{"id":32201,"date":"2022-09-25T09:03:47","date_gmt":"2022-09-25T13:03:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/autosector.com\/?p=32201"},"modified":"2022-09-25T09:03:47","modified_gmt":"2022-09-25T13:03:47","slug":"junkyard-gem-1987-jeep-wagoneer-limited","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/?p=32201","title":{"rendered":"Junkyard Gem: 1987 Jeep Wagoneer Limited"},"content":{"rendered":"

The first Jeep Wagoneer<\/a> appeared on American streets all the way back in 1963, years before American Motors gobbled up the Kaiser Jeep<\/a> Corporation, and it remained a big, body-on-frame truck<\/a> all the way through 1983. For 1984, the old SJ-platform Wagoneer<\/a> became the\u00a0Grand<\/em> Wagoneer<\/a> and the Wagoneer<\/a> name became the top trim level for the brand-new unibody Jeep Cherokee<\/a>. Here’s one of those Cherokee-based Wagoneers, a snazzy faux-wood-siding-equipped ’87 Limited found in a Denver-area boneyard recently.<\/p>\n

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This was the most expensive member of the XJ Cherokee<\/a> family you could buy new in 1987, with an MSRP of $20,503 (or about $54,605 in inflation-adjusted 2022 dollars). The very cheapest Cherokee that year, with two doors and two driven wheels, started at just $10,949 (around $29,160 today).<\/p>\n

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The Wagoneer Limited had a luxurious interior by 1987 truck<\/a> standards, though we’d consider it intolerably cramped and noisy today.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Buyers of early Cherokees and Wagoneers often wanted<\/em> manual transmission in their trucks, which seems hard to believe now. A four-speed automatic was base equipment on the 1987 Wagoneer, so the original purchaser of this one went out of their way to get the three-pedal rig.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

As you can see by the angle of the engine’s dangle here, some junkyard shopper bought the transmission (and gearshift) before I arrived. It should have been the Peugeot-sourced five-speed, but there may have been a way to get the good old four-on-the-floor<\/a> in this truck. XJ<\/a> experts, please advise.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

That engine is the metric-designated version<\/a> of the early-1960s-vintage American Motors straight-six engine<\/a>, which you may remember from such golden 1970s hits as the Pacer<\/a> and Gremlin. The 4.0 proved to be the most beloved of all AMC engines, long-term, and stayed in production all the way through 2006 (when it powered Wranglers<\/a>).<\/p>\n

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This one was rated at 173 horsepower when new.<\/p>\n

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Chrysler<\/a> bought AMC in the spring of 1987 (mostly to get the valuable Jeep brand, with secondary motivation being to acquire all the expensive Renault<\/a> engineering that went into the Eagle Premier<\/a>). As such, this truck still shows AMC branding on the regulatory labels. It was a “49-state” high-altitude truck, so it’s likely it was originally sold in Colorado (or maybe Wyoming or Utah).<\/p>\n

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Looks like it did some traveling around the Centennial State during its life.<\/p>\n

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The final mileage figure was just a bit over 200,000 miles, which is good for a 1980s American Motors product.<\/p>\n

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Features such as power windows and air conditioning were still considered somewhat frivolous by many truck buyers in 1987, but that attitude would change soon enough.<\/p>\n\n

Leaner, meaner, thoroughly luxurious.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The first Jeep Wagoneer appeared on American streets all the way back in 1963, years before American Motors gobbled up the Kaiser Jeep Corporation, and it remained a big, body-on-frame truck all the way through 1983. For 1984, the old SJ-platform Wagoneer became the\u00a0Grand Wagoneer and the Wagoneer name became the top trim level for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32202,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-design-concepts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32201\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/32202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}