Out of curiosity, what do you mean by Jeep riding on their reputation?
Based on everything I've seen and heard, Jeep's reputation is for unreliable vehicles that are increasingly difficult to repair. This seems pretty on-brand for that reputation.
Based on everything I've seen and heard, Jeep's reputation is for unreliable vehicles that are increasingly difficult to repair. This seems pretty on-brand for that reputation.
These days, you're in one of two camps: Either you still believe (because you're ignorant or value the Jeep brand more than you value a reliable vehicle) or you've read the recent reviews and steer clear.
Jeep has been duking it out for the bottom of Consumer Reports ratings for a while now, yet they still seem to sell cars. As they continue to betray their loyal customer base though, I imagine this will change. I wish American car companies were better!
They “seem” to sell cars? Well, yes. The Wrangler and the Grand Cherokee are consistently near the top of list of most popular SUVs, year after year.
China buying the MG brand was entirely just for reputation - no connection at all.
Somewhere in the ballpark of a week ago there was a car show near where I walk my dog (some charity event). Overall not that interesting - there were a lot of flashy low riders with the crazy hydraulics and stuff - but there was also this really cool jeep truck-thing from sometime in the 1950's, a Jeep Forward Control[0]. They had pics of it when they first got it, absolute rusty mess! But goddamn, I'm not even a car guy and I was impressed. Labor of love.
Then my cousin has a more modern Jeep and lemme tell you: not great. I wonder what happened to that company? Garden variety enshittification, or is there an interesting story there?
What percentage of people shitting on some brand actually have owned that brand for many years? And also owned other brands for many years, to be able to compare reliability and have any sort of informed opinion on the topic?
Things like Consumer Reports are just small surveys of the opinion of random members of the population, what they think about the brand, there's no connection to any objective reality about how reliable they vehicles actually are.
In the past I've tried to find a single study that actually compares objective reliability of brands. It does not exist. If you Google for it, everything you will find will eventually, at the bottom of it all, link back to the same Consumer Reports study.
I've owned a 2018 Wrangler for 6 years now, I've put 75k miles on it, many thousands of miles in the most remote places in the country, where if it had issues it'd be a 30 mile hike to safety. It's never once let me down in any way. Never once had a major problem. That's all I care about.
If a manufacturer has been broadly considered as unreliable for the past 20-40 years (JK's came out in 2007, and I still heard some people talking about jeeps as being reliable in the TJ era, though I'd personally disagree), I think it's fair to say they have a reputation of being unreliable.