2009 Land Rover LR2

SUV Review: Diesel engines have a well deserved reputation of being noisy and smelly. We normally think of them clattering under the enormous hoods of industrial haulers. Or we may have friends who use diesel pickups for heavy-duty hauling. Remember the Diesel Rabbit? Slow. Recall Oldsmobile’s failed experiment with Diesels in the 1980’s? Sigh.

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2009 Mercedes ML320

SUV Review: There's nothing particularly unusual about how the new 2009 Kia Borrego looks. It's a big, traditional SUV with a truck-style frame. The Kia Borrego can be summed up simply: It's a really good SUV at a really bad time.

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2009 Kia Borrego

SUV REVIEW: On one hand, Land Rovers are legendary off-road performers. On the other, they are luxurious cruisers for the well-to-do. As the newest and smallest Land Rover, the LR2 attempts to blend the best qualities of a fine sedan with the rugged off-road ability of an SUV.

2008 Land Rover LR2

SUV REVIEW: Mazda's seven-passenger SUV, the CX-9, got rave reviews and racked up more awards than any other SUV last year. It was named the North American Truck of the Year, Motor Trend's SUV of the Year, Kelly Blue Book's Best New Family Vehicle, Cars.com's Family Car of the Year, and probably a thousand other "of the years" that I can't remember.

2008 Mazda CX-9

SUV REVIEW: The Jeep Liberty sits in the middle of a rapidly growing lineup of SUVs from the company that has made them for a very long time. Now all new for 2008, the new Jeep Liberty assumes more of the chunky, squared-off look of the Jeep Wrangler.

2008 Jeep Liberty

SUV Review:  While it shares a platform with the GMC Acadia and Saturn Outlook, the Buick Enclave looks more seductive than both its siblings.

2008 Buick Enclave

SUV Review: At the large end of the SUV market is the Nissan Armada, a competitor to the likes of the Chevrolet Tahoe and Ford Expedition. I tested an Armada a couple of years ago and was impressed with it then. So how has it held up over the years? Relatively well I would say.

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2008 Nissan Armada

SUV Review: Nissan’s Pathfinder debuted in the mid-1980s as a real, truck-based sport utility vehicle. Like its numerous competitors, it has grown and expanded its offerings over the years. Now, for 2008, Nissan has introduced the first V8-powered Pathfinder.

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2008 Nissan Pathfinder

San Francisco: Kia is one of those car companies that is under appreciated. Whenever someone thinks Kia, they envision inexpensive cars for the income limited or cost conscious. Too bad, because Kia builds some darn fine vehicles.

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2007 Kia Sorento

San Francisco: Hummer didn't tone down the styling on its smallest vehicle, the H3. Owning up to its militarized look, it's still a rolling billboard that screams, "I want to melt the ice caps." But thank goodness to at least the interior in the H3, as it is by far, the best in any Hummer product. And at $30,000, it's also the cheapest.

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2007 Hummer H3

San Francisco: The MDX, Acura’s first SUV, debuted in 2000 as a 2001 model. For 2007, it is reborn. Other than the trademark caliper logo inside the pentagonal grille, not much was carried over from the ’06.

2007 Acura MDX

San Francisco: Chrysler has felt left out of the full-size and large SUV market. Despite fielding the Dodge Durango, there was no luxurious large SUV in the fold. Now there is. Taking the Durango’s form but giving it a Chrysler style, the Aspen is designed to take the feeling of the wildly successful 300 sedans and pump it up to SUV status.

2007 Chrysler Aspen

San Francisco: It's an open secret that most people who buy SUVs never take them off-roading. Oh, sure, they might find comfort in the fact that their four-wheel-drive American MegaCrusher is capable of scaling the Andes in six seconds flat, but in reality the furthest they go off pavement is in the grass parking lot outside their kid's Little League baseball field.

2007 Nissan Xterra

San Francisco: With the popularity of large luxury SUV’s on the wane, it is the smaller, but still substantial midsize crossover vehicles like the Cadillac SRX that are becoming the new choice for many family buyers. Offering much of the utility of an SUV, these tall station wagons are based on car platforms so they ride more comfortably and handle more like sedans.

2007 Cadillac SRX

San Francisco: There are few things more depressing in the automotive world than driving a new Isuzu. Oh, I suppose wrecking your Ferrari might top it, or perhaps having to trade in your beloved sports car for a minivan - or even having to carpool with Richard Simmons. Those things would make you want to swallow the business end of a shotgun.

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2007 Isuzu Ascender

San Francisco: Back at the end of the last century, Nissan introduced a special offroad ride. The first generation Xterra was truckish, strong, and independent, not an SUV for soccer moms or family vacations, but a real transportation module for active lifestyles. You want leather seats? Better look elsewhere!

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2006 Nissan Xterra

This Week's MiniVan Articles:

San Francisco: The Nissan Pathfinder looks like a truck, and guess what? It is one. Unlike crossover vehicles that use a car-like frame to improve comfort on pavement, the Pathfinder has a truck-like ladder frame designed for off-road performance. It's becoming rare to find a truck that's truly a truck.

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2006 Nissan Pathfinder

San Francisco: Unless you’ve been living under a rock or hiding in a Pakistani cave, you know by now that gasoline will never again cost less than $2 a gallon and that hybrids are selling like hotcakes, for a niche market. You also know that the worst vehicles for fuel economy are big, heavy SUVs and ultra-high-performance sports cars. Enter the 2007 GMC Yukon.

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2007 GMC Yukon

San Francisco: Pulling out all the stops on redesigning its fleet of cars and trucks, Chevrolet is making it clear that it will not lose any more ground (nee, market share) to any and all of its rivals by bringing more new product to life this year. We got a chance to spend a week with the all-new 2007 Tahoe and what a ride it is.

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2007 Chevy Tahoe

San Francisco: With gas prices passing the $3 mark in America and heading upwards, interest in gas-guzzling behemoth SUVs is waning precipitously. What better time for Subaru to introduce an alternative to the old-fashioned SUV?

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2006 Subaru B9 Tribeca

San Francisco:  Until now, it's been easy to compare the Mercury Mountaineer to its near-identical twin, the Ford Explorer. Mercury's new 2006 Mountaineer, though, would make a better comparison with the bigger Lincoln Navigator.

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2006 Mercury Mountaineer

San Francisco: While its basic, boxy shape is unchanged, the front end of Ford's all-new Explorer is slightly more aggressive. It's an example of how the Explorer is evolving into a more refined, less truck-like vehicle over time. Ford's top-selling SUV gets a major makeover for 2006 and now the Explorer is better than ever. 

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2006 Ford Explorer 4x4

San Francisco:  The Grand Cherokee has fulfilled its role as a rugged, yet luxurious, family wagon for nearly a decade and a half. Now in its third generation, it adds power to its list of accomplishments. The Grand Cherokee now comes with Chrysler’s popular Hemi V8 engine.

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2006 Jeep Grand Cherokee

San Francisco:  In the ever-increasing world of high-priced ad campaigns and catchy catch phrases, Pontiac did it again with it's latest barrage of ads by proclaiming their new SUV as the first ever Pontiac Torrent, following the first ever G6...Call me when it's safe to watch TV again.

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2006 Pontiac Torrent

San Francisco:  How many of those SUV drivers really go off road? Is it five percent? Three? The Nissan Murano is meant for people who would like to carry some cargo now and then but want a car, not a truck, for their daily driver.

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2006 Nissan Murano

San Francisco:  Toyota is the current leader in automotive hybrid technology and to keep that lead they just introduced another vehicle in their hybrid lineup, the 2006 Highlander Hybrid SUV. This SUV comes in 2 wheel drive and 4 wheel drive models and gets 32-MPG city and 27-MPG highway for a combined EPA rating of 30 MPG.

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2006 Toyota Highlander Hybrid SUV

San Francisco:  If you’ve been craving the macho power of a Hummer but are waiting until Hummers become drivable in normal traffic and more affordable, you’re in luck. The new H3 is here, delivering much of the Hummer go-anywhere talents and brick-house styling in a much more accessible package.

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2006 Hummer H3

San Francisco:  I've always liked driving Acura’s. There's something about the way they mix precision, comfort and value that makes them a perfect compromise - a step above ordinary cars, but not so expensive and outlandish as to make you feel guilty.

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2005 Acura MDX

San Francisco:  The GMC Envoy Denali is the latest addition to the wide-ranging Envoy lineup. It offers more luxurious features and a quieter cabin to give it the Cadillac treatment with a GMC badge. Good interior materials and construction make the Envoy feel upscale, especially in the Denali models.

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2005 GMC Envoy

San Francisco:  As Honda introduces, for 2006, a great big pickup truck, it’s probably a good time to take a fresh look at another remarkable truck in the company’s arsenal, the 2005 Honda Pilot SUV.

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2005 Honda Pilot

San Francisco:  Back in 1995, I tested drove my first Kia, the Sportage mini-SUV. While cute, Kia was still a work in progress. Fast forward to the all-new 2005 Kia Sportage and you can see how far the Korean automotive industry has come in a few short years.

2005 Kia Sportage

San Francisco:  A couple of years ago when Volvo introduced the XC90 I asked a Volvo executive what was the point? Volvo has always been known as a "winter" car. With the XC90, was Volvo introducing a winter, winter car? The answer of course was marketing. SUVs were hot and getting hotter.  All Volvo had were sedans and station wagons, so the easiest thing to do was change a car into an SUV.

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2005 Volvo XC90

San Francisco: The archetypical Jeep may be the rock crawling, go-anywhere Wrangler, based on the vehicle that helped win World War II. But today, the top of the Jeep heap is the Grand Cherokee. Designed to fit in at the country club or on backcountry off-road venues, the Grand Cherokee offers comfort and amenities that Beetle Bailey can only dream about.

2005 Jeep Grand Cherokee

San Francisco: No, we didn't place the wrong picture here. When you've got a sagging brand like Mercury, what do you do? If you're an executive with Ford Motor Company, you take the hot-selling Ford Escape, change a couple of things around, and rechristen it the Mercury Mariner. The new Mariner looks, drives, feels and even smells an awful lot like the Escape, yet - aw, heck - that's the whole story.

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2005 Mercury Mariner

San Francisco: I recently spent a week in what may be the best Jeep, definitely the best Jeep Liberty that Californians cannot buy, at least new. The 2005 Jeep Liberty Common Rail Diesel (CRD) does not meet California’s strict oxides of nitrogen (NOx) emission standards. Too bad, this is one heck of a nice Jeep.

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2005 Jeep Liberty

San Francisco: Thanks to its near-perfect mix of price, handling and style, the Ford Escape has been a hit since it was introduced in 2001. No matter. It’s already time for a new one, Ford says. The 2005 Escape has a new look and feel to match its intense competition from both domestic and foreign companies.

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2005 Ford Escape Limited

San Francisco:  Starting this year, environmentalists will be a little more timid when they gripe about SUVs. That's because sport utility vehicles - long criticized for their gluttonous appetite for gas and dirty emissions - are turning green. Several manufacturers are planning more efficient models for the coming years, and the first to the market is Ford's 2005 Escape Hybrid.

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2005 Ford Escape Hybrid

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San Francisco:  The Nissan Murano's bulbous shape gives it the practicality of an SUV with the feel of a sports sedan. It's a luxurious and refined SUV that doesn't even hint at having off-road ambitions.

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2004 Nissan Murano

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San Francisco: If I say to you, "Volkswagen," I’m guessing you picture the little Beetle in your mind. It’s as likely as if I ask you to imagine a pink elephant. Decades after the old rear-engine, air-cooled econo-bugs disappeared from American showrooms, the company successfully introduced the front-engine, water-cooled New Beetle, and we accepted it. The memories are that strong.

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2004 VW Touareg

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San Francisco: Mitsubishi has joined the ranks of crossover vehicles that combine the best features of a car and an SUV with the 2004 Endeavor, already in dealer’s showrooms. The Mitsubishi SUV lineup now includes the compact Outlander, the Endeavor, the Montero Sport, and the top-of-the-line Montero.

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SAN FRANCISCO:  Hot on the heels of the revamped CR-V small sport utility vehicle comes Honda's new Pilot. Designed in Ohio and California to meet the needs of Americans, this new midsize SUV chases the Ford Explorer in a way the Isuzu-sourced Passport never could.

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2003 Honda Pilot

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2003 Kia Sorento

SAN FRANCISCO: After years of looking at the rear end of Ford’s Explorer in the midsize SUV sales race, GM seems primed to move ahead (or at least alongside) with the introduction of its new trio of trail tamers. The 2002 GMC Envoy, the Chevy Trailblazer and the Oldsmobile Bravada.

San Francisco:  Jeep's Grand Cherokee, a major player in the midsize, upscale sport utility derby, gets a new suit of clothes this year, which, without sharing a single body panel with the past model still conveys the same rugged image.