Jeep Comanche - Design

Design

American Motors' Jeep designers based the Comanche MJ body, styling, engineering, and drivetrain on the Cherokee XJ, which had been introduced for the 1984 model year.

The Comanche featured monocoque (unibody) construction, an unusual form of truck design, somewhat similar to the Volkswagen Rabbit pickup and Dodge Rampage. The Comanche has a more conventional removable cargo box like conventional body/frame design trucks. The Rabbit and Rampage are technically coupe utilities, not trucks, since the cargo bed is an integral part of the body structure and not removeable.

AMC's Jeep engineering staff designed a rail "frame" structure to support the cargo box that was unitized with the front passenger section of a four door XJ Cherokee. The front doors of an XJ Two lengths were used; one for the 7-foot long-bed model, which appeared first in 1985, and a second, shorter version for the 6-foot cargo bed, which debuted for the 1987 model year. The "frame" structure (called a "Uniframe" by Jeep) was made up like unitized car body main supports -- from stamped sheet metal components spot welded together. For strength the rails were over 8 inches deep (top to bottom), much deeper than conventional mid size truck frames (1983 Jeep J-10 fulls size truck frame is 6.75 inches at the deepest point). This structure was pioneered by AMC for the 1971 "Cowboy" compact pickup prototype. Cowboy_pickup_truck

From 1985 to 1987, the Jeep Comanche grille had ten slots in a similar configuration to the 1984-1987 Cherokee XJ, while from 1988 to 1992, this configuration changed to eight slots to match with the SUV. A new "4x4" badge, similar to those found on the Cherokee and Wagoneer models, was affixed to the upper rear of the cargo box on all the four-wheel drive models.

After the Chrysler buyout of American Motors for $1.5 billion on March 9, 1987, designed to capture "the highly profitable Jeep vehicles ... and 1,400 additional dealers" the Jeep Comanche, like the similar Cherokee, received only minor changes. These were primarily to improve reliability and parts interchangeability with other Chrysler-built vehicles.