Ford Bronco vs Jeep Cherokee

Unlike some SUVs that only look like they were designed to excel in the dirt, the 2025 Ford Bronco delivers the goods. It’s more comfortable on streets and highways than the Jeep Wrangler and it offers buyers a wide range of variants to choose from.

Verdict: Buyers would do well to consider carefully how they plan to use their car day in and day out before making the decision to buy a new Bronco. While the 2025 Bronco is an extremely fun beast that’s a blast to play with on-road and off, it requires some serious compromises to use as a daily driver, and it's hardly a bargain.

The KL-generation Cherokee launched as a 2014 model and almost immediately began swirling in controversy. Jeep hadn’t offered a Cherokee in the United States since the 2001 model year, when the XJ Cherokee disappeared, replaced by two generations of the Jeep Liberty.

There was great excitement for this all-new Jeep. Lots of fans were hoping for a redo of the 1984 to 2001 Jeep Cherokee that really helped to define the midsize SUV class with a unibody and legendary toughness. “The 2014 Cherokee feels planted on the road, more carlike than trucklike…” read an early review in Car and Driver. A separate review from the same publication read: “If you have eyes, you’ve noticed that this Cherokee, code-named KL, makes no design references, other than with the grille, to the iconic, rectilinear XJ Cherokee.”

But the automotive industry isn’t necessarily in the business of fueling nostalgia. It’s interested in what it can sell in great numbers in the future, not what people liked 30 years ago. And what we’ve realized over the years is that the Cherokee is really good at what it does, and it’s capable of doing a lot more than you’d expect.

Jeep sells these at a rate of 240,000 annually, in a good year. The best the Jeep Liberty it replaced ever managed was 166,883 units before dropping off the face of the Earth entirely. Clearly, Jeep knew something we didn’t when it released the Cherokee.