Originally Posted by
michelle227
I felt that the 3.7L was underpowered for the vehicle. It held speed OK but it took far longer getting UP TO speed than I would have liked. The lack of power seats was also surprising since I have grown accustomed to having them in almost everything I drive.
Really? I think the 3.7 is extremely underpowered in the Grand Cherokee (the one I want to buy is the 4.7L V8...though of course I'd like to go for the 6.1L, 425hp SRT8 model), but in the much lighter Liberty, I thought it was actually quite sporty. If you do end up getting one, I believe they offer a 4.0L that is a substantial improvement over the 3.7L. (Doesn't look like much of a difference in the displacement, but I hear it is quite nice.)
Originally Posted by
michelle227
For a few days, it wasn't a bad vehicle, but as equipped and lacking the power seats, I would not want to own one.
I have driven the Limited trim of the Liberty, and it has all of the things you missed, plus a 368-watt (or something like that) Infinity sound system with a 6.5" subwoofer. So, a better-equipped vehicle is out there!
I've long maintained that manufacturers' fleet departments should actually provide top-of-the-line trims for their rental fleets. (Based on the way rental companies' fleet programs work, since they basically get overflow from the manufacturers, they don't control which trim lines they get.) I'd never want to buy the base 2.4L Avenger or Sebring, as they feel cheaply made and are completely gutless. But when I drove the 3.5L Sebring Limited and the 3.5L Dodge Avenger R/T (with heated leather seats, a sunroof, those cool LED dome lights, and the Boston Acoustics sound system), I fell in love with the car and almost bought one. I think having rental cars be decked out would actually increase manufacturers' sales, since people would actually like the cars and might go down to a dealership to look at cars they otherwise wouldn't have considered.
However, things are changing. In the past, the American manufacturers (the Big Three) looked at rental cars both as a way to dump excess inventory and also to expose their product to the general public (again, I maintain putting the best-trimmed cars in rental fleets would have helped this!). But as the American manufacturers try to contain their costs by scaling back production and closing down factories and laying off workers, rental car companies are now having to buy cars outright and sell them. This means two things for the rental car customer: you're going to start to see more Japanese cars in rental fleets, since they tend to hold their value better, and you're going to start seeing a higher percentage of older cars (two to three years old) to brand-new to six-month-old cars. (I rarely used to get cars with over 15,000 miles, and now I often see 25,000 miles.) So, my point is becoming more and more moot...