Jeep's Unlimited Hit

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The idea of a four-door Jeep was not new, but it was controversial. GM's Vice-Chairman Robert Lutz who was president of Chrysler in the mid-1990s, says he had pushed for a four-door but was overruled by the finance department, which was eyeballing an already solid profit return from the Toledo assembly line. They weren't interested in rocking the boat, even if it meant losing tens of thousands of loyal customers. Some owners at Camp Jeep clamored for a four-door "as long as it was a genuine Wrangler," says Jeep advanced engineering director Lou Rhodes. Others, he says, warned the Chrysler team not to mess with "their baby."

Chrysler was already struggling to interpret such impassioned and divided opinion when it came to new models in the design studio. Neither the Compass nor the Patriot, built off a passenger-car engineering platform, would be tough enough to traverse the Rubicon Trail, a benchmark for all Jeeps. Those two models are Jeep's first not to be "trail-rated," and many loyal Jeep owners were against building the vehicles. But Chrysler listened to those who said they wanted the smoother ride and better road handling of a crossover SUV under the Jeep brand. Chrysler designed the Commander in response to Jeep purists who had warned designers not to mess with the proportions of the Grand Cherokee by making it long enough to handle three rows of seats.

It's still early days for the Patriot and the Compass, but the lesson of the Commander has been painful. Rather than growing Jeep sales, almost every Commander sale came at the expense of the Grand Cherokee, according to data collected by Power Information Network. That means Chrysler hasn't made back the expense of developing, building, and marketing the Commander.

The "V8 Jeep"

The four-door Wrangler Unlimited, in contrast, is accounting for almost 70% of total Wrangler sales, while overall Wrangler sales are up a heady 84% through May from the same period a year ago. Chrysler's Metz says the majority of buyers are returning Jeep owners. Meantime, sales of the Hummer H3, the Wrangler's closest rival, are down 15% this year. "Even though it's a truck-based utility, a category that has steadily been losing ground to lighter crossovers, the Wrangler Unlimited's design has trumped everything else since it went on sale," says Tom Libby of PIN.

Jeep spokesman James Kenyon calls the Wrangler Unlimited, "our V8 Jeep." That doesn't refer to the engine, which is actually a V6. "It's like the old V8 juice commercial, when they slap themselves in the head for not thinking of having one sooner," says Kenyon.

David Kiley is a senior correspondent in BusinessWeek's Detroit bureau.