Patriot vindicated
This is not a column about K.T. Keller, the great Chrysler patriot who may have lost the company while saving the country (or at least, saving the country a lot of cash).
This is about the Jeep Patriot.
The Patriot came out to much scoffing at various auto blogs. Critics were fairly merciless, and one which proclaims to be especially truthful simply ravaged the vehicle - and then brooked no criticism of its criticism. Without actually taking the Patriot offroad, many simply said it couldn’t possibly be any good off-road.
This is of course standard fare for Jeep followers. No new Jeep is ever worthy; the predecessors were always better (of course sometimes that’s true). But with the Patriot, people were already feeling as though Jeep was becoming less credible, thanks to the Compass.
You know the Compass. It was supposed to be a great rally car, something akin to the Subaru Impreza. Somewhere along the way it became an economy wagon. Typical DaimlerChrysler thinking seemed to prevail - corners that could be cut were cut. Corners that could not be cut were cut, too.
Following the Compass could have been good, if this was a different age and if the spirit of the Internet was a bit more reflective. Articles could have begun, “Unlike the Compass…”
They didn’t.
The Internet does not usually lend itself to careful thought and reflection; it’s more the ignorant leading the fanatical. Having an opinion, as one engineer who has many opinions put it, does not make one’s thoughts worthy.
There’s also a lot of groupthink, not just on the Internet, but in general. We all know that German cars are all superior, followed by Japanese, then Korean, and finally, at the bottom, ignoring the French and Italians, come the Americans. We all know that it doesn’t matter if we buy a car made entirely in Japan or Korea or Mexico; it won’t affect our jobs. And especially, we know that anything made by the New Chrysler is a piece of junk with a lousy interior, and anything made by Toyota is superior — ignoring any actual experiences within a Toyota and a Chrysler. That also had an impact. Chrysler’s on a downswing and people are happy to push them deeper into the grave. GM and Ford had their turns, too. Ford was reputedly on the verge of bankruptcy. So was GM. Indeed, I had a friend who insisted stockholders would sue if GM did not declare Chapter 11, because only then could they escape those horrid unions that insisted GM focus all their energies on big trucks.
Obviously, Ford and GM did not go under. Equally obviously, the unions had little if anything to do with GM’s product decisions - or for that matter Ford’s and Chrysler’s.
The point of all this is that the Jeep Patriot, when I drove it, wasn’t bad. It was, in fact, so much nicer than the Caliber that I was rather surprised by it. And when people actually took it off-road, they found that properly equipped Patriots were pretty respectable.
Imagine that.
Now, Patriot sales are rising, at a time when just about all other American cars larger than a Neon are falling. The Patriot is the bright light of the Belvidere factory.
Hopefully, some of those with opinions to spare will start to give the Patriot a second look - and maybe even try it out on the trail. It’s not a Wrangler Rubicon, but likewise, it’s not a Compass.
