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BattlePorQyaplakal.com · Bring a Trailer
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jeep1 min read·18 Oct 2026

A Lightly Tuned Jeep Cherokee. A Little Automotive Madness in Photos.

BattlePorQyaplakal.com · Bring a Trailer

This one was prompted, out of nowhere, by the thread about the new Silverado. Even though the Silverado has nothing to do with it :)

In the US, as everyone knows, custom car culture is a phenomenon of national scale. The setting, the history and the laws all encourage it. Countless directions, movements, celebrities, styles and so on. Among them, "restomods" — classic cars with modern running gear, to put it simply. One day I'll put together a proper collection of those, but today it's just one car. There will be 24 photos, courtesy of Bring a Trailer (BaT). You probably have to be a very brave person to drive THIS every day.

Although from the outside it's hard to suspect anything unusual.

2. Looks like an ordinary Jeep Cherokee. Well, maybe lifted a little, with a bit more chrome on the grille than usual. Nothing surprising about that either.1 / 31
3. The paint isn't factory either — but that's an everyday thing too.2 / 31
4. Beautiful. The long-lived SJ body was in production for nearly thirty years, from 1963 to 1991.3 / 31
5. Underneath, things look almost normal too. Coil springs, Dana axles.4 / 31
6. Although the frame isn't original — it's from Roadster Shop. Still nothing extraordinary here; this kind of hardware is not rare on the market, plenty of companies make them for all sorts of lift and suspension-conversion projects.5 / 31
7. Disc brakes all round, though — now that's more interesting.6 / 31
8. And the exhaust system hints that whatever's under the hood is unlikely to be original. Back then the factory engines were the 5.9- and 6.6-litre V8s. Serious enough, but not nearly as serious...7 / 31
9. ...as what's been installed under the hood of this particular example.8 / 31
10. Yes. That's a V10 from a Dodge Viper. And not a stock one either — it's been worked over by Prefix Performance Center. Nine litres of displacement, 825 hp and 1,015 Nm of torque.9 / 31
11. All of that is paired with a six-speed Tremec manual, an Atlas II transfer case and good old part-time 4WD. Yes — solid axles, selectable front drive and locking hubs on the front wheels.10 / 31
12.11 / 31
13. The tachometer reads to 8,000 rpm, the speedometer to 160 mph (about 257 km/h).12 / 31
14.13 / 31
15. With a low-range ratio in the transfer case of what might be as much as 5.00:1 and that monstrous torque, I'd say it'll do just fine off-road.14 / 31
16.15 / 31
17.16 / 31
18. Denim seat upholstery. Cute and practical.17 / 31
19. This marvel — of which only the Cherokee body remains, and even that was stripped to the last bolt and reassembled — was built by Vigilante of Johnson City, Texas, USA.18 / 31
20. Thanks to its distinctive shape, the front end of this Jeep generation earned the popular nickname 'Pig nose'. Basically, Piglet :)19 / 31
21. Otherwise the interior doesn't differ much from the original.20 / 31
22.21 / 31
23.22 / 31
24. That's it for now. They didn't spoil the beauty, and they created a monster :)) That's all for today.23 / 31
Quote (ripli, 17 Jun 2026, 15:56): "Is that little red thing on the doors a reflector?" Yes.24 / 31
Quote (strijj78, 17 Jun 2026, 15:46): "Oh come on, the only safety system on first- and second-generation Vipers was the Lord's Prayer. And people were fine." All the more so since the Viper, by its creators' own admission, started out as a reinterpretation of Carroll Shelby's Cobra. And that didn't even have the prayer.25 / 31
Judging by the markings on the levers, the transfer case can do some interesting things.26 / 31
Quote (Horizen8, 19 Jun 2026, 00:04): "A Cherokee indeed. First generation — SJ. A two-door, cheaper version of the Wagoneer in budget trims." Not necessarily two-door. There were four-door SJ Cherokees too. But broadly yes, the more budget-oriented model. What never existed was a two-door Wagoneer.27 / 31
Quote: "What never existed was a two-door Wagoneer." Or rather, they did exist, just not in this period. The car in this thread is mostly a 1978 model. The two-door Wagoneer was built only at the very beginning, roughly 1963–68, back in the Kaiser Jeep days. And very few were made. Then in 1974 the budget two-door Cherokee was introduced in the same body. ~1965 Wagoneer 2-door:28 / 31
Quote (Horizen8, 19 Jun 2026, 10:18): "I may be wrong, but from memory, in the first years of production only two-door SJ Cherokees were built, and the four-door was added to the range only a couple of years after production began." Yes, exactly. The Cherokee SJ was built from 1974, and the four-door was added in 1978. 1978 Jeep Cherokee S29 / 31
1978 Jeep Wagoneer 4×430 / 31
And here's the result. Yesterday this monster sold at the BaT auction for $315,000.31 / 31

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