Jeep’s Original Grand Cherokee Tackled Country Roads and Country Clubs

For a long time, everyone just accepted that unless you were buying a Land Rover or G-Wagen, vehicles marketed for their off-road prowess were pretty bare-bones inside. That was definitely the case with products from U.S. automakers, at least through the 1980s. Broncos, Blazers, and Jeeps were basic, rugged, and compromised when it came to on-road manners—all to prioritize handling the unpredictability of the great outdoors.

That was true until April of 1992, when the Jeep Grand Cherokee turned up in dealer showrooms and put the mid-size SUV market on notice. Chrysler, and in some ways AMC, gave the U.S. a vehicle that was as at home on a washboard back road as it was cruising the suburbs. Designed with the well-to-do buyer in mind, the kind of person who didn’t want to risk their Mercedes in inclement weather but still wanted heated leather seats. To accomplish this monumental task, Chrysler consulted the plan that made the XJ-generation Cherokee such a success and improved on it. Thirty-two years later, that formula still yields the brand’s hottest seller.

Curiously, there was never meant to be a vehicle called “Grand Cherokee.” See, the existence of the Grand Cherokee hinged on a series of events that all had to happen at just the right time and in just the right order.

First things first, we need to talk about AMC. Because the Grand Cherokee doesn’t exist without that company.

AMC, like most automakers, struggled through the ’70s. Nothing it made seemed to appeal to the public, and by the end of the decade, company finances were in rough shape. AMC needed money, and a lot of it. The government deemed the outfit not big enough for a bailout, and to make matters worse, the banks also threw up their hands. Instead, AMC found a willing partner in Renault, exchanging shares in the company for a large amount of cash from the French automaker. Of course, it also helped that Renault wanted an in-road to the American market.

In a move to protect its investment, Renault made the brilliant engineer Francois Castaing Vice President of product engineering and development. And while this isn’t a historical survey of AMC’s tie-ups with Renault, it’s an important piece of the Grand Cherokee heritage. Castaing had a unique approach to vehicle development, which led to a successful and rather hasty release of a new, much smaller Cherokee.

The Cherokee won praise from professionals all over the industry and was a brilliant victory for the two companies. This wasn’t just an SUV body perched atop a repurposed truck frame: It was an innovative ground-up design, built using a unibody chassis, front and rear solid axles, and a four-link coil-sprung front end. Then, in 1985, as part of an attempt to stay in front of their competition from The Big Three, AMC started work on the Cheorkee’s successor, known internally as the XJC.

Work began in the summer of ‘85 when AMC contracted three designers to compete for the right to call the new Jeep their own. They put together an all-star cast of automotive artists. You had Larry Shinoda, Alan Clenet, and the king of the wedge, Giorgetto Giugiaro. Larry Shinoda would eventually be credited with the design of the ZJ Grand Cherokee, though AMC wouldn’t initially admit it.          

This is where the story gets a little murky. By the end of 1985, AMC abruptly told the designers to hit the road because the higher-ups wanted to handle the design with an in-house team. It was a strange move for AMC to contract some of the best designers in the industry only to send them on their way a few months later.

When Larry Shinoda was interviewed by Wards Auto in 1997, he ruminated on a few critical moments from his short stint with AMC. Aside from the fact that he penned the design that eventually morphed into the Grand Cherokee, he remembered the moment AMC told him his designs weren’t going to work and sent him on his way. By the time he went to his office to collect his work, he was shocked to find a team from AMC had already packed everything up and planned to digitize it. To make matters even worse, a friend inside AMC called and told him plans were nevertheless moving forward with his design. With little recourse because of his contract, he let the insult go. Shinoda eventually got credit, but not until 1998, a year after his death.

Despite the little Cherokee’s impressive sales numbers, both AMC and Renault were in a bad place in 1985, and Renault planned to rid itself of AMC. That was until a man named Georges Besse stepped in. Besse’s plan to turn things around unfortunately involved the closure of factories and the loss of twenty-one thousand jobs, but it did lead to profits for Renault. He was also a fan of Jeep, so the idea to unload AMC was cast aside, and he instead made sure they were well-funded. Unfortunately for Besse, on November 17th, 1986, he was assassinated.

With Besse gone, Renault decided to move forward with its original plan to unload AMC. Chrysler stepped in rather hastily and dropped $1.5 billion into Renault’s bank account in exchange for AMC. It was a lot of money for a failed company, but Lee Iacocca knew Chrysler needed something substantial to compete with Chevy and Ford, and that’s where Jeep came into the picture.

The Cherokee was exactly what Chrysler needed to take on Chevy and Ford in the rugged family hauler game. It was a leg up on the Blazer and Bronco II, because the Cherokee was offered with four doors, and with a successor already in the works, Chrysler seemed prepared for the future.   

Except Iacocca decided to delay the release of the new Jeep. Rather, he focused company efforts on the minivans and ensured the line was updated on time. Instead of a new Cherokee in 1989, the Concept 1 was presented to the public at the North American International Auto Show. Though not identical to the production model, it was a close enough rendition to give the public a solid idea of what the new Cherokee would look like.

The delay gave Iacocca time to think. He took note of Jeep’s past product line and realized the new model didn’t have to be a replacement. The standard Cherokee could stay in production, and the new one could sell alongside it as the Grand Cherokee. (Think Wagoneer and Grand Wagoneer, or for a more relevant contemporary example, Caravan and Grand Caravan.)

The new Jeep’s official debut came on January 7th, 1992. On that day, if you looked out onto Jefferson Avenue, near Cobo Hall, one might have seen something very strange. A stunning red SUV with a familiar slotted grille, followed by a horde of police cars being driven toward a crowd of onlookers. Was this a low-speed police chase? No. It was Bob Lutz, with the Mayor of Detroit, Coleman Young, in the passenger seat. On they crawled up the steps of Cobo Hall, crashed through a massive window, and drove into the North American International Auto Show.

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This was how Chrysler’s “Band of Misfits” decided to introduce the world to the new Jeep Grand Cherokee, a grand display of destruction and chaos only a person like Lutz could pull off. Did this foreshadow what a smashing success the Grand Cherokee would be? Who knows, but it was cool.

The first-generation, or ZJ, Grand Cherokee ran from 1993 to 1998. As expected, the Grand was similar to the standard Cherokee in construction. A unibody SUV that sported front and rear solid axles, four doors, and (for some reason) a spare tire shoved inside the rear cargo area. The front end was held in place with what Jeep called “Quadralink,” which was marketing-speak for a four-link, coil-sprung suspension. At the rear, where you’d usually find a set of leaf springs, was another set of links and coils. They called this new suspension system Quadracoil, and together, it was a big part of what put the Grand a step above other SUVs of the era: It offered a unique combination of off-road capability with car-adjacent road manners.

The powertrain options helped set it apart, too. Even AMC’s tractor-esque 4.0-liter inline-six churned out an impressive 190 hp and 225 lb-ft of torque, more than enough to best its Ford Explorer competitor. But Chrysler wasn’t content with just a six-cylinder. No, this vehicle needed something more, something that really emphasized the “Grand” in Grand Cherokee. So, by the middle of ’93 the company’s 5.2-liter V-8 was added as an option. And that 225 hp and 285 lb-ft of torque (upped to 300 lb-ft in ‘95) meant a healthy tow rating of 6500 lbs. Nothing in its class came close, and even modern SUVs like 2025 Toyota 4Runner can’t beat it.

You had your choice of three trim levels from ‘93-95: The Base/SE, Laredo, and Limited. In ‘96 the Laredo took the place of the SE in the lineup. In ‘97, the TSi was slotted between the Laredo and the Limited, sold as a “sport” model. The name was a weird choice, as it was neither turbocharged nor intercooled. Regardless of trim, they all came with ABS and an industry-first driver’s side airbag, and for the first two years the SE and Laredo were offered with a manual transmission. There was a trio of transfer cases available, too. The NP231 Command-Trac, which was just your standard, everyday transfer case, 2wd/4wd-hi/4wd-lo. The NP242 Selec-Trac was similar to the 231 except it offered a full-time four-wheel drive option. Finally, there was the NP249, which was essentially an AWD system with a low-range option.

The base model was a minimalist’s dream. The seats, windows, and door locks were all manual. Cruise control? Nope, that’s the driver’s job. Cassette player? Not here, just a basic AM/FM unit. Everything you needed and nothing you didn’t.  But even at the most basic level, it still featured the futuristic Electronic Vehicle Information Center (EVIC)—a digital display tucked into the lower dash in front of the shifter that would alert the driver to anything that might be going wrong with their Jeep. It kept track of everything from the coolant temperature to an open door.

The Laredo kicked things up a notch, adding power windows and locks to the list of standard features. Big, comfy cloth seats replaced the vinyl, and a leather-wrapped steering wheel helped class things up a bit.

However, if you wanted to feel like you were sitting in a Barca lounger while behind the wheel, the Limited was the trim you wanted. It dripped with luxury—so much so that even the badges and accents looked like they’d been dipped in gold. The heated leather seats were so plush that old men in Cadillacs were jealous, and the Infinity sound system meant you stayed isolated from all the noises of the big city as you escaped to the mountains for the weekend.

All of this added up to an incredibly versatile vehicle. In 1993 the Grand managed to win Motor Trend’s Truck of the Year, Petersen’s 4×4 of the Year, and it landed on Car and Driver’s 10 Best list.

There were several stand-out trim levels along the way: In 1993, Jeep offered a Grand Wagoneer version of the Grand Cherokee. It was the swankiest available trim in the lineup, and a way to pay homage to the original FSJ Grand Wagoneer. To set it apart from the Cherokee, the Wagoneer’s sides were bathed in woodgrain vinyl and the front received a chrome grille. It also came standard with the 5.2 V-8 and full-time 4WD so you could match the fuel mileage of the original.

Jeep, which fancied itself a brand for the modern outdoorsman, wasn’t going to let Ford steal all the glory with their Eddie Bauer Explorer. So, in 1995, Jeep partnered with America’s oldest mail-order retailer, Orvis. The Orvis Edition Cherokees were based on the Limited package and sported a moss green paint job and unique two-tone tan and green leather seats with red piping. Designers and product planners stayed true to the outdoor theme and equipped the Orvis Editions with the Up Country suspension (a small factory lift) and tow hooks. The Orvis lasted through 1997.

The ultimate, most badass, most true-to-MOPAR Grand Cherokee came out in 1998: the 5.9 Limited. It was a simple idea: Take the second-biggest gas engine from the Ram trucks, put it in the Grand, slap on some functional hood vents, and bam, a killer performance SUV. And perform it did, hitting 60 mph from a start in 6.8 seconds and running the quarter-mile in 15.2—not especially fast by today’s standards but damn good for 1998, which made it among the very fastest SUVs in the world. And unlike the Cherokee SRT-8 from ‘06, the 5.9 Limited was still designed with the off-road traveler in mind. It even walked away with another Petersen’s Four-Wheel Drive Vehicle of the Year award.

ZJ fans even got an encore when Jeep showed the old Grand some love for its 25th anniversary at the 2017 Easter Jeep Safari in Moab, Utah. Jeep picked up a ‘93 Grand Cherokee Laredo from Craigslist, stretched it two inches, and added a lift, lockers, and a beautiful custom blue paint job complete with a ghosted wood look paint job down the side. They even stayed true to the ’90s with the interior and kept the look close to stock. It was called the Grand One Concept and stood as a true testament to the importance of the ZJ Grand Cherokee to the Jeep lineage.

Even though the Jeep rolled the last ZJ Grand Cherokee off the assembly line in 1998, they can still be seen roaming cities and suburbs around the country. That shouldn’t be too surprising, as Jeep managed to sell close to one and a half million examples. The Grand found a welcome home with the off-road enthusiast community, too. A large group of enthusiasts is dedicated to modifying and enjoying the Grand Cherokee, backed by a healthy aftermarket and active online forums. You can find them everywhere, from the undulated sandstone surfaces of Moab, Utah, all the way to the boulder-riddled Rubicon Trail.

While it might not be the quintessential Jeep like the Wrangler or the boxy, quirky XJ Cherokee, the ZJ Grand Cherokee’s impact on the brand, and the passionate following that ensued, guarantees its hallowed place among the Jeep faithful for years to come.