Kings of The Road

By John Greenwald

To understand what makes the descendants of the Jeep the hottest vehicles of the 1990s, consider this fact: one of Chrysler's biggest challenges four years ago was to design the Grand Cherokee so the CD player wouldn't skip when going over rocks.

That's because Ford Explorers or Chevy Blazers are not about exploration or blazing, or even about fat tires meeting bumpy terrain. They are about the possibility of it. "They suggest you could drive off-road if you wanted to, even if you never do," says Christopher Cedergren, senior vice president of AutoPacific, an automotive consulting firm. In other words, they perform the neat psychological function of persuading baby boomers that reaching middle age has not turned them into grownups. "They don't carry the same label of suburban domesticity as our vans do," says Chrysler vice president Bernard Robertson, general manager of the company's light truck and Jeep division. "We get letters all the time saying, 'I've got a Mercedes or BMW, but I always drive the Jeep."

That vanity trick has paid off for auto manufacturers, who are finding that these sports-utility vehicles, which typically cost between $20,000 and $30,000 and can come loaded with leather upholstery, cup holders and cellular phones, have replaced luxury cars like the Lexus as the baby boomer's favorite way to tool around the neighborhood. Detroit is rushing out increasingly pricey models, and foreign luxury-car makers are jumping in too. Just last week Chrysler confirmed plans for a large upscale sports vehicle that may sell for as much as $40,000 when the first one arrives by 1998. It will square off against a Mercedes-Benz model that the German company will build in Vance, Alabama, and plans to sell for as much as $60,000 when production begins in 1997. Not to be outdone, BMW roared into the market in February by paying $1.2 billion for an 80% stake in Britain's Rover, whose sports-utility vehicles include the $52,000 Range Rover County and the $29,000 Discovery; both arrived in the U.S. in April. (Rover expects to introduce a more luxurious version of the County in the U.S. early next year.)

Meanwhile, American companies are straining to keep up with the demand for existing vehicles. Sports-utility sales rose 16.5% in 1993 and have increased 18% so far this year. With those kinds of gains, Chrysler is adding a third shift to build Grand Cherokees around the clock at a Detroit plant this fall. Chrysler is also reopening a Missouri facility that it closed down four years ago and will now use to make Jeeps. For its part, Ford is converting a St. Louis plant that currently makes Aerostar vans to sports-utility production at a cost of nearly $600 million. And General Motors is juggling shifts at plants in four states to make room for a new Chevrolet Blazer this summer and new Chevy Tahoes and GMC Yukons in 1995.

The vehicles do different things for each of the sexes. While men revel in their swaggering, go-anywhere prowess, women like the high cabins that enable them to look out over traffic and feel secure. "Before, when I drove around town, I always had my hand on the horn because I was worried about my visibility to other drivers," says Jill Headstream, 41, a legal assistant in Austin, Texas, who traded in her Ford Probe for an Explorer in April. "I'm noticed now." Besides, says Headstream, Jeeps and their cousins have helped bolster the position of women in the road's ancient gender war. "For years men drove around in big cars and trucks and looked down at women, at their legs," she says. "Now I think a lot of women are enjoying riding around and looking down at the little men."

As for men, some report having had real adventures inside their sports- utility vehicles. Jim Banks, 42, who sells hair products in the San Francisco Bay Area, nearly ran over a mountain lion with his Toyota 4Runner while returning home from a camping trip at 3:30 one rainy morning. "I swerved to avoid it and hit a guard rail," he recalls.

With such safari fantasies within reach, few owners -- or manufacturers -- have given much thought to the low gas mileage that could limit the appeal of these cars during the next energy crunch. Jeep Grand Cherokees equipped with V-8 engines get only 14 m.p.g. in city driving, for example, compared with 20 m.p.g. for the comparably priced Chrysler Concorde sedan. But carmakers profess few worries. "In America gasoline prices are so cheap they're virtually irrelevant," says a Mercedes official. "And in Europe the high cost of gasoline doesn't play a role with those who can afford these vehicles." (In Japan, though, Toyota three weeks ago unveiled a compact-size four-wheel-drive vehicle called the RAV4 that gets about 30 m.p.g. and has a sticker price of about $14,000.)

For truly macho driving, there's always the Hummer from AM General. It can cost $60,000, it averages 12 m.p.g. for combined city and highway driving, and it performed flawlessly during the Gulf War.

With reporting by Edward W. Desmond/Tokyo, Joseph R. Szczesny/Detroit and Bruce van Voorst/Bonn