Safety
What better segue into the various safety systems offered, of which there are well-rounded ones – but they don’t come cheap. (Sensing a theme here?) Where brands like Honda, Toyota and Subaru are making their advanced safety suites standard, Jeep is sticking to its pay-for-peace-of-mind model. No Compass model comes with the safety group that includes adaptive cruise and automatic emergency braking; it adds $995 to the price. Ditto blind-spot monitoring, rain-sensing wipers and rear parking sensors, which together cost an additional $895.
The same applies to the Cherokee, though the $995 package that bulks most of it together also includes a self-parking system that works in both parallel and perpendicular spots.
The Cherokee earned a Top Safety Pick designation from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), while the Compass achieved the same crash-testing results but missed the mark due to poor headlight performance.
Compass: 8; Cherokee: 8
Value
A base Compass starts at a relatively reasonable $26,200 before freight and fees, but the sky’s the limit when it comes to price and it’s possible to spend more than $45,000 on a fully loaded version – and that’s before the government even gets its piece.
The tester here, a Compass Altitude with four-wheel drive, starts at $32,940 but features almost $5,600 in options, ringing in at $40,530 with freight and fees. The additional dollars cover everything from the blue paint to the black exterior accents (roof, wheels and badging, among others), as well as an advanced safety suite with adaptive cruise control, lane-keep assist and automatic emergency braking, an 8.4-inch touchscreen infotainment system with navigation and a Wi-Fi hotspot, blind-spot monitoring, and a power tailgate, among others.
That’s a good chunk of change, coming in only a few thousand bucks less than a loaded Ford Escape, with which the Compass competes.
Surprise, surprise: The larger Cherokee features a larger price tag. The entry-level version starts at $29,545, while a loaded one starts at about $12,000 more. The High Altitude tester here starts at $40,995, but $6,200 in options later it has a sticker price of $51,260 with freight and fees – no small sum.
Those options are slightly more impressive than the Compass’s, with the addition of a self-parking system to go with a tow package that includes improved engine cooling and that 2.0L turbo engine. Still, that’s a lot of money for a vehicle that competes with – surprise! – the Escape, among others.
Compass: 6; Cherokee: 6
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