Classic 1975 Jeep Cherokee Rips with 880 HP Turbo Hemi Swap
A classic Jeep Cherokee may not be anyone’s first choice for autocross or drag racing, but this one is good at everything.
Theoretically speaking, if you wanted to build a wicked vehicle to tear up local autocross events in, you would probably go with a sports car or small, excellent-handling sedan or hatchback. One of the very last choices for such a vehicle would be a Jeep Cherokee, for obvious reasons. But the owner of this gorgeous and rather insane 1975 Jeep Cherokee – Greg – clearly wanted to do something a little bit different than the masses.
Hoonigan recently caught up with Greg and his crazy Cherokee at the Holley Moparfest in Bowling Green, Kentucky, where it grabbed their attention for somewhat obvious reasons. And in all fairness, even though it has a classic Jeep Cherokee body on the outside, it most certainly isn’t one underneath the skin. “I bought the body as a shell,” Greg explained. “Basically it’s a Jeep costume on a race car.” But oh, what a cool costume it is.
The Jeep body rolls on a highly modified Chevrolet C10 chassis that’s been shortened 17 inches and fitted with coilovers and all sorts of suspension mods. Then there’s the powertrain, which consists of a 5.7-liter Hemi V8 and six-speed transmission lifted from a 2010 Dodge Challenger. It’s been massively turbocharged with a compound setup consisting of an S480 over a single S366 bullseye billet wheel for crazy power potential.
Greg hasn’t even dyno’d the new combination yet, but with just the smaller S366, the old Cherokee put down 720 horsepower and 840 pound-feet of torque at the wheels, which is insane. And with a gentle launch to keep from breaking stuff, Greg managed to eclipse the quarter-mile in a smoking 9.90 seconds at 140 miles-per-hour.
Even better, the exterior of this old Cherokee looks awesome, too. The entire front end is a fiberglass piece that lifts off for easy maintenance, and Greg actually drives it a lot. In fact, he cruised over 500 miles to get to Moparfest, and called that trip “a breeze.” “With the six-speed in it, it just cruises down the highway no problem,” he said. “The turbos, when you’re cruising down the road, they’re not doing anything. So it’s essentially a stock 5.7 Hemi and it’ll get 20 miles to the gallon.”
Yes, it seems that this classic Jeep Cherokee can do just about anything well, whether that’s getting groceries, ripping up the drag strip, or tearing up the local autocross. And while it may not be the conventional choice for any of those activities (at least the last two), we applaud Greg for daring to do something totally different and uniquely awesome.
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