The Jeep Wrangler might be the most well-known Jeep in America, but the XJ-generation Cherokee is definitely my favorite. The uncomplicated design, no-nonsense mechanicals, and iconic square face exude a sense of blissful, workhorse-like simplicity you can’t find in many other SUVs.
Despite being out of production for 24 years (in America, anyway; a Chinese company called BAW built XJs up until 2014), these SUVs are everywhere. Jeep made an astounding 2,884,172 Cherokees from 1984 to 2001, which means they remain affordable on the used market.
Of course, just because XJs are affordable doesn’t mean they’re immune to time. A massive swath of those sold new have been devoured by rust, left to rot in junkyards, or crushed. Solid, good-running examples are becoming harder and harder to find. That’s where Drew Hayes comes in.
Hayes, a 25-year-old car dealer located in Fort Collins, Colorado, has made it his life’s mission to keep XJs on the road, buying tired examples, bringing them up to good health, and then selling them to fellow Jeep lovers. And he’s doing it all through Facebook Marketplace’s ecosystem.
Legendary Origins
“I’ve been flipping cars in Jeeps since I was able to drive,” Hayes told me over the phone. “I bought my first car when I was 14, so 11 years ago.”
Normal 14-year-olds don’t just start buying cars and flipping them. Sure enough, Hayes got it from his dad as they took road trips from their home in Michigan to visit family.
“My dad would always take us out west on road trips, because we have family out here, and inevitably, stuff would just break down,” he says. “So there were a few instances where we would end up buying something just to make it home.”
Hayes recounts one instance when his dad’s Toyota broke down in Arizona. Instead of fixing it, they bought a whole-ass RV instead (something that turned into a nightmare of its own).
“The Toyota pickup’s transfer case blew up when we were climbing a volcano in Arizona, so we bought the RV to continue our planned road trip around the west and tow the pickup home,” he tells me. “We figured we could flip the RV to pay for everything, but ended up blowing a spark plug clean out of the cylinder head.”
“That’s how we got into it, really,” he continued. “I have always had a desire to hit the road thanks to my dad exposing me to the west at a young age, and the way I made it work was buying stuff to flip to pay for the travels.”
Early on, Hayes discovered the demand for rust-free cars in rustbelt states. Anyone who’s shopped for an old car in the Northeast or northern parts of the Midwest knows that if you want to find a car that hasn’t been infected by the winter salt, you have to travel to the west or to the south (or ideally, both). So that’s exactly what he did.
“We’d buy [cars] out west, where there’s no rust for the most part, and we take it back to Michigan, where I used to live,” he says. “We ended up selling a few of those cars and making a lot of money on them just because of that rust appeal. So as soon as I graduated high school, I, of course, wanted to be out west as much as possible, so that [was an] outlet that I found to make money while also being able to travel.”
So Hayes moved to Fort Collins, and he’s been flipping trucks and SUVs ever since.
Why The XJ?
Hayes estimates he’s flipped around 100 to 200 cars since he started in the business, with 40-50 of those cars being XJ Cherokees, specifically. He told me he loves classic four-wheel drive SUVs and pickups, so that’s where he focuses his time.
“The vast majority is just anything four-wheel drive, really,” he says. “Pretty much everything I buy, nothing’s newer than 2005. With the go-tos, it just became Cherokees because there are so many of them, and they’re so easy to work on.”
And they do need work. These Jeeps are 24 years old at their youngest, and 41 years old at their oldest. So things need fixing. Hayes says he and his friends rent a “big property” with a barn where he fixes up his cars.
“Every XJ I buy needs work,” he tells me. “I restore a lot of them and do a lot of work to basically every one I buy. A lot of times it’s just a head gasket. It’s pretty common on these. It’ll overheat and then, you know, that’s a pull-the-engine-apart [job].”
Over the dozens of XJs Hayes has dealt with, he’s become accustomed to the stuff that constantly needs addressing.
“Windshields are common,” he tells me. “A lot of them get death wobbles. A lot of them need different bushings and stuff. A huge thing is just fender flares. People will pay $2,000 more for an XJ if it has the stock fender flares, and you’ll always find them just missing fender flares. Just simple stuff like that, simple cosmetic stuff that just makes them present better.”
It’s important to note that Hayes isn’t some big-time car restoration specialist for XJs. You won’t find him disassembling the cars to the bare metal and restoring them, like the Davis AutoSports build above. Rather, he’s a smaller operation that brings tired Jeeps (among other similarly old 4x4s) that need some love back to good, honest, running condition. For most buyers of these trucks, that’s more than enough.
Machine Learning
While I wouldn’t describe myself as a Facebook Marketplace “power user,” I do use the service every single day to browse for cheap, interesting cars for sale. A few times a year, I’ll buy and sell stuff through the site, too. I’d estimate I’m probably in the top 5% of users. I suspect Hayes is in the top 0.1%.
“I used to use Craigslist a lot, but it’s pretty much just all Facebook now,” he says. As of this writing, Hayes has nine cars listed on Marketplace, including four XJs. In his years of working with Facebook, he’s figured out how to manipulate the site to squeeze the most reach from his listings.
It’s just dealing with the algorithm,” he says. “With every car, I take three sets of pictures so I can repost every week. The algorithm won’t recognize it as the same car, so it’ll it’ll keep your views high. You’ve got to change the description every time.”
Hayes also uses Facebook Marketplace’s “Boost” feature, which allows users to pay a small dollar amount to push their listings to a larger audience. It’s a common move for people who are willing to invest in the system in the hopes that a buyer will reach out sooner. Hayes has even figured out how to tell whether it’s actually working.
“Right after you post [a car], you can boost it,” he says. “You’ll know right away if you’re getting shadow-banned. Because if you hit the Boost button and it’ll tell you, ‘You can pay ten bucks for 100 views.’ But if you’re not [shadow-banned], it’ll be $10 for 2,000 to 3,000 views.”
Hayes has become fairly well-known in the XJ community for his ability to source and fix up XJs, to the point where people are coming from across the country to snag one of his finds.
“A lot of my buyers still come from out east, just because of those [Facebook] groups,” he says. While he does get people reaching out to help them source cars, the majority of Hayes’ sales, he tells me, are simply through people scouring Facebook Marketplace looking for a driver-level XJ.
Unsurprisingly, Hayes also uses Facebook Marketplace to procure his projects.
“I think there are just so many XJs that it’s kind of impossible to monopolize the market,” he tells me. The most Hayes will travel for a car is three to four hours, which shows just how many forlorn XJs exist in the world (or Colorado, at least).
Of course, XJs aren’t the only things Hayes sells. He’s also got a few Toyota 4Runners listed, and two vintage trucks.
“I actually have like four classic trucks [right now],” he says. “[I’ve] got a couple of old Fords and Chevies and Internationals and stuff. I like the old stuff for sure. I’d like to shift more into classic four-wheel drive pickups and Broncos and such.”
Even if Hayes expands into other specialties, I hope he keeps a rotation of XJs in his inventory. In addition to being his bread and butter, it’s nice to see them getting the attention they deserve.
Top graphic image: Drew Hayes