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LIttle Cherokee v. Slumberland

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After my post a couple of weeks ago about the popularity of SUVs in the suburbs, I started thinking quite a bit about my dream sport-ute.

Apparently, that stuck fast in my head, because last night, I had a literal dream about a Jeep. This wasn’t just any Jeep, but a completely blacked-out 2010 SRT8 WK Grand Cherokee, perhaps the most ludicrous sleeper vehicle I could imagine. It was an awesome dream, and one that I’ll share, but first, a little historical context

When I was younger, the Grand Cherokee was a mom-Jeep. It was the Chrysler version of a Tahoe or Suburban, the ultimate kid-hauler and a Jeep in name alone.

However, my high-school buddy David Jones would change all of that. He was a dear friend who ended up as one of my fraternity brothers in college, and he was always one of my most trusted outlaw companions. Our penchant for mischief was the stuff of legends – we skateboarded together, we went to punk rock and heavy metal concerts together, we built potato guns and homemade explosives, we constantly talked cars, and we raced anything with four wheels and an engine.

David was the person who proved to me that a Grand Cherokee could be more than a glorified Jeep station wagon. His ’98 5.9L V8 ZJ Unlimited was an absolute beast. Except for an annoying intermittent oil leak, this thing was nigh indestructible. He was tearing up trails in ways that the guys in their brand-new Wrangler TJs couldn’t touch. Even though 245hp was on the low side for such a big engine, he absolutely smoked most import tuners off the line, and we even overtook an ambitious Bimmer at 100+ miles per hour on the interstate one night.

With that sort of flexibility and functionality, it is no wonder that the Grand Cherokee SRT8 – the most powerful Jeep ever built – would figure into this dream of mine.

I’m a pop culture junkie, and quite often I find myself living out my own version of a favorite book or film. Last night was a revision of last year’s love-it-or-hate-it Batman v. Superman. It’s hard for me to explain just how much I love Batman, but let’s suffice to say that I quite often dream that I am Bruce Wayne, so this dream came as no surprise.

During the open scene of the film, Bruce exits a helicopter in Superman’s home city of Metropolis and jumps into a Jeep Renegade to zip through the crumbling city in an attempt to save his Wayne Industries employees from a collapsing building.

A lot of critics panned various elements of the film, but I happened to love most of it. Strangely, my biggest complaint is that one scene. It was an egregious bit of product placement that frustrated me to no end. Why would Bruce Wayne, billionaire playboy and philanthropist, choose one of the smallest, weakest Jeeps ever built to go tearing through the collapsing Metropolis streets? My only rational answer is that it was disposable. He wouldn’t have been terribly sad if it was crushed under the wreckage of the Daily Planet.

Given my proclivity for power and my experiences with a truly tough Grand Cherokee of yore, it comes as no surprise that my version of Bruce Wayne was driving the Batmobile of Jeeps. Not only does it have enough power to make a Porsche Cayenne Turbo blush, but chewing up rubble is part of its job description.

Of course, given the creative license of dreams and the arsenal of gadgets for which Batman is famous, my Bat-Jeep was equipped with a front-mounted winch with built-in grappling hook launcher, bulletproof tires, a self-driving function, and miniature rockets to destroy any debris that got in my way. Now that is a Jeep truly worthy of Bruce Wayne.

-Trey Fennell


'89 Jeep Coco #91 Jaspe 




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