Fail of the century #44: 2001 Jeep Cherokee

Jeep's 'XJ' Cherokee, built between 1984 and 2000, was one of America’s great automotive designs: a chisel-edged slab of practicality that arguably set the template for every SUV that followed. A shape as recognisable, as genre defining, as the 911 or Mini.

So when it came time, in the early Noughties, to replace the XJ, obviously Chrysler – fresh from tying the knot with sultry European paramour Mercedes – decided to do the sensible thing, and retain that iconic shape while overhauling the Cherokee’s underpinnings.

Only this was Chrysler, and this was the early Noughties, so obviously it didn’t do the sensible thing. For the ‘KJ’ generation Cherokee (called Liberty in the US, because to hell with badge allegiance) it did the exact opposite, binning everything beloved about the XJ and ushering in a new shape that was, to use a technical automotive design term, revolting.

Chrysler claimed the round headlights and ‘slot’ front grille mirrored the Willys Jeep of the Forties, which may have been true had the Willys in question spent the intervening six decades binge eating waffles.

Things were no better beneath that unpalatable skin. The KJ’s interior and engines were pensionable even at launch, while its lumpy ride quality made it near-impossible to tell whether you were driving on a Colorado boulder trail or marble smooth highway.

Somehow this lump of inadequacy was nominated for North American Truck of the Year in 2002. It didn’t win.