Car Buying Advice: Buy A Jeep Grand Cherokee [September 11 Edition]

It’s been 10 years to the day since American’s aura of invincibility was irreparably pierced by four hijacked airplanes. We all know where we were when it happened. It was the defining moment for a generation of youth who’d never known the horrors of a “real” war like WWI, WWII, Korea, and Vietnam. But that morning, our innocence was snapped over Osama’s knee like a twig (or was it, my dear conspiracy theorists?). Since then, the US economy – already beaten down by dot-com 1.0’s burst bubble – briefly rose like a Phoenix from the literal ashes, before economically imploding and returning once more. And so here we are, 10 years on. No wiser. Just older.

If times were uncertain then, they’re unknowably uncertain now. The intervening decade has done little to mend the scars that were torn into the world’s psyche on that cool Fall morning. After September 11, the world renewed its right to fear outsiders starting with radical Islam, followed by our greedy bankers and, ironically, the governments who were forced to save us from said bankers. Everything from airport security to the completely coincidental increase in the sale of 100mL bottles have since created a peculiar kind of conformity as citizens of the world are treated increasingly like numbered sheep for “their own protection”. In 2001 we talked about the world at 6 billion people. Today, we’re too scared to even bring up the subject, lest we offend someone.

Technological progress and the relentless drive of scientific advance make this following statement blatantly obvious, but never before has the world changed so much in so little time. Never. And, as fortune would have it, we were alive to witness it. But before you run to the car dealership, blessing your lucky stars with wallet open and ready, you deserve some car buying advice.

Let’s say that you don’t care what size of hair gel you can take on the plane, you don’t care how many people live on the planet, and you’re more scared of snow drifts than the stock market. You’re more interested in soft leathers, off-roading, and seating for five. If somehow, someway, you actually exist, we suggest that instead of going to the Mercedes dealership to look at that new (German) ML350, you pay a visit to the Chrysler dealer to check out the (mostly German) Jeep Grand Cherokee first. Wait, since when does a Jeep qualify as “German”?

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