Jeep Commander...did I miss something?

["John W Rosa" <JohnRosa@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Umm....for a while now, I've noticed this cool-looking Jeep 
sitting pretty in the latest Missy Elliot music video... 
wondered if it was a blinged-up later, pre-Liberty Cherokee.

Now I happen on the Jeep website to find...it's the new 
'Commander'...and I use the term 'new' very lightly.

I thought AMC was the great recycler, but I'll be damned 
if this 'new' Commander isn't the spitting image of the XJ, 
given a facelift and renamed. Everywhere I look, I see 
Cherokee....not that there's anything wrong with that. But 
perhaps I'm just irked that they didn't call it what it 
plainly seems to be...a new incarnation of the Cherokee, not 
some 'new' model.

Am I treating it too superficially?? Sure, it's got 5 years 
more advancements in there... But that's a Cherokee, damn it,
and in the minds of the more-cash-than-sense public, there is
not enough stylistic difference from the 2001 XJ to warrant 
many folks from bothering to trade-up. They're gonna want the
style to scream 'all-new', not 'there's the Cherokee again'.
I happen to like the XJ, so the new look is fine by me...
but then, I ain't shopping for a new SUV... so my view means 
squat. The new-SUV shopper is gonna walk right past this thing,
thinking it's a 2001 XJ. I almost did.

John