If you’re Fiat Chrysler, how do you tempt your sometimes ornery dealers to come to your biennial showcase in Las Vegas in August? Promising them a first glimpse at the long-promised 2018 Jeep Grand Wagoneer sounds like a good start.
Automotive News reports that’s exactly what FCA is doing. When U.S. Jeep store representatives show up at the dealership event in August, they’ll be the first folks outside FCA headquarters to lay their eyes on the upcoming Grand Wagoneer.
As we’ve reported in the past, the plan is to build the 2018 Grand Wagoneer on the upcoming, fully redesigned 2017 Grand Cherokee platform. Unlike the two-row Grand Cherokee, the Wagoneer will be a bigger, three-row affair, one that FCA boss Sergio Marchionne says will compete with Land Rover in the “upper luxury” region of the SUV market. If it comes to fruition, it’ll be the brand’s first three-row vehicle since the demise of the ill-fated Commander.
Of course, reviving the Grand Wagoneer name is a move fraught with nostalgia for the wood-paneled, stalwartly upright bruisers that still cruise the moneyed hamlets of Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, as seen above. With a body and most mechanicals essentially unchanged from 1963 to 1991, the full-size Jeep that eventually became the woody Grand Wagoneer had stylish staying power that’s really only rivaled by the equally ostentatious and retro Mercedes G-Class. Way back in 1977, when the platform was but a mere 15 years old, we found the less luxurious Cherokee Chief to be ultimately charming. We’ll have to wait until 2018 to see if Jeep can rekindle that magic in a thoroughly modern luxo-ute.
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