Gotta agree with Roundeye here. Bear with me, because I'm taking a trip down amnesia lane here, but it's all relevant.
5 hours north of Metro Detroit, or about 30 miles south of the Mackinac Bridge, is Cheboygan County. My family has 11 acres of property up there, all hardwood forest, in a trapezoid shape, the southeastern portion of which, in a beech stand, is our camping area. Now, when I say camping area, I refer to camping in it's purest sense. There is a circle of rocks around a firepit, and that's the only structure up there. You set up the tents, string up the tarps, find a tree if you have to go, haul your water in with blue plastic jugs... True, pure, Up North Michigan.
Back in the day, every summer vacation, we used to go on a family camping trip, for about two weeks. There would be fishing, and hiking, and trips to the historic landmarks, Fort Michilimackinac, Mackinac Island, Fort Wilkins in the U.P., Tahquamenon Falls, Ocqueoc Falls State Park... Cheap cheese curls, and Faygo Redpop. Hotdogs over the fire, and Kraft Mac and Cheese to go with it. Classic rock, and Motown whispering in on the radio. S'mores. As children, we were never bored, hell with Nintendo, air conditioning, or the old Commodore 64. We were perfectly content, with plenty to engage our imaginations, be it helping Dad cut firewood on a hot summer afternoon, or looking for frog-toads in the puddles on a rainy summer morning.
We made these treks, the summer vacations of my childhood, in an 83 Reliant, towing a rowboat. The old Chrysler K-Car never failed to get us down the two-track, a full mile off the pavement, to the property.
In 1994, a logging company came through, doing 'selected hardwood thinning'. We were offered a fantastic amount of money for them to harvest on our parcel, but my parents said no. My dad's reasoning was: how do you get to the 'selected hardwoods', without cutting down the trees in the way. Sure enough, the company clearcut all the parcels around ours. It looked like a war zone. And with all the heavy equipment on an unmaintained backwoods two-track, the road was completely, and irreprably destroyed. My father had gotten a new job, and did not have the vacation time that we were used to. We didn't go to the property that year, but vowed that we would next year.
Next year never came.
In 2001, right after I graduated high school. I decided to make a trip up to the property. All my happiest memories, times of my youth, before bills and insurance and jobs and all that crap that comes with 'growing up', were stored up there, and I was determined to get back to that happy place inside of me. I took my 84 Reliant north, with a trunk full of supplies, and my best friend at my side. Being a mile long two-track in the middle of the woods, the road was never great, but the Chrysler K-car had amazing backwoods prowress! I was doing well, right up until the point where I sunk it in the mud, and bottomed out in two feet of water. We spent the night in the car, and the next morning, after walking to the nearest farmhouse, a mere seven miles down the road, the tow truck came, tore off it's front bumper, and destroyed the rear end of my car before backing down the road to points unknown.
By the time I made it home, the back seat was dragging on the ground (when you have a body that's 95% rust, a rear-end collision does you no favors), and I knew that my hand-me down K-car had seen it's last days. I was so close to my property, and even though we walked to it, and raked it out, we weren't even able to camp the night (the trunk lid was smashed in, unopenable, and containing all our camping gear). I vowed that the first vehicle I bought would be able to get me back to my property!
I had set in mind a nice Dodge Dakota, but then I saw a 1997 Jeep Cherokee on the used car lot of Oakland Dodge. The salesman saw that I was interested, and while I was really liking this vehicle, he said that he had something special in the back that he wanted me to see. Out pulled this beautiful patriot blue 2000 Cherokee, power everything, clean as a whistle, and still under factory warranty with a mere 24,000 miles on the odometer. I fell in love with it instantly. It fit me like a glove, handled like a dream, and the financing was right in my price range. I took it up to my buddy's family's farmhouse in Charlevoix, and it tore up the backwoods like I was driving to the grocery store. The second off-road trip was, at long last, to the property. It was May, just after my birthday, the wet season, when the road is under two feet of water. No sweat. I put it in 4X4, gave it hell on the skinny pedal, and I was finally pulling into the parking place of my property, something no vehicle had done for the better part of a decade!
Generally speaking, you like the vehicle you're driving, but you don't expect to fall in love with it. This little Jeep was able to get me back to my happy place without batting an eye, practically sending me back through time to a time where the biggest concern of one's life was; do you want one or two Hershey squares on your s'more? It reopened a chapter of my life that had been closed for ten years. Since that time, it's taken me back there countless times. It's been on roads in the U.P. where the only tracks were from snowmobiles. It's been down to Texas and back, and a handful of times to Virginia to visit my aunt. It's been West to Grand Rapids, South to Monroe, East to Port Huron, and North to Newberry. It resurrected my late grandfather's shop in Ortonville where, one afternoon, giving it an oil change, I realized that I had, without even thinking about it, named it. It's taken me to every place I thought of going, and gained me countless friends on the trail, and at Jeeper meet-and-greets.
You can help your friends move. You can transport your mom's new dryer. You can fit exactly $287.00 worth of flowers and shrubs in it with the seat down. It holds an entire regiment of landscaping equipment, and still seats five! You can transport a drum kit, two electric guitars, a bass, AND four people, with all their bedding and clothes from Charlevoix to Madison Heights with surprising comfort and ease! There's room under the hood to practically stand in there next to the engine while you're wrenching on it! Not to mention that the 4.0 looks like an engine! Where I pop the hood on my mom's Sebring, and all I see is plastic, I open up the Jeep and see a valve cover, an intake manifold, a battery! You can do all it's fluid changes with a creeper and a crescent wrench. Parts are plentiful, and the whole blasted thing is built on common sense! If movement needs to happen between two points, then there's a big chunk of metal directly making that happen, no silly hydraulics, plastics, or computers!
In all, I suppose I have to answer your question with a question: why WOULDN'T you buy a Jeep?
