It was one of those warm, bright spring afternoons that was so beautiful you kind of had to spend it outside washing your car for the first time in months.

But Jeep owners everywhere were on a different mission: collecting dirty, crusty mud all over their rides. I decided to join them, and try to discover what makes Jeep owners such a unique bunch, by driving the new Liberty CRD the way a Jeep owner would drive it. That meant spending Sunday afternoon getting my paint as plastered with muck as possible, going places that vehicles aren’t supposed to go, then showing off my soiled mess to the other Jeep guys and girls at the end of the day, where else, but in a Tim Horton’s parking lot.

Jeep fans from a different cloth than other kinds of enthusiasts. To a hardcore Jeep devotee, dirty is clean. I was only given nods of approval from other Jeep owners when my Liberty looked like a giant kid had finger-painted the whole thing with filth. After I washed it, one even said to me at a stoplight “Nice machine, how come it’s so clean?” with a suspicious tone in his voice.

Rivals include the Escape, X-trail, Rav4, CRV and Tucson to name a few. Serving its customers the Jeep way means the Liberty is fitted a locking center differential, giving drivers the ability to escape from snow banks and mud ruts with ease. Try such antics in a machine with mere All Wheel Drive, and you’ll be calling your favorite tow-truck driver in a hurry.

The Liberty has three selectable four-by-four modes ranging from part time to a full low range. Select Trac, it’s called. Operated by a floor mounted lever, when engaging your chosen four by four mode you can feel your choice being called up through the handle- not some wimpy blinking light. Very manly indeed. Unlike “soft roaders” with All Wheel Drive, you can reach down and engage 4-LO, then go climb your favorite ravine wall or dirt pile, while towing your boat and four other passengers. Pull the lever into “Four Part Time” and you’ve got an all purpose 4×4 mode for tearing through terrain all day long. It’s even got a full time 4×4 mode which works as an all wheel drive system.

By Chris Walton
Photography by Evan Klein
Truck Trend, May 2006

Through a series of improbable, seemingly impossible, and loosely planned circumstances, I found myself behind the wheel of a handbuilt million-dollar prototype Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT8. Without a single journalist mile on the odometer, I stabbed the throttle a few times to clear its throat, and the echoes sounded like an octet of pissed-off 200-pound Rottweilers. Mile-marker seven on the Pikes Peak Highway, or a nondescript telephone pole, is the unremarkable starting line of the infamous, sometimes deadly Pikes Peak International Hill Climb (PPIHC). From this vantage point, one can see a series of switchbacks cut into the mountainside eight miles up the road, 3000 feet above. The mountain seems to be saying, “You reckon, do you?” What have I gotten myself into?

Because everything happened so fast, I hadn’t fully researched the ramifications of agreeing to do this. Sure, I’d heard all the tales of how dangerous Pikes Peak is, seen the “Real Men Don’t Need Guardrails” T-shirts, and read about the Unser family’s legacy there. But now it was real: real big, real scary, and there would be real consequences for doing something wrong just once on any of the 156 turns. Postrun research revealed that since 1916, thousands of famous race drivers have made the 12.42-mile run up the 4720-foot ascent to the finish, literally in the clouds at over 14,000 feet. There’s even a record for pushing a peanut up the mountain with your nose. In a four-wheeled vehicle, though, Rod Millen has held the overall driving record since 1994 with a 10-minute, 4.06-second blast–eclipsing the prior mark by 40 seconds. Also, better drivers than me have wrecked there; three have died, as did an inattentive corner worker.

Did I mention I was seated in a prototype vehicle intended for glamorous advertising shoots and there were no fewer than 15 other people waiting to get their hands on the one and only SRT Grand Cherokee that existed at that time? Photographers, videographers, ad-agency observers, and a vehicle-prep team were all clamoring for my temporary loaner as I waited for my walkie-talkie to announce, “The highway is clear. Go, go, go!” Oh, and I had two very brave, back-seat passengers: the freelance writer of the SRT Adrenaline Tour magazine insert (Motor Trend, January 2006) and this story’s enthusiastic photographer.