SUVs may not be to everyone’s taste, but to those who love these powerful motors with their four-wheel drives and loads of space for families and storage, they are vehicles they couldn’t imagine being without.
For folk who are yet to enjoy the wonders of owning an SUV, the question is, which is the best one to go for? Plenty of reviewers have had a go at answering this question, with the latest including the Daily Express and consumer group Cheat Sheet.
Curiously, the two produce completely separate lists, both based on driver intreviews. Cheat Sheet lists a top eight, based on a consumer satisfaction survey by polling organisation Consumer Reports. The Express lists six vehicles, three of which are compact SUVs and the others small SUVs.
The Cheat Sheet puts the Ford Flex eighth, with drivers praising its comfort and style but not necessarily its value. The Toyota Land Cruiser was seventh, with the Porsche Macam next, then the Honda CR-V, the Tesla Model X and then two Audis: in third was the Q7, which was described by Consumer Reports as “one of the best [vehicles] we’ve ever tested.” The Q5 was second, ranked highly for everything except value.
All this left the Mazda CX-5 in top spot, a vehicle not only scoring top marks for satisfaction, but one in which its makers had such confidence that at a recent promotional event in San Diego they brought out a series of competitors and invited those assembled to compare them.
On its own, this assessment may seem cut-and-dried, but the Express list is significantly different. It is based on the 2018 JD Power UK Vehicle Dependability Study, which examines the key question of reliability based on the number of driver reports of problems. In the compact category, it listed the VW Tiguan as the most reliable, followed by the Hyundai Tucson and the Nissan X-Trail.
Among small SUVs, it placed the Skoda Yeti top of the pile, ahead of the Vauxhall Mokka and the Renault Captur.
So there we have it: 14 different SUVs, and two kinds of criteria – a narrow one based on reliability and a wider one based on general customer satisfaction. That might seem a lot to choose from, but it can also be taken as an indicator that there are lots of very good choices out there.
What do you think is the best SUV on the market? Let us know in the comments below
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