From the September 2015 issue
What can easily be forgotten in this age, when anyone with a Twitter account and opposable thumbs can call themselves a “content creator,” is that words matter. We are called Car and Driver, which over the years has made us unusually protective of the word “car,” even more so than those car companies around which our world revolves. That word—car—its meaning both to the general public and to us as enthusiasts, has long been threatened with dilution by all manner of conveyances that are not cars, from trucks to minivans to SUVs.
But right now it is the actual physical car that is being subsumed. Compact crossovers have surpassed mid-size sedans to become the most popular body style, claiming 16 percent of retail sales last year (to 15 percent for sedans), according to the market data firm IHS Automotive. This is a significant milestone, on par with cars first being relegated to minority status in 2001, when trucks and SUVs accounted for 51 percent of U.S. sales.
The beasts of burden of that era had body-on-frame designs, and the word “crossover” had yet to come into widespread use. A year before, during Pontiac’s launch of the Aztek, GM referred to its seminal crossover as a “hybrid,” unaware (or unconcerned) in its idiolect that such a thing, a much different thing, had already been so labeled. But in the early aughts, Toyota still referred to its pioneering crossover, the RAV4, as an SUV.
Toyota RAV4 XLE
While there had been car-based utility vehicles before Toyota’s “cute ute,” it was the Japanese automakers that fully embraced the crossover. Customers became enthralled with the raised seating position and the extra ground clearance that enabled ample suspension travel to accommodate our increasingly deteriorating roads without the agricultural ride of traditional SUVs. Evolving child-safety-seat mandates relegated kids to the back, and automakers added a third row, birthing a larger variation. Parents, freed from soccer-mom shame, were willing to pay, replacing their minivans with quasi-utes. The business of crossovers, which could be sold for more than their counterpart sedans, boomed.
All this did not go unnoticed by luxury purveyors, who have unleashed crossovers with such abandon that traditional size descriptors no longer apply. And because modern MBA doctrine insists that every profit center must be exploited as rapidly and fully as possible, an even smaller wave of compact crossovers is now filling the marketplace like circus clowns in a Volkswagen Beetle. Some predictions have crossovers making up 20 percent of the U.S. market by 2020, as more two-box designs emerge from carmaker studios.
We stand wary. In the rush to get some of these branded appliances to market, considerations as varied as styling, performance, efficiency, and handling have been overlooked. And consumer appeal is such that automakers are now calling almost anything a crossover. Infiniti has plans to market the very same body shell as two different models, a car called the Q30 and a crossover dubbed QX30. Audi withdrew the A4 Avant wagon from the U.S., lifted its suspension, and sent it back to us as the Allroad crossover. They’ve even begun to have a deleterious effect on car choices: Mazda will forgo selling the redesigned Mazda 2 hatchback here, justifiably expecting the CX-3 crossover to satisfy the entirety of its small-car demand. Which, having now driven the CX-3, we admit is maybe not a such bad idea after all.
Mazda CX-3 Touring AWD
Look—we Americans need our space. We have kegs to haul and kids to get to baseball practice. There are times when a sedan won’t get the job done. And as crossovers mature beyond generic lozenges festooned with corporate-identifier grilles and injection-molded bumpers, there will certainly be worthy examples of the species. But we’ve had it with boring-looking, boring-driving slugs that squeeze interesting cars off the corporate product plan. Who will save the car from the crossover? It is up to you and me. Read on to see which carmakers are fighting the low-CG fight in 2016, and then go out and buy yourself a Cadillac CTS-V.
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