Jeep Liberty

The Jeep Liberty is the replacement for the venerable Cherokee. Only in North America, in fact, is it called the Liberty. Elsewhere, it has carried the Cherokee badge from day one.

The real question is this: Is the jeep Liberty a worthy successor?

Given it was a clean-sheet design, the Jeep Liberty came to market with an independant front suspension and a new 3.7 V6 engine. While it was seen by many as the beginning of the end of Jeep's adherance to offroad capabilities as a main focus point, time has proven the Liberty to be a capable offroad performer right out of the box.

Add on the typical bits of armour, a small lift and some aggressive tires, and the Jeep Liberty will take you 98% of the places a Cherokee used to much more comfortably. It's trail rated like almost all other Jeeps, which ensures the Jeep Liberty can keep up when the trail gets rough and still places it miles ahead of other brands.

The Jeep Liberty is your typical small-ish SUV. Room for 5 adults, good storage space and lots of room when the rear seats are folded. Offering decent towing capabilities, the Liberty is a useful addition to the family - from towing a small trailer to moving kids around, the Liberty perfroms well. The V6 engine pumps out about 210 bhp, and when lightly loaded, the Liberty has enough grunt to keep up. Since the Liberty has been around a few years, there's also plenty of aftermarket support available now.
The Jeep Liberty is also the first mid-size sport-utility vehicle available with a diesel engine for sale in North America. The 2.8-liter CRD boasts three best-in-class stats: 295 lb-ft of torque (V8 territory); a driving range of roughly 500 miles(4-cyl territory); and towing capacity of 5,000 pounds (again, V8 territory). The engine produces 160 horsepower and gets an estimated fuel economy of 22 miles city and 27 miles highway. All that torque is available from 1800 RPMs, too, so towing or low-speed offroad performance is outstanding. While giving up some overall top-end power to the V6 engine, the 2.8 4-cyl diesel unit returns roughly 32% better fuel economy.

Jeep Liberty - the driving experience

Having driven both engines in the Liberty, it's safe to say either is a good choice.

It's no secret we're BIG fans of diesels here at AJT, so naturally, the Libby CRD was our favorite ride.

Offroad, the V6 Liberty was a very capable performer and had no problems with the mid-level trails we were on.

While we didn't get to take the CRD model offroad, thrashing it around town brought big grins to our faces. Thankfully, the Jeep Liberty comes equipped with traction control - good thng, too, because that much torque is an easy way to spin the rear tires on command.

Given the diesel is still a Liberty, we'd expect it to perform well offroad with that low speed power on tap. Mud bogging won't be it's thing, though.

Some folks have taken their Liberty and banished the front independant suspension, as is evidenced by the increasing number of solid-axle swaps we're seeing under Liberties these days.