You say tomato, we say tomahto. You say crossover, we say SUV. Should we heed the advice of Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald and simply call the whole thing off?
These days, the terms “SUV” and “crossover” get thrown around so casually, it’s easy to wonder which is which. Is a Jeep Wrangler Unlimited an SUV? Absolutely. Then how about a Jeep Grand Cherokee? We’ll call that one an SUV, too, since it’s nearly as capable off road as the Wrangler. But we realize there are SUV purists who consider today’s Grand Cherokee merely a tarted-up crossover in disguise.
We wrestled with the SUV vs. crossover classification. Ultimately, we created our list of 2012 SUV candidates based on their underlying structural construction and their abilities to go off road. Any SUV with traditional body-on-frame construction, like a Chevrolet Tahoe, is an SUV. Other models, like the unibody-construction Jeep Grand Cherokee, qualify based on mechanical and technological features that allow them to tackle serious mud, muck and steep hills, unlike their namby-pamby crossover lookalikes that may look ready for hill-climbing action but prefer to spend their days cruising the blacktop instead. That’s also why we created a 2012 Crossovers Buying Guide so you can compare both these lists and find the right vehicle for your needs and environment.
Read: 2012 Crossover Buying Guide – 9 Vehix Picks
While nearly every manufacturer sells a crossover of some type, not every one sells an SUV. By our count, at least 25 vehicles priced under $60,000 qualify as SUVs for 2012; nine of those vehicles emerged as our 2012 SUV Vehix Picks. Since nearly everyone starts shopping with a budget in mind, we’ve divided the SUVs into three categories:
The Vehix editorial team reviewed safety and reliability data, tossing the worst performers in these areas off of the list of contenders. Then, Vehix editors weighed the objective data and slammed it up against our own subjective experiences driving these vehicles. Then we voted and the nine winning SUVs for 2012 emerged from the fray with the results being our 2012 SUV Buying Guide – 9 Vehix Picks. Let’s dig into the details.
View the 2012 SUV Buying Guide