S6E47 – The 2026 Jeep Cherokee | Ralph Gilles on Bold Design & Hybrid Innovation

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Welcome to the Total Car Score podcast,

bringing you the world of cars from inside the car.

And now your hosts, Carl Brower, Lauren Fix, and Javier Mota.

Well, here we are in New York.

Wellington, I think, what is the name of this place?

Domino Park.

Domino Park here in New York with Ralph Giles,

a legendary designer, in charge of another,

I mean, several legends, like the Jeep Cherokee

or the Jeep Brown in general, well,

thank you for having us here, Ralph, first of all.

Thank you, great to be here.

I mean, we're here to talk about the 2026 Jeep Cherokee,

but I always say, especially in this kind of car,

that I have so much history.

I love when you bring the old ones,

because then you can see where you're coming from.

So you were in your presentation,

you were talking about some of the inspiration

that you took from that, from this one in 1974, right?

Actually, 84, the one my father had.

He bought a 1984 Cherokee.

The original Cherokee was 74.

XJ, yeah, the original was older than that.

So the second gen, let's say.

And I loved it.

It was so different from what was out there,

and it was very capable.

We lived in Montreal, Canada, lots of snow.

So we really used it as a Jeep,

but also as a daily family vehicle,

and it was exactly that.

Yeah, and it seems to be like,

I don't know the perception

or like the way they set up.

Is that one bigger than the new one?

Like, it seems like it, right?

It depends.

The original ones were a little bit bigger.

The generation through the 80s and 90s

was more compact, actually.

This has much more space than those did.

Even though it may look compact on the outside,

it's far more efficient.

Well, that's the genius of engineering

and designing together, right?

Exactly, yeah.

So tell us about what are the key features

designed-wise in any way?

Well, we tried to make something,

let's say authentic and essential,

less over-styled, you know,

just kind of something that could be handsome

in anybody's driveway, let's say.

So number one, had to look good.

Be a Jeep in terms of the capabilities,

the approach and departure angles.

Those are like where we start with Jeep,

ground clearance, all that stuff.

And then the personality of the Jeep.

So from 20 feet away, you know it's a Jeep.

I know.

We kind of harken back a little bit

to the XJZ lamps, but in a modern way.

So fusing some modern touches

with a very authentic, clean look.

But the biggest thing for me was fixing the cargo issue.

The last generation had a somewhat compromised cargo.

Overall, we kind of maybe favored styling over space.

This time around, we fixed it.

This is about four and a half inches longer

than the last generation.

Most of that going to cargo.

A little bit to the rear seat, but mostly the cargo.

We stood up the windows vertically

in all directions, actually, to improve visibility,

but also, and we lowered the belt line.

So overall, which is one of the things I loved

about the XJ generation is you felt

like you were an atrium when you were inside.

You could really add this connection with the outside.

And then we maybe downplayed the tech a little bit.

Didn't want the big tablet in your way,

nothing between you and the environment outside.

Yeah, some brands are overdoing.

Exactly.

I'm not going to say which one.

You need to do your temperature.

You need to play with your nav.

And that's about it.

The rest is settings, which you do very quickly.

So you don't need to, you know,

most people use their phones for everything else, right?

Yeah, and it's pretty amazing how far we've gone.

Obviously, this is 50 years old

and it's cool that you have an actual map,

a physical paper map to navigate.

So it checks a lot of boxes.

I think we did a lot of homework this time around

on what this consumer wants.

And it's really a vehicle that has to do everything.

And most people that buy this segment,

it's the only car they have.

They don't have two cars.

They don't have...

Because it does every purpose, right?

Exactly.

So we really had to check all the boxes,

the emotional boxes, the capability

that comes with the name, right?

And then the rest was functional needs.

What about the materials?

Because I think that's a very interesting story too.

And like maybe not a lot of people pay attention to that,

but it's really important for Jim,

as a brand and for...

Yeah, we did it for ourselves.

Most customers will buy this vehicle

and never know that we've put so much effort

into the sustainability story, and that's okay.

And the ones that care, they'll do their homework

and they'll figure it out.

We may tout it a little bit in our commercials,

but it's not important that it's...

We're not going to market the whole vehicle on that.

It's more...

It's in our conscience, right?

And I owed it to my staff.

Our color materials team insisted on that,

put a lot of work behind it,

and they spent many years finding this material.

The problem is some of it

wouldn't pass our own testing.

So we had to really push our suppliers

to not give up, let's say.

So when we were able to find at least six or seven

different materials,

some of them most people don't even know is there.

You can't tell a difference.

That's the thing.

No, that's the great thing about it.

Which is cool.

It was long, and I could sleep a little bit better

at night knowing that we...

If this vehicle takes off

and sells in the volumes that we hope,

that's going to be a big impact

on sustainability.

Yeah, absolutely, yeah.

Because this is a global vehicle,

obviously a Jeep has become in the past 20, 25...

This century, basically,

a true global brand.

I remember when it was Inter Milan,

Spongebob, not anymore,

but that helped us push a lot.

So this car will sell everywhere.

And it will set the tone.

This should be one of our highest-volume vehicles,

and that'll set the tone for the others.

And if we win here,

then we know that it'll be a positive influence

on the rest of our portfolio,

even outside of the Jeep brand and to other brands.

Another important thing,

I think that to talk about is the team that signed it.

You were talking about really young people,

and that's really interesting.

We had also a lot of influencers here,

like a lot of my old-school traditional media friends

don't like that,

but that's where the world we live in today.

So that's why you bring the mean tour, I guess.

Exactly, to look at it,

who may not know the Jeep brand,

may not have had ever had a Jeep, right?

Some of our people we speak to that are our ages

have had lots of Jeeps in our lives,

they know about the brand.

And that's why we have this setup here,

is to kind of educate them a little bit on the past,

and we sold a lot,

almost 3 million of these things, right?

So a lot of them are still running around,

they're still in service today.

So there's this connection,

and I know this other thing about this generation,

they love authenticity,

they love some history.

They like to buy products that have

legend status in the way.

So we wanted to purposely connect ourselves to ourselves.

And I'm interested a little bit

because you guys do strategies as a whole,

there's a lot of things with a dash school,

for example, in Miami, that is,

and I always try to get you guys,

I mean like the important people in the industry,

to inspire people and this is a cool story

because you said like some of the team members

are 20, 20 years old,

I mean, there's an opportunity there,

so how can people get involved

or what can they do to get more into the industry?

Most all of my designers come from schools

where they had a student project

that was one of our brands in Jeep in particular.

And I get very inspired by that,

when I see someone put it in the extra effort

to do a project and if they win the competition,

let's say, I want to hire that person

because I know they have this passion in the brand

and a lot of them end up in our company

because they want to work for Jeep.

They could work a lot of places

and they choose to work there

and that passion does continue throughout their career

for the brand, so their family had a Jeep,

they personally love the brand

and they want to help us go to the next level.

So we've always empowered our younger designers

and I benefited from that when I was their age.

I was thrown into the deep end

of the design pool many times

and I want to give that same opportunity to...

Are there any particular ideas or details

that some of these young kids came up with you

and said, wow, like, we need to do that?

Even the headlamps and tail lamps came from...

We were going to do the U-shape thing

and it came from one of our designers

who loved the original headlights of the XJ

and said, how could we do it?

So it has that rectangular shape

but we don't need it to be rectangular anymore.

It's very small, the actual headlamps,

so the design helps remind of it,

but not literally, right?

So it's this fun kind of back and forth

between a little retro sprinkle

but with a very modern overall design, yes.

Well, it looks really cool,

but we have a blue one and a white one,

white, grayish, but you said you have more colors?

Oh yes, we are about to have some fun.

Lessons learned from Wrangler.

Langer is probably the most fun we have with colors.

We're bringing that game here.

We've had a long chat with our production team

and they're willing to play ball with us.

We're going to bring the heat with the colors.

Watch the spaces they say.

Excellent.

And you guys are busy because I heard in the presentation

also like four new models for Jeep in the next,

pretty much the end of the year, right?

Exactly, between now and even Christmas time.

Wow, thank you.

Well, that'll be a nice Christmas gift for some people.

Thank you very much.

Jeep brand deserves it.

Yeah, exactly.

Thank you very much for your time, your work,

and for inspiring the next generation.

I think that's probably the most important job.

Absolutely.

Thank you, my pleasure.

Thank you.

That's a wrap for this episode of the Total Car Score Podcast.

Want more expert takes on the hottest cars,

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S6E47 – The 2026 Jeep Cherokee | Ralph Gilles on Bold Design & Hybrid Innovation

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