#SUV

The XJ Cherokee was born out of the French government's bailout of American Motors and made its debut as a 1984 model. It was so successful that it stayed in production in essentially its original form through three corporations and into the following century. Today's Junkyard Find is one of the very last XJ Cherokees ever made, found in a Wyoming car graveyard last week.

Horsepower and SUVs can be a wicked combination when done right; witness any number of hi-po German and, increasingly, Italian machinery which somehow successfully combine high centres of gravity and outlandish acceleration numbers.

The new Range Rover Sport SV takes the concept and cranks its wick to 626 horsepower, meaning this Rangey is capable of hitting 60 mph from rest in just 3.6 seconds.

While we already covered the powertrains the 2024 Kia EV9 will receive, its North American premiere at the New York International Auto Show has given us more to chew on.

The crash test dummies at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) have been doing great work in ratcheting up the difficulty of their impact examinations, often requiring automakers to return to their drawing boards in search of the elusive Top Safety Pick+ designation. Now, the group is increasingly casting an eye toward how backseat passengers fare in a wreck.

Jeep has discontinued the optional 5.7-liter Hemi V8 for the two-row Grand Cherokee, meaning you can either have the standard 3.6-liter Pentastar V6 or the new 2.0-liter PHEV that comes with the 4xe trim. That doesn’t mean the V8 has been removed entirely, however. Specific versions of the 3-row Jeep Grand Cherokee L can still be outfitted with the Hemi. You just have to get it in all-wheel drive, padding the price somewhat. 

GM sold Isuzu Faster pickups with Chevrolet LUV badging in North America from 1972 through 1982, replacing that Japanese truck with the all-Detroit S-10 starting in that final LUV year. An SUV-ized version of the S-10 ( the S-10 Blazer) followed for the 1983 model year, and a GMC-badged twin known as the S-15 Jimmy went along with it. Here's one of those first-generation mini-Jimmies, found in a self-service yard near Sacramento, California.

Leaving aside the absolutely psychotic dealer markup being slapped on these things by some sellers over the last couple of years, the squared-off Telluride represents a good-looking and reasonably equipped SUV which has been eating the lunch of more than a few established competitors.

This model year brings a few cosmetic changes and a dizzying 10 different trim levels. Which one do we prefer? Why, the one without any greedy markup, of course.

The Honda Pilot has been with us for four generations now, showing up for duty after the suits at Honda finally figured out two decades ago that Americans were serious about their thirst for XL SUVs. For 2023, the model earns new looks, a revamped interior, and a more powerful V6 engine.

The General began selling rebadged Suzukis on our shores for the 1985 model year, with a Chevrolet-badged Cultus called the Sprint. A few years later, GM's Geo brand came into being, with the Cultus becoming the Metro and the Escudo aka Vitara, rolling into Geo dealerships bearing Tracker badging. Meanwhile, Suzuki began selling its own versions of both vehicles here, with the Tracker's sibling known as the Sidekick. Here's one of those trucks, a rusty '93 in a Denver car graveyard.

If you prefer to share your Land Rover with 7 of yer mates while on the way to a fox hunt, the British brand will soon have just the rig for you. Set to be called the Defender 130, it’ll stretch the existing SUV by more than a few inches to make room for extra passengers.

This is the third-generation Range Rover Sport, a model at which some traditionalists originally sneered but which has done much for the fortunes (and sales volume) of the British brand. Offering all the RR swagger in a tidy package, this thing has been a darling in the moneyed set for nearly two decades.

The newest one, unveiled earlier today across the pond, will be offered with a variety of powertrains including – you guessed it – an all-electric model in the next couple of years.

There’s an argument to be made Mazda is the little car company that could. Representing a sliver of the American market compared to its larger competitors, the Hiroshima-made vehicles are typically infused with the type of driving fun that’s seemingly been surgically removed from the vehicles with which it competes.

Actually, the term ‘Hiroshima-made’ is no longer totally correct. With the introduction of the 2023 CX-50 crossover you see on these digital pages, Mazda now has a manufacturing footprint in this country to the annual tune of 150,000 vehicles. It’s only fitting they’d deploy this new capability for the type of rig most Americans prefer: An all-wheel-drive crossover with an off-road attitude.

Some of us who are rapidly approaching a certain age will clearly recall when Lexus (and Infiniti, to a lesser extent) first showed up on the luxury car scene and promptly took the establishment to school. Fast forward 30+ years and we find an upstart Korean brand attempting the same thing – and being largely successful.

The GV70 plugged an important hole in the Genesis lineup, given the perpetual thirst of Americans for crossovers and SUVs. Its unique lighting treatments might be a love-it-or-leave-it affair, but there’s no denying this thing brings the goods to a cutthroat segment.

It’s no secret this industry is moving towards smaller displacement engines, with power adders cropping up on machines of all shapes and sizes as part of an effort to meet fuel economy and emission regs while maintaining the level of power to which we’ve become accustomed.

Last summer, Mercedes-Benz indicated they were dropping V8 engines from their lineup, favoring smaller mills for a myriad of reasons. Someone in a corner office has evidently had a rethink, as it has been confirmed there will be Mercs with eight cylinders in the 2022 model year after all.

Americans like their SUVs – and for some customers, bigger is better. One need look no further than parking lots filled with Tahoes and Grand Wagoneers for confirmation, not to mention their extended-length brethren like the Suburban and upcoming Grand Wagoneer XL.

Toyota has been in this game as well, albeit with an offering older than Methuselah. That changes for 2023, with the introduction of a new Sequoia.