 mph quicker than a contemporary Honda Accord wagon?

Carlike: It's an SUV cliché, yet here we are in the very SUV that originated the phrase. The sights and sounds date the ZJ, but we've driven modern-day car-based crossovers that feel soft and sloppy by comparison. When we contemplate that the Grand Cherokee will out-crawl them off-road, as well, we can practically feel the blood vessels bursting in our brain.

Let's drop the literary devices and talk straight: We expected this three-decade-old Jeep to contradict its age. We anticipated a streak of modernity, the beginning of an arc that led directly to today's best SUVs. The shocking realization for us is that the arc is not an arc but a fixed point in space. Thirty years ago, other SUVs drove like trucks, leading the industry to embark on a decades-long journey to make them feel like cars. Those that made it—and some still haven't—found the 1993 Jeep Grand Cherokee waiting for them, its engine at a grumbling idle. When we first met the ZJ, we had an inkling that we might be seeing the future. We had no idea how right we were.