Grand Wagoneer, A Family Classic

larsd4 · June 2002

Just got my '88 GW fixed so it nearly gets into double figures mileage-wise. My two boys 4 and 8 fight over who gets to sit in the front middle seat. They've never seen a bench seat before. People stare at me as I drive through town, thinking I'm really smart or really dumb (can't tell). Americana at its finest. I feel like Ward Cleaver. Hope storing it winters will keep the rust away.

andys120 · June 2002

Mr_Shiftright · June 2002

yeah, really lars, no sense saving it. There's a lot of metal in that beast, it'll take a long, long time to rust away.

andre1969 · June 2002

...if it's something he wants to hold onto forever and keep, I don't see a problem with it. My uncle had a '76 Jeep pickup...Honcho, I think they called it. Same design as the Wagoneer. Rust got ahold of that thing really bad. They may be tough and rugged, but they'll turn into rustbuckets fast if you let 'em.

Mr_Shiftright · June 2002

You mean like a hobby...yeah, sure I can see that.

andys120 · June 2002

from that standpoint they're lousy winter vehicles. I always thought of the as Cadillacs. for the horsey set.

The GMC/Chevy Suburban replaced it in that role.
Although I live next to a horse farm I haven't seen any Escalades.

corsicachevy · June 2002

Lars - definitely put that thing away in the winter. After a few years of salt, ice and snow the only thing remaining will be a pile of brownish, powdery residue and an apology note from Mother Nature.

Preserve that thing - it is a precious and non-renewable commodity.

andre1969 · June 2002

...on my uncle's Honcho was so rusty, that he just pulled the whole thing off and built a new one out of wood! The front-end clip and the cab weren't too bad though, except someone had put trailer mirrors on it at one time, and it had rust holes where the mirror used to mount.

opera_house_wk · July 2002

I think their only saving grace is that most of them will get crushed and the remaining ones will achieve an oddity status. One of the ugliest vehicles ever built. And they must have the imitation wood on the side!

jrosasmc · July 2002

Just like the full-size station wagons from GM and Ford; most of them will also get crushed, right?

speedshift · July 2002

I thought only Disney made Family Classics.

opera_house_wk · July 2002

Save a few for a museum and a documentary film, "When Designers Go Bad." The Grand Wagoneer is more meretricious than many others.

andre1969 · July 2002

I like their simple, sturdy, rugged look.

http://www.usedwillysparts.com/images/Brochure/30wagoneer.jpg

Far cry from the pansy-mobile SUV's that get pushed on us nowadays :-P

I'll admit some of 'em were a bit contrived though. The early ones looked like they tried to graft a Jaguar front-end on there, and some of the later ones looked to the coffin-nose Matador for inspiration.

Mr_Shiftright · July 2002

It seems people always had a love/hate thing with these vehicles, and you can see the same thing here with the posts we've seen. They did not enjoy a very good reputation, and as a consequence today are not worth very much, but they were sort of a pioneer in the luxury SUV idea--unfortunately not as well executed as the Range Rover which, for a time, took control of the high end SUV market. Probably the awkward styling and the rather obsolete technology kept the Grand Wagoneer from ever gaining much respect.

I think of them more as rather oddball time capsules than "classic", since true classics are supposed to embody a trend-setting excitement (for their time) , styling advances and engineering superiority. Applying those criteria to a Grand Wagoneer would be a stretch for the true blue auto historian.

We in the old car biz have a term for inexpensive old cars that aren't destined to be collectible but are lovable to their owners...we call them "ice cream cars", meaning that's what you take the kids in on Sundays for a treat.

jrosasmc · July 2002

So the Grand Wagoneer was never really that well-executed, in terms of quality?

Mr_Shiftright · July 2002

Well you have to look at the Grand Wagoneer in relation to the times in which it was built (1980s). No American car was striving for quality at that time. It was a real low point in American auto manufacturing, so I don't think you can single out Jeep alone for shabby assembly or multiple defects.

It was just a bad time all around for domestic cars.

andre1969 · July 2002

...the Wagoneer by the '80's was in roughly the same spot as the Dart/Valiant in the '70's, or the Chrysler M-body by the '80's. It was designed in a totally different time, and things had changed a lot since then. However, not all of that change was for the better, so in some respects it was a draw.

For instance, by the '80's, I think the AMC 360 was the only engine still available. These things were tough. Not exactly fuel efficient, and probably down to pathetic hp ratings toward the end, but they'd keep going long after your typical Ford or Chevy smallblock bit the dust. Also, I'd imagine most of 'em had Chrysler torqueflite trannies.

On the downside, AMC really didn't have a lot of money, so these things were probably slapped together as quickly and cheaply as possible. They'd start squeaking and rattling and rusting before their Chevy and Ford counterparts, but those latter two would catch up pretty quickly!

Also, that crudeness and outdatedness tends to pay off with age, as technology breaks and fails, and becomes cost-prohibitive with time. And that thinner sheetmetal and other components, originally designed to inflate the EPA ratings by one or two MPG, suddenly works against long life, as things rust, crack, and break more quickly.

BTW, didn't they start building whatever became the Grand Wagoneer around 1964?

jrosasmc · July 2002

The Grand Wagoneer was first introduced in 1963 as just simply Wagoneer.

Mr_Shiftright · July 2002

I think Grand Wagoneer appears in 1984, which is the model the original poster owns.

jsylvester · July 2002

I don't know if you can say the Wagoneer was that bad, take a look at AMC's automobile line for 1976 - sad to say the Pacer was one of their better products.

http://www.usedwillysparts.com/images/Brochure/5amc.jpg

ghulet · July 2002

Can you say 'ugly, uglier, ugliest and even uglier than that'?

My aunt had a '75 or '76 Hornet sedan, in lovely baby blue with matching plaid interior. Before that, I think she had several Ramblers, so she was a loyal customer. Ultimately, I think AMC was killed due to their ugliness more than anything. I don't think they were particularly bad cars in their era, considering the competition. I know they had durable engines.

Check this out:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1842044043

Please tell me that interior belongs in a vehicle that probably cost $25-30k in 1989. It has the a/c vents mounted under the dash, a la 1960.

andre1969 · July 2002

...check out the door handles on the thing! I thought those types of handles were outlawed, oh, around 1968? My DeSoto has handles like that. Real convenient, actually. Just push the handle down to lock the door when you get in, pull it up and back when you want to get out, unlocking and opening the door at the same time. Even more fun during an accident, when, in an effort to brace themselves, the occupants grab for the first thing they can out of instinct, which is often that handle! I've also heard that those types of handles and small children are not a winning combination.

On the plus side, those seats look oh-so-comfortable, and I think they blend the leather, vinyl, and cloth very well, although the carpet all the way up the seatback is a bit much.

I remember my uncle's '76 Honcho had four round gauges in the dash, much as an intermediate Pontiac back in the early-mid '60's (or an '80's Parisienne, for that matter!) I thought it looked kinda cool, but I don't really care for the "cookie-cutter" square gauges in that '89.

Another thing that always annoyed me about these was the vast expanse of emptiness on the passenger side. The glove box is centrally-mounted, but then where it would normally be, is nothing but a blank area of crash padding. On my uncle's truck, there was nothing in the dash behind it, just wasted space. Maybe on models with a/c though, there might be something up in there?

Grand Wagoneer, A Family Classic

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