The Jeep Grand Cherokee is a Mid-size SUV produced by the Jeep

Jeep

Jeep is an automobile marque of Chrysler . The first Willys Jeeps were produced in 1941 with the first civilian models in 1945, making it the oldest off-road vehicle and sport utility vehicle brand. It inspired a number of other light utility vehicles, such as the Land Rover which is the second...

 division of Chrysler

Chrysler

Chrysler Group LLC is a multinational automaker headquartered in Auburn Hills, Michigan, USA. Chrysler was first organized as the Chrysler Corporation in 1925....

. While some other SUVs were manufactured with body on frame construction, the Jeep Grand Cherokee has always used a unibody chassis.
The Grand Cherokee's origins date back to 1983 when American Motors

American Motors

American Motors Corporation was an American automobile company formed by the 1954 merger of Nash-Kelvinator Corporation and Hudson Motor Car Company. At the time, it was the largest corporate merger in U.S. history.George W...

 (AMC) engineers were designing a successor to the smaller Jeep Cherokee (XJ)

Jeep Cherokee (XJ)

The Jeep Cherokee is a unibody compact SUV. It shared the name of the original full-size SJ model, but without a body-on-frame chassis, it set the stage for the modern SUV. Its innovative appearance and sales popularity spawned important imitators as other automakers began to notice that this...

. Three outside (non-AMC) designers—Larry Shinoda

Larry Shinoda

Lawrence Kiyoshi Shinoda was a noted automotive designer who was best known for his work on the Chevrolet Corvette and Ford Mustang....

, Adam Clenet, and Giorgetto Giugiaro

Giorgetto Giugiaro

Giorgetto Giugiaro is an Italian automobile designer responsible equally for a stable of supercars and several of the most popular everyday vehicles driven today...

—were under contract with AMC to create and build a clay model of the Cherokee replacement, then known as the "XJC" project.