Other body or interior problem on the 1996 Jeep Grand Cherokee
4 crashes 1 fire 3 injuries 8 of the 111 reports for this failure mention a crash, a fire, an injury or a death. Those are the owner's words on the complaint form, not a verified finding, and one report can mention more than one.
Only 7 reports for this mode came with an odometer reading, which is too few for percentiles to mean anything. The page is here because someone linked to it; treat the figures as anecdotes, and see the full report for this year instead.
When other body or interior problem gets reported
There are 111 reports of other body or interior problem on the 1996 Jeep Grand Cherokee, 7 with a mileage attached. That is too few to place the failure on the odometer with any confidence.
A part like this is normally expected to survive 88,000 miles. It is the 2nd most-reported problem on this model year.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | — | 167,215 miles | — | — |
Read the 10th percentile as “one report in ten arrived this early”. Exact figures are shown in this table because it is the table of record; everywhere else on the site they are rounded to the precision the sample can carry.
What a percentile can and cannot tell you here
These five numbers describe the readings owners gave, in order. The median is the middle one: half the reports arrived below it. The 10th and 90th are the edges of the bulk of the distribution, and the distance between them is the part worth reading. A tight spread — say 70,000 to 95,000 miles — points at something that wears out on a schedule, and the schedule is knowable. A wide one, 20,000 to 190,000, points at a fault that hits some cars and never troubles others, which means the mileage on the listing in front of you tells you very little about your odds.
What these figures are not is a survival curve. Every reading here comes from a car whose owner filed a complaint, so the sample contains only failures: it cannot say what share of the fleet made it past 150,000 miles untouched, because those owners had nothing to report. Nor is the mileage the moment of failure — it is the odometer reading as recalled at the time of filing, which may be weeks later and is sometimes rounded to the nearest ten thousand by the person typing it.
Percentiles are shown at all only once 8 readings exist for the vehicle and mode. Below that the middle of a handful of numbers is noise wearing a decimal point, so the figures are withheld rather than dressed up.
What happens, and what it costs
Of these reports, 4 a crash, 1 a fire and 3 an injury are mentioned. Owners write their own complaints and the agency does not verify them, so read this as what the reports say happened rather than as a confirmed count.
Putting it right typically runs $200–$2,000 at an independent US shop. That range is an editorial estimate held in this site's failure-mode catalogue, not a figure from NHTSA, and it is a repair cost rather than a diagnosis cost.
The same failure on other years
The same failure is reported on 30 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2019, at a median of 15,000 miles, and latest on the 1996 at 165,000 miles.
By volume the 2005 carries the most reports, with 548; the 1996 has 111. A mode that appears across most years of a model is usually a design choice rather than a bad batch.
If one year stands out to the left, that is the year to avoid; if the whole line sits at a similar mileage, this is wear rather than a defect in one production run.
Tick median reported mileage Solid middle half of reports Faint 10th to 90th percentile Colour how bad the failure is when it happens
What owners wrote
Verbatim from NHTSA complaint narratives, trimmed for length. The mileage is the one the owner gave.
While driving driver's side door popped open and would not close. The consumer took the vehicle to the dealer, and was told that the vehicle was out of warranty and there was nothing they could do. The consumer then took the vehicle to an aftermarket body shop, and was told that it was the weld, which was very thin that caused the latches to pop off inside the door. *ak *sc
The driver's seat of my vehicle broke. The seat is unable to sit fully upright as the brackets holding it in place (to rail) are broken. The metal appears to be actually torn. 1996 jeep grand cherokee laredo (6 cyl). *tr
Jeep advertises that there grand cherokees can withstand water up to 20 inches deep. I beg to differ and I have been lied to. Was driving through my neighborhood on my way to a buddy's house a few blocks away, I hit a small puddle on my way and my engine just seized up and everything went ballistic. Measured the puddle and it was a whopping inch and a half deep. Had my buddy tow me back home to check it out and low and behold, there it was, rod #1 sticking right through my oil pan about an inch. Bent to high [xxx] and sheared right off (note: also noticed the electrical components said "japan" and when I pulled the oil pan and pulled the rod, in big bold letters "china" stamped on the rod") now I have a 6000lb paper weight sitting in my driveway that I can do nothing with. Now if jeep advertises that their vehicles are safe in water up to 20 inches, why did an inch and a half deep puddle hydrolock my engine resulting in rod #1 being shot through the oil pan and all electronics fried? Hmmmm interesting. Also notice how the foreign mass market parts were the only ones to fail. Seems a little fishy. It grinds my gears because I have…
Also reported on the 1996 Jeep Grand Cherokee
Other powertrain problem
Premature brake pad or rotor wear
Fuel pump failure
Other fuel system problem
Other engine problem
Other electrical problem
How far this goes
This page is kept out of search results because 111 reports is not enough to publish percentiles from. It stays reachable because somebody looking at this exact car would rather see the reports than be told there are none.
Complaints are voluntary, so 111 is a floor and not a count of affected cars. Mileages are typed in by owners and cluster on round numbers. And the mode itself is assigned by software reading the complaint text, which is reliable in bulk and fallible one report at a time.
Questions this page answers
At what mileage does other body or interior problem happen on the 1996 Jeep Grand Cherokee?
Across 7 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 165,000 miles. A quarter were filed before — and a quarter after —. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.
How common is other body or interior problem on the 1996 Jeep Grand Cherokee?
111 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 0.4 per 1,000 vehicles. Complaints are voluntary, so this is a floor rather than a count of affected cars.
What this is and is not. These are the mileages at which owners chose to complain to a federal agency, which is not the same as the mileage at which the part fails on every car. It skews toward failures that happened outside warranty, cost real money, or frightened someone. It is still the only public dataset that carries failure mileage at all, and the shape of a few hundred readings is informative even when a single one is not. Methodology · JSON · this failure on other cars
Source Owner complaints and recall records published by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, model years 1996–2027 Figures rebuilt Published by AtWhatMileage How every figure is computed