#crossover

The “made for China” Buick Encore won’t be the last gawky micro-crossover put out by General Motors. In addition to the Encore and the Opel Mokka, it looks like Chevrolet will join the party too – perhaps what should have happened right from the start.

The Infiniti JX marks the fourth SUV or crossover for the brand, slotting between the FX sporty crossover and the gargantuan QX56. According to Infiniti, the brand had nothing to stem the flow of customers who were dabbling outside the brand when it came time for a three-row luxury crossover. Instead of letting their clients go off and get an Acura MDX or Audi Q7, Infiniti took the underpinnings of the 2013 Nissan Pathfinder and co-opted them for a luxury vehicle.

The BMW X1’s launch in the United States was “postponed indefinitely” due to high demand in Europe, but now, BMW has inadvertently confirmed a launch date for the United States.

Along with a facelift, the 2013 Mercedes-Benz GLK soft-roader will get a BlueTEC diesel option in the United States, in addition to the standard 3.5L V6 gasoline engine (now making 302 horsepower and 273 lb-ft of torque).

Mercedes-Benz will no longer sell the R-Class crossover (minivan? SUV? wagon? we’re not sure) in the United States as of the 2013 model year. Slow sales meant it was hard to justify continuing sales of the car in America, but the R-Class will live on elsewhere.

Even though GMC made a fuss over their Terrain Denali, with its new 3.6L V6, this past week, the hot ticket seems to be the 4-cylinder Terrain, along with its Chevrolet stablemate, the Chevrolet Equinox.

Last May, I had the chance to drive the Range Rover Supercharged, the alpha dog of the Range Rover lineup. Though I was charmed by the incredible power and opulent cabin, I felt that the Range Rover was afflicted by a curse that affects many upper echelon vehicles – all the flash and features were spoilt by an underlying impracticality.

Hyundai’s Santa Fe crossover is long overdue for a re-design, and when pressed for details, all that CEO John Krafcik would tell me was that it looked like a larger Tucson. He was right.

In a very small way, my family was involved in bringing the Honda CR-V to North America. As Honda hemmed and hawed about bringing their first in-house SUV to the continent, they quietly shipped over a few right-hand drive examples in late 1995 for employees to evaluate. As a car guy with two kids, my father, who was Honda’s in-house attorney at the time, was a perfect candidate, and got the bright blue CR-V for a few days. Festooned with chrome accents, graffiti-like graphics, a JDM fender mirror and brush bars, the right-hand drive CR-V got lots of attention. The CR-V finally came to North America two years later, without all the awful acoutrements that Japanese versions had in spades.

What’s the difference between the Range Rover Evoque and the Nissan Murano CrossCabriolet? About $545, and the fact that people will actually buy the proposed convertible version of the Evoque, solely due to the “Range Rover” lettering on the front end.

Things Russia has that we don’t; oligarchy, grinding poverty, face control and the 2013 Mitsubishi Outlander. Wait, never mind. We have all of those!

The small crossover segment is heating up, with the Honda CR-V, Ford Escape and Mazda CX-5 squaring off as this year’s new entrants in an already crowded field. Starting at $20,695, the CX-5 will get class leading fuel economy numbers of 26/35 mpg thanks to the SKYACTIV 2.0L 4-cylinder engine – and a 6-speed manual gearbox.

The shifty definition of “truck” for the NACOTY Truck of the year awards means that car-based vehicles like the Ford Explorer and Range Rover Evoque are eligible to win the “Truck of the Year Award” – but not for much longer.