RoyJackson said:
Yep, I read it all. One person's opinion of a vehicle that was actually pretty popular. One person's opinion does not make a vehicle or design "bad".
Roy, it really boils down to this: The truck was a dog. I had friends that had them, they were dogs. It
did have redeeming qualities, but it was still poorly made and the quality of virtually all AMC vehicles was legendary....in a bad way. But Roy, I said that the American automakers generated a lot of ill will. That's pretty much a point of historical reference. My one opinion and yours has little bearing on that. The quality of American vehicles, particularly AMC and Dodge/Chrysler was at an all time nadir and did not improve until driven to do so by the imports. You can lapse nostalgic all you wish, but it won't change this fact.
To be fair, the early Cherokees did have teething problems in the first years of production.
Roy, the Cherokee had its teething problems in the late sixties and early 70's. By 76 this vehicle had been around plenty long enough to get past 'teething' problems. Now it sounds like you are just making excuses. And I'm not real sure why. We bought ours on the recommendation of a close friend who had a 72 that was a pretty good truck. His next one was a dog. His full sized Jeep pick-up was a dog. His next vehicle was an import. My best friend in med school had 2 Wagoneers. We spent our weekends working on them....constantly.
I personnally never cared much for Cherokees...too narrow and a bit tippy. But that design (of the Cherokee) has been around for a lot of years now with millions of satisfied customers.
With all due respect Roy, I'm starting to think you don't know what you are talking about. The Cherokee was a huge, very wide, low and very stable 4x4. You are clearly thinking about the later models, the small ones. I don't know anything about them but I've specified continuously that I'm talking about the 1970's. AMC. No little Cherokees in the 1970's. That started maybe about 82 or 83.
The only real dog from the 70's (that I recall) was when GM tried to make a diesel out of the 350 gas engine.
OMG. You have got to be kidding. You can only think of ONE dog from the 70's?!?! Roy, the 70's is the decade of the American junk car. As other have mentioned, anyone can rattle off a long list of not just bad but laughably bad cars from the 70's and early 80's. It's comedian material man. Where have you been?
N80, all I'm saying is your complaints about a given vehicle doesn't make the vehicle design junk or have created widespread ill will among the customer base. You're basing your critique upon 30 year old memories.
Hmmm. So my 30 year old memories are the source of the shame of the American automakers in the 70's. I'm pretty sure, at this point, that my 30 year old memories might be based in a little more reality than yours.
But relax Roy. I never even brought up any of this stuff. I simply said my otherwise good Ford truck had one element of undeniably bad ergonomic implementation. You'd have thought, from responses like yours, that I'd baked the flag in an apple pie and hit my mom in the face with it at a baseball game.
