A lot of people went a little nuts when they heard the new KL Jeep Cherokee can't be lifted. Never mind the fact that most of those people don't own one and
aren't planning to buy one. It was apparently a principle thing—Jeeps should be liftable!
READ THIS: 2014 Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT
To prove the naysayers wrong, Jeep built a lifted 2014 Cherokee. One of six concepts showcased for the 2014 Moab Easter Jeep
Safari, the Cherokee Dakar sits a few inches higher than a stock model. It's a real thing, and I got to drive it this week in Utah. I learned
that the process of building it explains why you won't be seeing many lifted Cherokees anytime soon.
First, don't call this a lift kit. It's really an entirely new suspension. The car-based Cherokee has struts up front, and it isn't designed with
the camber adjustability that's required to compensate for a lift. (You can't, and wouldn't want to, lift a Dodge Dart or Chrysler 200.)
READ MORE: Last Year's Jeep Easter Safari Moab Concepts
The concept setup uses Fox coil-overs front and rear with one-off mounts (the shocks are off-the-shelf units, basically the ones that fit). There are new
custom halfshafts with U-joints at all four corners to accommodate the lift. And to clear the 33-inch tires Jeep put on, the Dakar concept's fenders were
cut and new, wider flares were added. That's a lot of parts and a lot of work to go through, and it's not the bolt-on solution that Jeep or Mopar would want to
sell you. Again, not a lift kit, but it results in a lifted Cherokee.
But yes, it's possible to lift a new Cherokee. As you'd expect, it cleared obstacles that would, at minimum, scrape the skid plates on a Cherokee
Trailhawk. And that was a good thing for me, because as I crawled the Dakar concept over jagged rocks, I asked the engineer riding shotgun how much the thing
was worth. "A couple hundred grand in parts," was his reply. So, not including man-hours for design or the build. I drove a little slower from then on.
FIRST DRIVE: 2014 Jeep Cherokee
A Cherokee Trailhawk can handle some respectable obstacles, with its main impediment being ground clearance. A lifted version solves that but becomes
prohibitively expensive. To anyone looking for a liftable Jeep: The Wrangler still exists. And it's more capable in stock form than a lifted Cherokee would
be, anyway. And it's cheaper. Plus, Mopar is adding a next-to-factory-installed 2-inch lift for the Wrangler.
Jeep acknowledges there won't be a very large market for lifted KLs, so it's probably not going to offer one. But at least we now know it's possible.
Oh, and expect the same non-liftability on the new Renegade.
READ THIS: So, what do we think of the 2014 Jeep Cherokee?
