Around town, the SRX fears neither pothole nor rippled pavement.

What’s perhaps most impressive of all about the Q5 isn’t that it would blow the minds of the average car buyer of fifty years ago, of course, but that it’s an outstanding product even for today.

There’s nothing quite like the confidence of driving with all four wheels.  Case in point:  2004 Audi A4 versus surprise early-spring Michigan snowstorm. As the snow came down and the salt trucks were sluggish to respond, drivers were fishtailing left and right.  The medians were full of overconfident sport-utes. Meanwhile, our serene silver sedan plowed through the worst of it without a complaint, illustrating the results of Audi’s long-term love affair with all-wheel drive.

The A4 is Audi’s lowest-priced entry into the sports sedan market, and it’s a familiar face. Getting …

To say that Porsche fans were upset when the sports car manufacturer announced that it would be introducing an SUV is a bit of an understatement. The Porsche faithful were downright horrified. A Porsche sport-ute was the answer to a question that no one had asked. Oh, sure, the all-wheel drive 911 is cool, but Porsche’s not known for building vehicles with four usable seats, let alone four doors, a sizeable cargo area, and off-road ability. It just isn’t done. Until now.

Although the hard-core Porsche …

Introduced in 2002, Saturn’s first SUV has been keeping up nicely with the times.  The VUE sport-ute is a pavement-oriented compact trucklet with Saturn’s signature plastic body panels and a continuously variable transmission that help to separate it from the “soft-roader” herd.

The big news for 2004?  More power, refinement and a hot-rod version.  Saturn’s installed a 250-horsepower V6 in the VUE, for a 69-horse power boost.  Materials inside the VUE have been improved to combat complaints of cheap-feeling interior parts.  Saturn’s Red Line performance series will also debut on the …

Any video game fan knows about “easter eggs” and “cheat codes,” those secret commands that can be used to reveal more powerful weapons on many electronic games.  If there were such a thing as a cheat code for economy cars, the result would look a lot like the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution.  This Lancer seems to have undergone a rapid transformation from “normal” to “attack” mode.

That’s because, unlike all of the Honda Civics and Nissan Sentras running around with spoilers and scoops and big wheels, the Lancer Evolution is actually based …

Mitsubishi’s Endeavor doesn’t look like anything else.  Considering the extremely crowded nature of the mid-size sport-ute market, that’s probably a good thing.  Our first reaction was, admittedly, to think it was ugly, but the design grew on us after a while.  The Endeavor’s good road manners and powerful 3.8 liter V6 didn’t hurt in winning us over, either.

The Endeavor is one of the latest entrants into the “soft-roader” class of mid-sized sport-utility vehicles that have been bred for life in the suburbs, rather than bashing through the boonies.  Although the …

The guy at the transmission shop rushed out to get a look at the Toyota Matrix.  “What is it?” he asked.  “It’s pretty cool.  Is it a four or a V6?”  A grizzled diesel mechanic had a similar reaction when he saw our dark blue test car on his lot.  “Is it a four-by-four?” he asked.

Not bad curb draw for a vehicle that’s basically a glorified Corolla wagon, eh?
Oh, right, we know, it’s called a “crossover” and all sorts of other hip-sounding things, but the fact of the matter is, …

Subaru’s Outback spawned a whole category of imitators when it appeared on the scene offering some of the versatility of a sport-ute without the tradeoffs in ride and handling. Big-tired, all-wheel-drive station wagons have become almost as common as Ford Explorers, and the combination of carlike ride and off-road ability could be said to have inspired the Toyota Highlander, Lexus RX300, and other “soft-utes.”  Subaru lays claim to inventing the “sport utility wagon” niche (although we think that if AMC were still in business, they might dispute that, citing their …

After two years of beating up on unsuspecting (and more expensive) German sports sedans, the Subaru WRX’ natural enemy has finally arrived on our shores, with Mitsubishi’s announcement that it will be bringing its rally-bred Lancer Evolution to the U.S. this year.  Unfortunately for Mitsubishi, the WRX hasn’t grown fat and placid on its steady diet of hapless Nissan Sentra SE-Rs and Audi A4s.  Quite the opposite, in fact.  Even as the Lancer Evolution is getting geared up, an even angrier WRX is making its debut.

If the all-wheel drive, 227-horsepower …