rev up your engines, today I'm gonna talk about why not to buy jeep compass even
though they look cool now one has to admit that cool looking vehicles there's
no arguing that they got a nice look to know this particular one is a 2017 so
it's three years after Fiat has taken over Chrysler and as far as I'm
concerned that's three years into the Chiefs being made cheaper and cheaper
even though it's a smaller vehicle you can see the girls great stuff forty five
seventy five pounds they are not lightweight vehicles but if you look
under the hood so we got a little four-cylinder engine and you couple it
with an automatic transmission you gotta get that engine spinning
pretty fast rpm before it starts getting any decent acceleration you know
it's a small engine you can see down there there's not much working on you
gotta work on these things they're still pretty hard to work on they put it on
transversely and there's not that much working room now this isn't all wheel
drive vehicle as you can see when we go under
it's got drive going in the rear and drive going to the front wheels
what is you can also see yeah it's not that high above the ground so even
though it's a jeep four-wheel drive it's not really a serious off-road vehicle
it's not high up in the ground it's more of an SUV with four-wheel
drive as you can tell it's got front doors and back door so it's pretty much
an SUV style it has a kind of smallish below average room in the backseat and
it's got a trunk that's a smaller size the Toyota matrix my wife has got a
lot more space than this trunk and it's got a low luggage carrier on
the top but it's so small there really isn't all that much that you could hook
up there this is a high end video display navigation camera HID
headlights and leather seats a serious moonroof its superficially it
looks like a good vehicle but it's made by Fiat Chrysler
and there's where the problem lies if you want a long-term reliable SUV this
is not the vehicle for you customer lined the bottom invariably had problems
some bought them new and had problems from the get-go with electronics with
transmission failure right from brand new others bottom secondhand and saved a
whole bunch of money there's no arguing that I've seen people buy them when
ahead twenty five thousand miles on them and they pay well under 50% of the
original sticker price but there's a reason for that the quality just is not
there no even though this only is a four-cylinder engine it's still pretty
much a gas hog in town this car gets about eighteen to nineteen miles a
gallon because it's a V and that's four-wheel drive but at the same time it
doesn't have that great acceleration I've seen v6 engines that get better gas
mileage than this that have much more horsepower in let's face it the modern
jeeps are nothing like the old Willy's these things aren't gonna last forever
you might get a Toyota Matrix that about the size they might last you three four
hundred thousand miles easy these things you're lucky if you ever get anything
over a hundred thousand miles on them the compass says they were basically
made because they wanted to cash in on a jeep name and make a small SUV that they
can sell but that is such a cramped market with such great vehicles already
there a wise person they think twice before they plop their money down for
one of these things just understand for that price you're getting a lot lower
quality too, I mean if you want to get something you always wanted to have a
Jeep and you're driving four or five thousand miles a year hey you might last
a few years what the Fiat technology just put into
these things not known for a long life in the least these things as I said they
don't have the acceleration and this is the bigger engine this is the 2.4 they
make a 2 liter that's even slower and with all the weight that it's pulling
around with the 4x4 system it just is not a zippy vehicle to drive around and
at the same time it gets pretty crappy gas my
so you're really not getting the best of either world it isn't particularly fast
and it doesn't get good gas mileage and it kind of makes me wonder what their engineering
design was behind this thing other than just another one a Fiat cars idea of
well let's make something look you'd see if we can rush it out and sell it to
people now they are selling a reasonable amount the first ones that they made
they only sold 60,000 of them but 2018 they sold 160 thousand of them so
they're banking on a jeep name it's paid in back some dividends they're selling
them but really the quality isn't there if you're looking for a long term small
SUV that you can drive without having a lot of expensive repairs as they age and
believe me the transmission repairs on these things they're expensive and are
also common as the vehicles get older and when you look onto the hood you can
see little quality lock here's the top you can see that's all corroding
we'll go to the back look all these nuts and bolts are all rusted and corroded
and that's on a vehicle that only has 30,000 miles it could use better made
metal could have better coatings on it there's no arguing that it's a big
reason I'd never advised one of my customers to buy one of these if they
really value their money over time know when you're taking consideration of the
Italian designs and even actually Italian parts that they're starting
to using these Jeeps the quality is nothing like they were
back in the 50s or 60s or even the 70s as the saying goes what's in a name in
this case the name Jeep often works to sell things to people don't over 160
thousand of them last year it seems to be working let's say you bought a load
of 2018 four-wheel drive you're talking about $29,000 and if you are comparing
that to and all-wheel drive toyota rav4 the same year that things about $38,000
so this thing's almost ten thousand dollars cheaper than the Toyota and yes
is the cheaper made vehicle there's no arguing that which is one of the reasons
that they can sell them price matters a lot but if you're looking for a long
term reliability low cost of up keeping it maintaining it
I'd stay far away from this Jeep Compass because you really want to never judge a
book by its cover these things may look great but underneath those looks
look under the hood,
but if you look under the hood, so if you never want to miss another one of my new
car repair videos, remember to ring that Bell