<p>I compare the Patriot to the Cherokee (the old style Cherokee) in terms of looks. That squarish look, but a little smaller, a little lower to the ground. With a budget of about $15,000 we were able to get a Patriot with just under 20K miles (I think) and nice options including heated seats and an extended warranty.</p>
<p>I always think that when CC-ers post car threads you need to discuss budget right from the get-go. If you’re looking for something AWD/4WD, lower mileage, etc. but have a budget that is restricted (like ours was) then it doesn’t do any good to think about some of the higher priced cars!</p>
<p>The Jeep Patriot is actually more of a “car” SUV (think Escape, RAV4, Forester, CR-V) than a “truck” SUV like the Jeep Cherokee was and the Jeep Liberty is. The latter are made for more heavy duty off road use and have better towing capacity, but give up ride and handling and use more fuel. The Patriot is actually based on the same platform as the Mitsubishi Lancer, Dodge Caliber, and Jeep Compass. The Patriot has optional improved off-road capability (“Trail Rated”) with the Freedom Drive II option.</p>
<p>The Patriot and Compass will supposedly be discontinued soon and replaced by a Fiat-based model.</p>
Like I said in my post above - the Patriot has 2 different 4WD systems although they’re different than the Liberty’s. The Patriot’s offerings are ‘Freedom Drive I’ (standard) and ‘Freedom Drive II’ (optional). they both can be used as AWD.</p>
I rented a Compass and drove it all around the Northeast for a week and a half. I wasn’t impressed by the Compass.</p>
<p>I rented a Liberty for about a week once and wasn’t terribly impressed with it either. It had a very jouncy ride - and this is coming from someone who’s owned various SUVs a long time including a Jeep Cherokee that I really liked and 4 wheeled heavily in. </p>
<p>All I can say is Italian manufacturers have some issues with quality control.
From what I heard they were a major player in the delays of the 787.</p>
<p>As part of DaimlerChrysler, Chrysler tended to do poorly in reliability surveys, but appears to have improved since Fiat took a stake (initially 20%, now a majority).</p>
<p>Not a fan of either. If you can handle slightly older, I’d go with a late-2000s Grand Cherokee (Limited/Overland), an 04-06 BMW X5 3.0i, or a similar year Acura MDX. You can definitely find them in the sub-25K, even sub-20K with lots of options and mileage under 60K.</p>
<p>EDIT: I’d throw the VW Touareg in there as well.</p>
<p>More convenient tables of AALA percentages can be found here without having to laboriously fill in the form for each vehicle on the ABC News site:</p>