1988 Cherokee
I had one from '88 until the late 1990s. 4.0. Great mileage on the highway, 25+ under the best circumstances (55mph), plenty of power, decent room. In my case I HATED the seats, thought they were torture devices but other than that it was a great car. Things broke but it never broke down. The fit and finish was nowhere near the Land Cruiser it replaced, it wasn't nearly as hard core nor were the small items like window regulators and plastic bits particularly reliable ... but the core of the machine, the stuff that kept it running, worked perfectly. Plus it was fun to drive, the motor wound out nicely and handling, for what it was, was acceptable.
One of the big advantages is it's size. It would hold four people and a fair amount of junk yet was small enough to nose through tight spots that the LC found impossible. In the last few days I've been using a 1990s 4.0 HO while recording sound effects in the Pacific Northwest and my partner and I have been driving trails where my vehicle (an early Earthroamer) would have been 3 to 4 times too large for me to even consider. Yet we just keep going farther and farther back down old trails in the jeep, sometimes so tight we can barely get the doors open. On other days we've had all our recording gear, props, a 14' canoe, outboard, lunch, and sometimes our very small female assistant with us. Tightly packed. Intimate. Scraping tires ... but getting the job done. In many ways it's a more compact package than a wrangler and better on the highway. Most of us spend a lot of time on the road getting to the off road stuff, that's when a vehicle like this does its part.