#SUV

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.

Don’t listen to certain talking heads who are trying to tell us that all hands are busy switching to electric transportation pods and there’s no market for enormous SUVs. In Japan, where they’d have you believe streets are tighter than two coats of paint and no one drives anything bigger than a Kei car, Toyota is apparently running up against lengthy waitlists for its new Land Cruiser.

How long? Try four years.

After plenty of speculation and spy shots – plus a healthy dose of rumor – Ford has whipped the sheets off what they’re calling the most powerful street-legal Bronco ever to roll out of a Blue Oval factory. Shod with FOX shocks which permit yawning wheel travel, 37-inch all-terrain tires, and heavy-duty bash plates, this thing is ready to jump a few dunes and tear across wide-open spaces.

Under the hood is an engine not currently found in any factory Bronco – and it isn’t the mill your author thought would be residing between these flared Raptor fenders.

Well, that didn’t take long. Mere minutes after our post this morning about the upcoming Cadillac Escalade V, the brand dropped official images of the thing – much earlier in the day than expected. But if you think TTAC had anything to do with that decision, we’ve some bridges in which you may be interested. After all, no one at RenCen reads TTAC, right? Right? (*nudge, nudge, wink, wink*)

As for the upcoming Escalade V, it promises to be a ground shaker.

If you’re part of a weird Venn Diagram that’s been trying to figure out whether to pull the trigger on a CT5-V Blackwing or a new Escalade, it seems Cadillac is about to make your decision a whole lot easier. Later today, the luxury brand from Detroit will haul the covers off a powerful new variant of their biggest SUV.

It’s one of the industry’s worst-kept secrets that a new Toyota Sequoia is on the way within twelve months or so, likely sharing much with the just-released Tundra pickup truck. The company has now shared a typically shadowy teaser image of the upcoming rig, one which may not be as slab-sided as its forebear.

While the full-size Bronco might be one of the hottest games in town, its performance in some key safety measures failed to wholly impress the IIHS crash test dummies. Their major beefs? Headlights and whiplash.

If you’re looking to get behind the wheel of Honda’s entrant in the two-row midsize crossover segment, be prepared to open your wallet a bit further than last year. A first blush, it might appear as if Honda jacked prices skyward by five grand but the reality is actually a lot simpler – they simply binned the base model.