The Rise of the SUV
Do you know when SUVs became SUVs? Sound confusing? Let me explain.
SUVs (Sport Utility Vehicles) have grown in popularity in the past two decades. Having ground clearance, a better sense of safety, larger cargo space, along with decent power and fuel economy, is a recipe that has fed consumers and grown the market. So much so, that it is nearly impossible to have a brand without some kind of SUV in its lineup, because it is a market demand.
There are two more crucial ingredients to that recipe that fed the modern-day SUV success – size and drivability.
Before the mid-to-late 1990s, SUVs were commonly just seen as boxy vehicles that drove like trucks, paired with poor fuel economy that comes along with hauling what is essentially a truck. Think 1980s/90s Chevrolet Tahoe, Blazer, Toyota Land Cruiser, Jeep Grand Cherokee and so on.
All of these vehicles drove like trucks because they were a body-on-frame platform, when, paired with their engines, they were basically trucks with interior cargo spaces in place of beds.
A body-on-frame platform means the body of the vehicle (cabin or bed) is bolted to the frame that has the suspension and drivetrain. Trucks are famously made this way due to better off-road and towing capabilities.
Cars, for the most part, are unibody – meaning the frame and body of the car are molded as one, and there is no disconnect. This, in turn, offers better handling, comfort, lightness and better safety due to the architecture and crumple zones.
The problem is body-on-frame platforms on the road aren’t as comfortable and they don’t handle as well as driving a car that is a unibody, and they’re not as fuel efficient. SUVs from 30-40 years ago were definitely utilitarian because of their truck platform, but not everyone who desired the cargo space wanted the drawbacks of a truck. But something changed and flipped the market in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Lexus debuted the RX300, Acura launched the three-row-seating MDX, Honda targeted the compact SUV market with the CR-V and Toyota with the RAV4. These vehicles and others that followed changed the trajectory of the market because they were no longer on a truck platform.
They were all unibody-based, which meant they drove more like cars with the added benefit of being an SUV. Additionally, due to the unibody design, manufacturers were able to extract more interior cabin and cargo space.
As a result, some models were fitted with a fuel-efficient 4-cylinder engine, while the larger unibody SUVs were fitted with a V6. On top of all that, unibody SUVs could be optioned with all-wheel drive to tackle the winter weather or light off-roading.
This all culminated in today’s SUV market. Which is why even Porsche, a sports car brand from birth, now has SUVs in their lineup.
