Merch & Blog:
All right what’s up guys my name is zach and last night i burned the roof of my mouth on bagel bites but more importantly today i am driving a 1995 jeep cherokee up front is a 4.0 liter inline six and down below is a four-speed automatic transmission now i am super excited to be driving this here cherokee for many reasons but this is a japanese domestic market
Jeep meaning it was originally sold in japan it lived its life there until about 2007 where it was re-imported back into the united states so this car has a very interesting story to tell and i’m excited to share that with you guys today but before we get on to anything else i have a website zachprado.com where you can buy stickers and other merch when it becomes
Available you can also submit your own vehicle to be reviewed by me through a quick and easy submission form you’d get a video just like this one and you could read my behind the scenes blog to see what i’m filming before it comes out on the channel so i want to quickly hop out and explain what those three little letters mean jdm while they stand for japanese
Domestic market so this jeep although it was built in the united states was actually built for the sole purpose of going to japan that’s why you’ll see clear indicators up at the front you have these weird little side markers and on the inside you’ll see a couple of labels that are written in japanese this was meant for someone in japan to buy it was never meant
For anyone in america to buy even though it was built there there’s often some confusion around the acronym of jdm i have a 2019 mazda 3 hatchback that was built in hiroshima japan however it was meant to come here everything is written in english it’s left hand drive and so even though that car was built in japan it is not jdm and even though this car wasn’t
Built in japan it is jdm because it was meant to go to japan and have a japanese owner there are things written in japanese in the vehicle and so that is why this is a very very special cherokee to film today so with that being said let’s get back to the engine it’s a 4 liter straight 6. this engine was actually originally designed by amc if you guys remember my
Mail jeep video i did from the 1970s that actually had the 3.8 liter which was then made a little bit bigger and put into these jeeps up through the 1990s and into the very early 2000s it is an incredibly incredibly reliable engine and although it only makes a modest 190 horsepower out of its six cylinders it’s just one of those engines where everything seemed
To work out properly for the manufacturer and they used it for years and years and years because of that reliability however it’s a very interesting part of this japanese domestic market jeep because over in japan they are taxed on displacement and so four liters of displacement you’re paying almost a thousand dollars a year just to have a vehicle with that big
Of an engine let alone other taxes that come with it so that’s part of the reason why this vehicle is so dang interesting like i said paired to it is an automatic transmission it’s shifting it’s doing fine it’s doing the job i don’t really have any complaints about it last but not least of course the cherokee is four-wheel drive we’ll talk about how to select
That a little bit later on with that out of the way let’s talk about the interior well in front of me i have a bunch of gauges on the left is my coolant temperature and fuel in the center i get my tachometer and speedometer and on the right i get my oil pressure and battery voltage all very nice features here in the cherokee down below the gauge cluster off to
The left i do have transmission settings so i can put the transmission into power or comfort which is very interesting mode and then of course windshield washers work the normal way however it’s actually for the rear wiper and not the front off to the right i have my fog lights on and off and defrost on and off for the rear as well which is really cool now the
Steering wheel is not the factory steering wheel however it does have the factory jeep centerpiece my good friend matt actually did that i think it looks great now one very interesting thing about the steering wheel area is actually the turn signal stock because it’s on the left side normally in every single japanese domestic market vehicle i’ve ever driven the
Turn signals are on the outside hand but this is actually off to the left i assume i don’t have hard evidence of it but i assume this is because chrysler didn’t want to re-engineer a whole new steering column so they took the american one and just put it over here off to the right of all that i do have my headlight switch and then on the door i have my power
Window options so this was a fairly loaded cherokee to be sent over to japan power windows very very nice and they have these little labels on them for left front right front left rear right rear and then of course lock and unlock and other things like that really really cool to see here in the cherokee moving back into the center we do have the radio now this
Is a japanese domestic radio so it only gets japanese radio frequencies which a few of our lower frequencies in the 80s do cross over with this radio but this radio goes a lot lower and doesn’t go as high as american ones very very interesting then i do have very basic climate controls temperature where to send it in fan speed off to the right very simple and i do
Get a single climate control vent down below that and the cigarette lighter off to the right moving on to the center console i have a cubby up front my shifter down below that very chunky very 90s from chrysler to be expected and off to the left i do have my four-wheel drive settings i have a little coin holder and the parking brake and then i have two cupholders
So we will do a big freaking bottle test here in the japanese domestic market cherokee and unfortunately the bottle won’t even fit into the upper lip of the cup holder so it is a full tried and true fail here for the 95 cherokee then i do get a center console and these seats are finished in this very 90s fabric i absolutely love them they’re very very comfortable
And i also think that they are presentable this is still where luxury cars more luxury oriented vehicles had nice nice cloth instead of just defaulting to leather so i really really like the appeal however speaking of seats we do have back seats so let’s go do a backseat review alright so in the back of the 1995 jeep cherokee from japan and pretty standard jeep
Stuff back here of course i do get an ashtray but the seats are pretty cushy headroom good knee room good however you should note that the headliner is removed so that might give me a little bit extra space however still knee room great comfy back seats i don’t really get any amenities back here but it’s a jeep what do you want i do get this nice jeep cherokee
Carpet which is a nice little touch and these seats do fold up however we’ll talk about that with the cargo space but overall my thoughts back here are it’s a jeep pretty cool let’s talk about the trunk and cargo space so before we talk about the trunk i can actually pull these seats up and i have some extra storage down here however something i want to show off
The owner matt showed me is that i do actually get a little tool kit now it says chrysler of course because it’s chrysler but also not sure what it says but it’s in japanese so if you didn’t believe me that this is a japanese domestic market vehicle here it is so i do get a little tool kit if i can unwrap it here pretty freaking cool drop forged steel doesn’t
Have any branding on it otherwise but i do get some tool kits here and that is chrysler specific but not only chrysler specific chrysler in japan specific which is really really cool i guarantee you haven’t seen one of these in quite a while if at all but that out of the way let’s close up this and come around back here i do have this little button here and this
Is the back storage area of the xj cherokee not really anything japan specific back here however you have tons and tons of space and really great visibility too something to be noted about the cherokee it’s very boxy but it has very few blind spots and that is very true back here with cargo space as well nothing to write home about however definitely very nice to
See now we got to talk about the looks and i love the look of the xj this is the xj generation of the cherokee people have come to know and love it so much and there aren’t too many things that give it away of being a non-american market vehicle i do get side markers up front which is kind of strange but other than that it looks pretty much like a jeep however
When you step inside obviously you notice that the steering wheel is on the wrong side of the vehicle now a lot of people even today use these jeeps as male carriers however this was not a mail carrier jeep this was just something that someone randomly owned in japan they wanted a jeep they ordered it and this is what they got i find that fascinating but let’s
Get on to my final thoughts what do i think driving a japanese domestic market jeep this is very very strange like i said in japan you get taxed the larger your engine displacement is and at four liters of displacement it just kicks you into that next bracket it’s almost 800 to register each year in japan because of that displacement but also it’s more than 13
Years old and so it gets taxed even more beyond that in japan vehicles over 13 years old get taxed more heavily because they want to put more modern cars on the road as safety features advance they want to give you an incentive to buy something new and so that’s why we find a lot of older cars in japan with super low mileage at auction or whatever it may be and
So that’s why in 2007 this was actually shipped back here to the us now that violates the 25-year import law here in america but since this was built in america it’s basically the equivalent of having an american passport and being an american citizen and it came back it could have come back at any time it could have came back in 1997 or even 1996 if it really
Wanted to and so those import laws don’t actually apply to american-built vehicles something very interesting so it jumped that law and actually came back in 2007 where it actually spent its days in california and then somehow randomly ended up in michigan last year and now it’s in illinois quite the wild ride for this little thing and that to me is why i wanted
To review it it’s just such an interesting story behind this jeep oh i wonder what this cherokee could tell me if cars could talk i want to shake the hand of the first owner who ordered it in japan i want to meet the guy that imported it to california because it’s just cool to me that this isn’t a jeep story this is a global story and those are my favorite kinds
Of cars to review i hope you guys enjoyed the video huge thank you to my good friend matt for letting me take out his japanese domestic market jeep cherokee this thing is really really cool and it was just nice to be back behind the wheel of an xj it’s been years since i’ve driven an xj and that is all thank you to matt but i hope you guys enjoyed the video don’t
Forget to rate the video comment on the video and subscribe if you really liked it take care guys bye
Transcribed from video
JDM 1995 Jeep Cherokee Review – Importing A Jeep From JAPAN! By Shooting Cars
