Family Reputations Can Be A Handicap: The 2019 Jeep Compass Limited High Altitude 4X4

2019 Jeep Compass Limited High Altitude 4X4.

You may have noticed that I don't rip cars to shreds in these reviews---that generally, I find the upside to most of the vehicles I drive.

The biggest reason for that goes back to when I was 14, growing up in Bishop, on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada mountain range in Central California. The local Ford dealer was a family friend, and I was a teenage car freak who would ride my bike out to the dealership near the edge of town once a week to see what new stuff had come in. Not old enough to drive, but full of opinions about what was cool and what was not, I was spouting off one day about what I thought were the inadequacies of a new car on the lot.

Jim Ellis put a fatherly hand on my shoulder and said "Mike, there's a butt for every seat".

Better Late Than Never: The 2017 Jeep Compass Limited 4X4

The 2017 Jeep Compass Limited 4X4.

Nearly five years ago, our Publisher and Executive Editor wrote about the Jeep Compass, noting that it would be leaving the Jeep lineup after 2014.  It was true at the time, but Fiat Chrysler Automobiles changed plans, deciding it would be less than good business to not have an entrant in the rapidly-growing small SUV segment.  So, despite its shortcomings, the first-generation but heavily facelifted Compass soldiered on while a replacement was designed and engineered.

Now it's here---and it is exactly what the Compass should have been all along.

New Car Review: 2012 Jeep Compass Latitude 4X4




The 2012 Jeep Compass Latitude.

As that great poet, philosopher and automotive journalist Jim Morrison of the Doors once said, "Been down so G-----n long, looks like up to me."

Jim died 41 years ago, and he was never one during his four short years of stardom to sell his songs for ad campaigns, but in the case of the Jeep Compass, he just might have made an exception. For in six years on the market, the Compass has largely been reviled as cheap, crude and worst of all...not really a Jeep.