Question: How reliable is Jeep Cherokee (01 - 08)?

Answer: Well, different parts of the car more prone to breaking than others.

For example the average cost of a trip to the garage for some kind of break down or failure is £434.96 is but that is only half the story.

The heating and cooling system has a 9.52% chance of failure. But if one of those 9.52% failures also damages the head gasket or if the water pump fails and shreds the cam belt, then suddenly you will also have an engine failure.

Engines break down in a sufficiently large way as to make a warranty claim viable 4.76% of the time.

So if your claim includes both the engine and cooling system, you can soon find that you are going to need make one of the larger, less common, warranty claims. Some larger or more serious break downs lead to Jeep Cherokee (01 - 08) garage bills and warranty payments hitting £2,288.84.

It’s the same story with the braking system and suspension. If the shock absorbers need replacing at the same time as the brake pipes or cable, and it’s not unrealistic to think they may both wear out at the same time, then the warranty repair and claim rates of 19.05% and 9.52% are irrelevant and you are going to get a big garage repair bill.

The other areas where compound failures through sheer bad luck can make a relatively reliable car seem like a nightmare on wheels is the fuel system leading to engine problems. 4.76% of fuel systems will fail in a typical sample of Jeep Cherokees, which combined with the engine figures above will again lead to a relatively rare but very expensive bill, and make the car look unfairly unreliable.

If you want to avoid being stressed by these compound failure bills, then we recommend keeping up a service and MOT schedule, plus we think you should take out break down cover and warranty insurance.

If you are looking to buy a 4 year old Jeep Grand Cherokee then you will find these Jeep warranty claim statistics very useful.

If your a car has an average repair time of over 2.14 hours then it is above market average and the car can be expected to be costly to run. The average repair time for an Jeep Grand Cherokee (05 - ) is 2.17 hours.

That labour time, combined with parts costs, gives the Jeep an average cost of repair of £334.79, which compares to the market average of £327.93.

Market-wide, air conditioning fails on an average of 4% of cars, where as the air conditioning failure rate on an Grand Cherokee is 7.84%.

Brakes and suspensions systems can be deemed to be strong and reliable if they fail less often than 9 times in a hundred, the Jeep Grand Cherokee from (05 - ) fails on around 7.84% of cars.

Cooling systems are prone to failure on most cars and so the industry average warranty claim rate is not surprisingly about 12.5%, and that puts the Jeep Grand Cherokee’s rate of in context.

Not until a car requires its owner to claim on a warranty for electrical systems more than 28% of the time should it be considered unreliable or problematic – the Grand Cherokee’s claim rate is 31.37%.

Engine re-build and re-conditioned replacements, let alone new engines, are a massive cost to owners and warranty companies, even though the failure rate is around 12% (which compares favourably to the electrical system above). So bear that in mind when considering that the Jeep Grand Cherokee (05 - ) aged over 3 years claim on their warranties for engine issues 11.76% of the time.

Fuel systems claims tend not to be too expensive when compared to the engine, or as difficult to diagnose as electrical issues, but should not be overlooked when considering the Jeep Grand Cherokee reliability as the average failure and claim rate is 11.3% on all cars (industry wide) and on the Jeep Grand Cherokee specifically it is 7.84%.

Steering issues are relatively uncommon, but they can be expensive to repair, so don’t overlook the Grand Cherokee’s 7.84% steering system warranty claim rate. Anything over 7% is considered above average or high.

The final really big bill can come from transmission failure or problems and any car with an above average failure rate of more than 8% should be treated with caution – the Jeep Grand Cherokee comes in at .

You can protect yourself against all these problems with an aftermarket Jeep warranty.

Jeep Grand Cherokee warranty cover is a big factor in deciding whether to buy these famously unreliable cars.

According to Warranty Expert, if you are buying a car over 3 years old you should consider a private warranty, otherwise the following reliability issues may hit your wallet hard:

Jeep Grand Cherokee (99 - 05) spend an average of 3.36 hours off the road when being repaired for warranty work.

Jeep Grand Cherokee (99 - 05) costs an average of £501.56 to repair. This is based on repairs covered by warranties, so that is actually a trade rate, and if you pay for privately because you do not have a valid warranty, you may pay more. Warranty claims on Jeep Grand Cherokees have been reported as high as £2,449.99

In terms of what is most likely to fail, looked at in percentages, the Steering system has a 12.80% chance of failure. The transmission is likely to fail 19.20% of the time, with the fuel system is unreliable 6.40% of the time too.

Engines need re-building or replacing in 4.00% of cars and the electronics fail 16.00% of the time. That is on top of over-heating issues which occur on 12.80% of cars.

The braking and suspension is not much better, with problems on 9.60% - 19.20% of Jeep Grand Cherokees from (99 - 05).

If you have a higher level of car specification that includes air conditioning, then you can expect bills for that too, as often as of the time.

In summary, we wouldn’t buy a used Jeep Grand Cherokee without taking out break down insurance and a warranty.

This data is based on warranty claims in the UK for cars with average mileage of 59,704.94 an average age of 6.