KEY POINTS:
American four-wheel-drive specialist Jeep has set out to broaden its appeal in New Zealand with the Compass, its first "soft-road" model.
The addition broke cover in Auckland yesterday and is aimed at four-door rivals such as Toyota RAV4, Nissan X-Trail, Hyundai Tucson and Kia Sportage. It is loaded with bells and whistles and likely to be priced at about $43,000 when it goes on sale next week.
The Compass spearheads a raft of new models for New Zealand from the Chrysler Group this year, starting next month with the four-door version of the rough-and-tumble Wrangler.
The Compass features the signature seven-slot grille and round headlights but differs with its steeply raked windscreen. It will be available with a 2.4-litre four-cylinder petrol engine or a 2-litre four-cylinder Volkswagen turbodiesel. The petrol unit will be mated to either a five-speed manual gearbox or six-speed variable transmission. The diesel comes with a six-speed manual only.
The Compass has Jeep's new all-wheel-drive system, providing fulltime AWD but without a low-ratio gearbox. A switch on the dash allows the centre diff to be locked. Most rivals offer the same feature.
The name Compass is also a change for Jeep. The company usually has all-American handles: Wrangler as in cowboy and Cherokee as in Indian. Compass points to a new direction, it says.
Jeep itself, so one story goes, is a slurring combination of the original World War II model's designation GP, for general purpose. Another says it was nicknamed after a train built by General Motors in 1949 and called the GP. The trains became known as "geeps".
Another says it refers to the character Eugene the Jeep in the 1936 Popeye comic. Eugene the Jeep was dog-like and could walk through walls, climb trees and go anywhere it wanted. It is thought that soldiers in World War II were so impressed with the vehicle's versatility that they named it after the Popeye character.
But one US Army historian says that "jeep" was first commonly used during World War I (1914-1918) by US soldiers as a slang word for new recruits and unproved vehicles.
