Jeep Grand Cherokee certified pre-owned warranty
Buying CPO plus an extended warranty might be your best bet

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Sure, the Wrangler is a cult classic vehicle that helped us win World War ll – but sometimes you need a few extra comforts and amenities.
Enter the Grand Cherokee, a more luxurious road-going variant that still maintains much of the pedigree of its mud-loving stablemate. As Jeep’s best-selling model, it receives lots of love and attention each year with updates and fresh tech.
Unfortunately, Jeep as a whole still hasn’t shaken its reputation for below-average reliability. So if you’re considering a Grand Cherokee, you might want to look at a certified pre-owned (CPO) model. In our breakdown of Jeep’s CPO program, we determined that the benefits are light – but so is the cost.
But what about a CPO Grand Cherokee, specifically? As Jeep’s best-selling model, are dealers charging up the wazoo for CPO Grand Cherokees? Are Grand Cherokees reliable enough to skip CPO or the opposite?
Read on to find out.
CPO Jeep Grand Cherokees come with a three-month/3,000-mile bumper-to-bumper warranty plus a seven-year/100,000-mile powertrain warranty.
Jump to insightPerhaps due to low demand and high inventory, the average cost of a CPO Grand Cherokee nationwide is actually less than the average cost of an identical used one.
Jump to insightEven if the average price difference rises to $500, it might still be worth buying a CPO Grand Cherokee considering these vehicles have frequent, well-documented issues across multiple systems (brakes, electronics, powertrain, etc.).
Jump to insightBuying CPO also grants you a discount of up to 30% on an official Jeep extended warranty, which might also be a good idea.
Jump to insightHow long is the CPO warranty on a Jeep Grand Cherokee?
The CPO warranty on a Jeep Grand Cherokee is the same one you’d get with any other Jeep (or FIAT, Ram, Chrysler, Dodge or Alfa Romeo, which are all Stellantis-owned brands).
- Three months/3,000 miles of bumper-to-bumper coverage, measured from the date you purchased the vehicle or the date your factory warranty expires
- Seven years/100,000 miles of powertrain coverage, measured from new
For context, all new Jeeps come with the following factory warranty, which automatically transfers to new owners upon sale:
- Three years/36,000 miles of bumper-to-bumper coverage
- Five years/60,000 miles of powertrain coverage
So when you purchase a CPO Grand Cherokee, you’re effectively getting three months/3,000 miles added to whatever’s left of the factory bumper-to-bumper warranty plus two years/40,000 miles added to your remaining powertrain warranty.
If the Grand Cherokee you buy has no factory warranty left, the clock starts on your CPO bumper-to-bumper coverage the moment you drive off the lot.
In addition to the CPO warranty, CPO Grand Cherokees also come with:
- A 125-point quality inspection by a trained Jeep technician
- 24/7 roadside assistance, including flat tire services, gas delivery, battery jumps, lockout services and towing (up to $100 per occurrence)
- A discount of up to 30% on a Mopar Vehicle Protection Plan (Jeep’s official extended warranty)
However, they lack some of the other benefits that are typically associated with CPO programs, such as rental car assistance or trip interruption coverage (which helps to cover meals and lodging if your vehicle breaks down over 100 miles from home).
In total, three months of bumper-to-bumper protection, two years of powertrain protection, and inspection and roadside assistance make for a pretty threadbare CPO program. There’s not a whole lot here. But it doesn’t cost much, either.
» MORE: Jeep certified pre-owned warranty
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How much does a certified pre-owned Jeep Grand Cherokee cost?
We found 8,979 pre-owned Grand Cherokees nationwide with an average listing price of $32,479. On the CPO side, there were 1,809 listings with an average asking price of $31,958.
To find this out, ConsumerAffairs did a brief analysis of used and CPO listings on Edmunds. To create the closest comparison possible, we looked at the average cost of a CPO Grand Cherokee nationwide and compared it with the cost of pre-owned models with similar age, miles and condition.
We also filtered out special editions, vehicles with accidents and other examples that might skew our results.
Even after we filtered out some additional outliers, the average price difference between used and CPO listings was negligible. We also found that Edmunds had marked 47% of all CPO listings as either “Good Price” or “Great Price,” indicating that the dealer had priced them significantly below market value.
So as of May 2024, the cost of buying a CPO Grand Cherokee is virtually the same as a regular pre-owned one. The only caveat to buying CPO is that there’s far less selection (roughly 20% of all pre-owned listings were CPO). But considering all that you’re getting for essentially no extra cost, it’s probably worth being patient to find the one you like.
Is a CPO Jeep Grand Cherokee worth it?
At the time of this writing, CPO and non-CPO Grand Cherokees were priced virtually the same, with a significant portion of CPO models listed for well below market value.
But should that change in the future and CPO prices start to rise again, would it be worth paying more? If so, how much?
In general, it’s more likely to be worth paying extra for a CPO vehicle if:
- The vehicle in question has a below-average reputation for reliability.
- The cost of buying CPO versus pre-owned isn’t much higher than average (about 6%).
- The CPO warranty and benefits justify the cost.
We’ve established that Jeep dealers probably won’t be charging more than the industry average for CPO anytime soon and that, while slim, the warranty and benefits easily justify paying a small upcharge (around $500).
But how reliable are Grand Cherokees? If the CPO upcharge becomes $1,000, will it still be worth paying the difference for the extra CPO warranty?
Well, at the brand level, Jeep doesn’t score especially well in terms of overall reliability. In their latest rankings, J.D. Power and Consumer Reports ranked the American brand 10th and 26th out of 30 brands, respectively.
Consumer Reports also found that the Grand Cherokee and the Grand Cherokee Ls were Jeep’s least reliable models, scoring 26 and 23 out of 100, respectively. The No. 1 trouble spots for these vehicles were brakes and in-car electronics, neither of which would be covered under the CPO powertrain warranty (more on that in a bit).
Even our local Jeep dealer painted a pretty honest picture of Grand Cherokee ownership costs.
“A Grand Cherokee won’t be as reliable as a Wrangler,” he told us. “The car simply has more parts that can fail, especially with electronics.”
Issues with electronics also seem to be a recurring theme among our reader reviews of the Jeep Grand Cherokee.
“I have a 2022 Jeep Grand Cherokee and it is awful,” wrote a reviewer in North Carolina. “It has had the stereo replaced 2x, broke down losing power due to a bad cylinder and now the automatic emergency brake comes on when I try and backup with nothing around me.”
“I have had nothing but problems/issues with my jeep since I bought it a year ago.” wrote another customer in Florida. “Endless recalls, electronics issues, replaced solenoid, replaced water pump, odd shift points, radio reset over 20 times, and terrible on gas (13-15 mpg).”
The problem with Grand Cherokees having so many well-documented problems, aside from the obvious, is that most of these issues will only be covered under a bumper-to-bumper warranty. That means whether you choose to buy CPO or regular pre-owned, you’ll probably want additional bumper-to-bumper protection to protect yourself against likely repairs.
So before we wrap up our discussion, let’s look at your options for extended warranty protection on a Grand Cherokee.
CPO vs. extended warranties for Grand Cherokees
This is the section where we’d normally compare the merits of buying CPO versus buying pre-owned with an extended warranty.
But if you’re considering a Grand Cherokee, you might want to buy CPO with an extended warranty.
That’s because one of the best hidden benefits of buying a CPO Jeep is that you’ll get up to 30% off the price of a Mopar Vehicle Protection Plan (Jeep’s official extended warranty).
“As long as you purchase the plan before your three-month/3,000-mile CPO warranty expires, you’ll get a discount of up to 30%,” a rep from Zeigler Auto Group, a wholesale online retailer of Mopar warranties, told ConsumerAffairs. “You also won’t need to get your car re-inspected, which is normally a requirement to activate the warranty and costs around $200.”
To put the potential discount into context, Zeigler quoted us $3,075 on a seven-year/100,000-mile bumper-to-bumper extended warranty on a 2022 Jeep Grand Cherokee. With the CPO discount, you’ll save $200 on the required inspection and $923 on the cost of the warranty.
A discount that steep can easily justify the cost of buying a CPO Grand Cherokee over the cost of a used one.
And to learn more about the benefits included in a Mopar Vehicle Protection Plan, check out our full feature on the cost, coverage and plans of a Jeep extended warranty.
» MORE: Jeep Grand Cherokee extended warranty: cost, coverage & plans
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Article sources
- Edmunds, “Used Jeep Grand Cherokee for Sale Near New York, NY.” Accessed May 7, 2024.
- J.D. Power, “Vehicle Dependability Slumps as Rate of Deterioration Increases, J.D. Power Finds.” Accessed May 7, 2024.
- Consumer Reports, “Who Makes the Most Reliable New Cars?” Accessed May 7, 2024.
- Consumer Reports, “Jeep Grand Cherokee.” Accessed May 7, 2024.