When I first started in radio in the mid-Eighties, I became friends with a young news anchor about my age who commuted "around the horn" in one of these from his home in Connecticut to our little station on Long Island's south shore. And he hated it. He thought it too big, too slow, too thirsty, far from the hippest looking thing on the road and certainly something not befitting of an up-and-coming newsie to be seen in. He preferred his mother's 1980 Mercedes-Benz 380SL. So, understand, that kid was born with a proverbial silver spoon in his mouth whereas I was born with a moldy sweat sock in mine. Still, we were good friends, and I couldn't get enough of his stories, told in a disarming, very funny, self-effacing way about how wealthy his family was. He also said the reason his dad bought the big Jeep was because he needed something to tow the horses with that he could also use as a family vehicle. Tow. The. Horses with?
I loved that Jeep too. Not sure if it was because I actually liked it or because I construed it to be a trapping of the wealthy. Said trappings this poor old slob from the south shore's always found interesting. Probably a combination of the two. I mean, what do rich people spend their money on when they have more than they can spend in multiple lifetimes?
Our subject here is a 1989 Jeep Grand Wagoneer, my friends was a 1983 Jeep Wagoneer. Starting in 1984, AMC built a smaller vehicle they called "Wagoneer", but they kept building these and added "Grand" as a pre-fix starting in '84.
Three different manufacturers made these from 1963 through 1991. They were first built by Jeep Kaiser which was bought by American Motors in 1970. AMC was swallowed up by Chrysler in 1987 and they had little interest in AMC's cars; they were all about the "Jeep" moniker. Holy foresight, Lee Iacocca. Not sure it was all him making that decision but somebody at Chrysler in the late-Eighties had their eye on the ball.
Chrysler replaced these with the game changing "Grand Cherokee" in 1992. The Grand Cherokee helping to spur the SUV craze of the Nineties that also helped create the, at the time, crazy weird, "luxury SUV" market that today is so commonplace.
Ford launched their Lincoln Navigator in 1998 that did inexplicably well. GM answered with their first Escalade that was little more than a rebadged GMC Yukon in 2002. So, on paper at least, these brutes are the ancestors of every luxury SUV on the market today.
Our subject here popped on Facebook Marketplace with a $55,000 asking price. You guys sniffing the Grey Poupon again? NADA values these average retail around $25,000, high retail $40,000. I find that amazing but that's what these things are going for. I totally get what someone might see in these things and you're going to have to "pay" for one in this shape but 55G? This one has a branded title and the 118,000-miles on its thirty-three-year-old ticker is not the actual mileage. You've been warned! You're going to pay through the nose to reupholster these front buckets too. Who knows what else it needs.
Six month (later) update: it's still for sale at a dealership and the price has been reduced to a more palatable $28,000. Still too much in my opinion considering the branded the title. The mileage I can deal with but the branded title is a big no-no. There are no details in the ad why it is branded.
Jeep brought back the Wagoneer and Grand Wagoneer moniker recently festooning it to a gigantic (and homely as sin) SUV that doesn't have a shred of the charm these things have. Funny how I see young families in those $100,000 Grand Wagoneer's these days and wonder how they make the payments on them as opposed to looking at them as trappings of the wealthy.
That's the difference between old money, like my old friend's family has and the nouveau riche. Or folks wanting to be perceived as being wealthy. There's a subtlety there that today's super-expensive luxury makes and models simply don't convey. Through my foggy goggles, hipsters driving around in six-figure vehicles is just conspicuous consumption. "Look at me, I'm rich". Newsflash, kids. We don't care.
Back in the day, these were money, and the rich didn't buy them to make it seem they were wealthy either.
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