So just a small update, I finally had the displeasure of driving a Cherokee at work for a bit. Had a '14 Latitude I had to do a used vehicle inspection on and I have to say that I am not at all impressed by these things.
Acceleration? If it isn't skittering off the line (tires were decent enough that this shouldn't have been an issue) its struggling (the 2.4L is woefully underpowered in this vehicle after you get off the line, it really struggles uphill,) shifting is something like this:
Moderate acceleration is like: High rev... jerk, High Rev... jerk, High rev.. jerk (oh don't worry you got like 4-5 gears to do this with until you hit 45-ish!) If you do a hard acceleration its just High rev... JERK!
I don't know what the hell 6-9 gears are for because you don't feel the damn thing even shifting above 5th gear (and down shifting down a steep grade from 9 to 5 you don't see or feel the RPMs drop until 5th gear... so I have no idea what the hell the extra gears are really doing...)
The interior wasn't bad, but its got plenty of hard plastic to go with soft touch material, in my opnion some of the interior design is pretty bad too (plastic trays that are cheap looking, remind me of office depot paper clip organizers and the "infotainment" screen almost makes an iphone look large... I swear Chry-crap has some of the smallest damn screens they use in their vehicles with giant thick bezels that make them even smaller looking!) But the interior wasn't all bad, I did like the design and feel of the soft touch; I'd say it's a good Rav4 competitor in that respect and the cargo space in the passenger seat is an ingenious use of space (does the seat pad float too?

) I wasn't impressed by the fit and finish, some of the headliner wasn't tucked into the panels and some panels didn't line up (was obvious factory issue, not because of being a used vehicle with 20k, you could tell the difference.)
Honestly even trying to shoehorn this crap into the same category as the 4Runner is a joke, it truly is 100% a Rav4 competitor if anything.