A deal between the government and Chrysler over Jeeps linked to deadly fires isn’t sitting well with many Jeep owners and auto safety advocates.
In early June, after a nearly three-year investigation, the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration recommended that Chrysler recall 2.7 million older Jeep SUVs because the fuel tanks could rupture, leak and cause fires in rear-end crashes.
But last week, after talks between outgoing Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne, the agency compromised, letting Chrysler limit the recall to about 1.5 million vehicles.
The agreement removed about 1.2 million Jeep Grand Cherokees, model years 1999 to 2004, from the recall, leaving some owners confused about the safety of their vehicles. Chrysler argued that those Jeeps have a different design than the ones it agreed to recall and are as safe as comparable models from other automakers.
The about-face has confused people like Els Sipkes, a photographer from near Charleston, S.C. Her 2000 Grand Cherokee isn’t being recalled, although the government initially said it should be.
She says that every time she stops quickly, she checks her rear-view mirror. “It’s in my mind that if a car crashes into the back of me, that I’ve got to be on my toes and I’ve got to get out,” she said.
Chrysler won’t comment on the recall, beyond the documents it filed with NHTSA outlining its case.
Sean Kane, a frequent critic of NHTSA who heads a safety research company in Massachusetts, said the number of vehicles cut from the Jeep recall is unusual. But the agency frequently negotiates the size of recalls with car companies, he said. For example, in the early 2000s, Ford negotiated a series of smaller recalls that held off a big one for vehicles with cruise control switches that caused fires, he said. But the company eventually recalled more than 10 million vehicles.
David Kelly, former NHTSA chief of staff and acting administrator under President George W. Bush, said Chrysler probably presented data justifying the smaller recall. “I am positive that the agency would never negotiate vehicles out of a recall if they felt they were unsafe,” he said.
Recall them all?
Yet critics say all the Jeeps should be recalled. And they question whether Chrysler’s solution of adding a trailer hitch as an extra buffer in the back is enough to prevent deadly fires.
Under the recall Chrysler will, free of charge, install hitches on any Grand Cherokees from 1993-1998 and Libertys from 2002-2007 that don’t already have them from the factory. About 65 percent of Jeeps from that era were sold without factory hitches, according to Ward’s Automotive. Chrysler will inspect those with hitches purchased elsewhere and replace them if they have sharp edges that could puncture the gas tank.
The 1999-2004 Grand Cherokees are part of a “customer service campaign.” Here, a Chrysler dealer will inspect a trailer hitch installed after the car was purchased and replace it if necessary. But Chrysler won’t install a hitch on any vehicle that doesn’t already have one.
Chrysler Group LLC, which is majority owned by Fiat SpA of Italy, hasn’t disclosed how much the recall could cost, although hitches sell for about $200 each on websites.
On June 3, the government sent Chrysler a 13-page letter requesting a recall of all 2.7 million Grand Cherokees and Libertys in question. The letter included detailed statistics on crashes involving fuel tank fires in SUVs from model years 1993 to 2007. The agency said the data showed the Jeeps were more prone to fuel tank fires than similar models. The Jeeps have gas tanks behind the rear axle, a design that was fairly common when they were built but isn’t used much anymore. NHTSA had evidence of 37 Jeep accidents that killed 51 people.
Chrysler argued that the vehicles were safe. The company said its data show the Jeeps are no more prone to fatal crashes than comparable vehicles such as the Ford Explorer, Chevrolet Blazer and
Toyota 4Runner. But it agreed to the smaller recall, it says, to improve the Jeeps‘ safety.
When asked about the government’s change of position, spokeswoman Karen Aldana said in an emailed statement that NHTSA let Chrysler remove the 1999-2004 Grand Cherokees from the recall because the design change made them safer than the older models. The agency’s full analysis will be published when the investigation is completed, she said.
But NHTSA knew about the change to the Grand Cherokee’s design long before it asked for the recall. Documents on NHTSA’s website examined by The Associated Press show that Chrysler detailed the change in a November 2010 letter to the agency.
The recall deal came after outgoing Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and NHTSA Administrator
David Strickland met with Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne on June 9, and it was sealed in a June 18 telephone call, a Transportation Department spokesman confirmed.
Clarence Ditlow, director of the Center for Auto Safety, an activist group founded by Ralph Nader, said those events show the deal was made by political appointees and not by engineers. Ditlow’s 2009 inquiry prompted NHTSA to investigate the Jeeps.
Ditlow is urging NHTSA to test the trailer hitches to see if they offer added safety. Ditlow said a hitch failed to protect 4-year-old Cassidy Jarmon of Cleburne, Texas, who died in a fire after her family’s 1993 Grand Cherokee was rear-ended by a car in 2006. The hitch punctured the gas tank, he said.
According to news reports, police estimated the Jeep was hit by a car traveling 52 mph.
NHTSA’s abrupt position change even worries people who own a Jeep with a trailer hitch.
Soham Vaishnav, a pediatrician from Chicago who uses a wheelchair, had a hitch installed by U-Haul on his 2004 Grand Cherokee. But he’s still not convinced it’s safe to carry his children, ages 1 and 4. So Vaishnav and his wife are thinking of buying a new car.
“There’s just not enough time after a fire starts,” he said.
Resale values hit by recall
Some owners also fear the controversy will hurt resale values.
“It kind of depreciates the car’s value because people would be wary of buying them,” said Charles Mangan, a recent college graduate from South Carolina who is moving to New York City. Mangan hopes to sell the 2004 Grand Cherokee he bought used four years ago. His SUV isn’t part of the recall, but he’s thinking of paying to get a trailer hitch installed.
Newer Grand Cherokees and Libertys aren’t as risky as the old ones. Chrysler moved the fuel tank in front of the axle in a 2005 redesign, which helped meet stricter government rear-crash safety requirements imposed that year. The change also brought easier back-seat access and more storage space. The Liberty’s tank was moved forward in the 2008 model year.
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There are times when you see your friend dating the absolute wrong person. You know it, they know it, and yet the relationship lingers, slowly causing you to think, maybe instead of hoping they break up, you should break up with your friend. Because it’s just too damn tiring to hear all the complaining.
This is the exact scenario I try to avoid when friends ask me if they should buy aJeep Wrangler. Man, I see the appeal. Driving a Jeep is like being 19 and free again – it’s the freedom to drive over curbs or right up onto the beach or straight up a set of stairs. It’s that same euphoria you had after leaving high school and realizing no one could tell you what to do anymore. At least, not until you got a job.
I want one myself. But my friends and I, we are not people of means. We can’t afford to have one car just forweekend fun, and one car to drive to work. We’re also getting a little old. So when my friends ask me about the Wrangler, I think about their kidneys and their spines getting sore after hours jostling down the freeway, and their empty wallets after filling up the gas tank. And I almost always push them in another direction.
But I just spent a week test-driving the newJeep Wrangler Sahara edition. There is no mistaking that this car is an off-roading Jeep, made with rock climbing and sand dunes in mind. But Jeep has also made this a gentler ride, more comfortable on the highway. Read on to see if the changes are enough to make it a car I’d put on my recommend list.
MSRP: $27,995
Price as tested: $35,360
Engine: 3.6 liter V6
Transmission: 5-speed automatic
Performance: 285 horsepower, 260 pound-feet of torque
Fuel economy: 17 city, 21 highway, 18 combined
Seating: 4
Cargo: 12.8 cubic feet
This is the one of the Jeepiest Jeeps on the market. Everything about its exterior shows this truck is made with purpose in mind.
The exterior hinges on the door show how easily the doors can be removed– which is useful when off roading so the driver can see rocks and other obstacles on the side of the car. The latches to the hood are on the outside. It comes with giant wheels – the size depends on which model you are driving, but the Sahara we tested came with 18-inch wheels with on- and off-road tires.
There is nothing trendy about this truck. Current fashion inSUVs is to make them smaller and more car-like, but the Jeep Wrangler is all truck. It looks similar to the first Wrangler, born in 1986. They have a similar grill, similar boxy stance, and same fenders that don’t quite reach the bumper. But the 1986 version came with optional square headlights, and the modern truck comes with just circular headlights.
If you loved the Wrangler at any point in its 27-year existence, there’s no reason you won’t love the looks of the current model.
Here is where the die-hard off-roading Jeep enthusiasts and I might part ways. The interior of the Sahara we tested was delightful. It came with soft brown leather seats, which made it feel as if you were a cowboy riding in a really comfy saddle. It came with all the creature comforts– navigation, a USB port inside a lockable arm rest so you can stow away your iPhone but still listen to music, heated seats, tire pressure monitoring, power windows, a leather wrapped steering wheel and a temperature and compass gauge.
Not exactly roughing it, I admit. But I am not someone who thinks you need to suffer in a bare bones off roader in order to feel like you’ve accomplished something. A little butt warmer on a cold day out in the forest could actually come in quite handy. A lot of off-roading enthusiasts would disagree.
Let’s face it, the Wrangler is pretty small. The two-door Sahara isn’t exactly family friendly (you’ll want to upgrade to the four-door Wrangler Unlimited if you plan on regularly carrying backseat passengers.) My kids didn’t mind popping the seat forward so they could climb in the back, but it took a bit of muscle. It wasn’t a job my 6-year-old could handle on his own.
As for cargo space, a couple of bags of groceries fit easily in the back. If you need more room than that, this isn’t exactly the vehicle for you.
Where do we start? Well, on the first day the Wrangler was at our house, I took the kids out to show them what it could do. But I quickly realized there wasn’t much I could show them, so we went to an industrial park and I drove over a bunch of those cement blocks that mark the end of a parking spot. That was fun, and easy, and did nothing at all to harm the Jeep.
But a couple of days later, the folks at Jeep let me plow the Sahara around their proving grounds in Chelsea, Mich. There is really nothing this little truck can’t do. We went up stairs. Up a 45-degree sand hill. We went crawled over rocks, drove through ditches, bounded around in fast circles in a sand pit. The Jeep acted as if it was no big thing.
Some folks might favor manual transmissions over automatic, but if you’re really going to go climbing around on rocks with this Jeep, I’d suggest taking the automatic. It makes taking slow downhills on rocks or sand very, very easy.
But the most important factor I was judging this Jeep on was its behavior on the highway and city roads. Was this a car I could recommend to friends? I came away thinking yes, I could. Although it still maintains some of that jumpy Jeep feel, the Sahara’s 18-inch wheels give it a nice, smooth feeling on the road. I never felt like I was fighting with the car on the highway, even when I was commuting home on a windy, rainy day.
The Jeep comes equipped with Chrysler U-Connect, which recently won AOL Auto’s Tech of the Year award. We loved the system because it doesn’t go too far in replacing buttons and knobs with flashy touch-screen controls, and responds well to voice commands. And the touch screen is fast, acting more like an iPad than a slow, clunky car map.
UConnect is a $495 option.
Well, it’s not great. Getting 21 mpg on the highway and 17 mpg in the city is something drivers never would have noticed back in the late 1990s, when gas was less than $2 a gallon. But now that it’s almost always over $3 and many times tops $4, those kind of mileage figures can hurt.
Especially if you plan to commute far in this vehicle. On the upside, though, off roading doesn’t take all that much gas. You could do a day on the Rubicon Trail and use less than a half tank of gas.
The Sahara is a nice Jeep, comfortable enough to make it a reasonable option for someone’s daily car. With just two doors, though, it’s not a great choice for families. That’d take moving to the Wrangler Unlimited Sahara, which starts at $31,295.
Still, given the amount of gas it uses, you’d really have to love this truck to make it your own. Another option– and one I’m considering for myself – is to put aside a couple thousand dollars and buy a used Jeep for weekend playing.
But if you really love the Wrangler, and have access to a good chiropractor, you won’t mind the occasional bounces down the highway.