What does it say in the upper left hand corner? 
Clear as mud.
I’ll continue calling and thinking of our Crosstrek as a small wagon (as I considered my GTI), and our Forester an SUV.
Right, the SUV/CUV/Crossover naming as used in these cases is marketing department bulldada mostly to help sell the models to different segments of the public and sometimes as observed not even internally consistent.
Heck, go all the way back to the AMC Eagle (a Concord/Spirit given 4wd and lifted) back in the 1980s.
I believe the “arrived to stay” lead of the current version of that segment was the Subaru Outback, originally a lifted trim line of the Legacy wagon that as sales rose got spun off as a model designation in itself. I also notice, the category that once existed of the “5-door” sedan hatchback has for most purposes been entirely replaced by “crossovers” that don’t give you a proper full height cargo compartment because they have a raked rear roofline.
Then in between those and the proper trucks there are the ones that have the guts of the carmaker’s regular-car platforms but are specifically made in the configuration of a SUV, things like the Honda HRV.
Nevermind.
Chevy has the Malibu, Camaro, Corvette and technically the Bolt is a car. The Sonic is gone.
GMC has no cars.
Buick has no cars.
Cadillac has the CT4, CTV, and Celestiq.
Ford has no sedans, the Mustang is the only street legal car.
Lincoln has no cars. The MKZ is long gone.
Chrysler has the 300 but it has been discontinued as of 2023.
Dodge has the Charger and Challenger, but both have been discontinued as of 2023.
I’ll throw a few observations over the decades for my fellow Dopers to consider. These observations have come from watching little news features and stuff like 20/20 and Sixty Minutes and also from personal experiences.
Back in the mid-1980’s American-made trucks were big and powerful while Japanese import trucks were small, cheap, and sometimes even a joke in terms of hauling capacity. But they were cheaper and more fuel-efficient than the trucks America’s Big 3 were making and, for those who were filling the beds with pool-cleaning supplies and gardening gear rather than cinder blocks and forklifts (I’m exaggerating), they were quite sufficient. And they got more and more popular.
Camper-shells were available for the Big 3 trucks back in the 1970’s. I remember my neighbor putting a new shell on his Chevy (we called it the Green Machine because it had a lime-green paint job) and inviting us to join his kids on a test drive. We all piled into the back of the truck through a 4-foot tall door and sat on a bench that covered (and was supported by) the wheel-wells and we sat fully upright while zipping up the fire road of a local mountain. That shell extended forward over half the roof of the truck cab and, eventually, my neighbor put a panel/face there to make the extended space into useful storage, complete with cupboard doors he recycled from his remodeled kitchen.
My first automobile was a used Dodge D-50 sport truck. I wanted something I could use to haul stuff and maybe add gear and accessories for my altruistic efforts; the jump seats (what a ridiculous name!) of the Subaru Brat didn’t appeal to me at all. It got 23mpg on the highway and my brother laughed at that&, saying his used Capri got better than that in city traffic. He advised me to get a shell or tonneau cover so the air flowing over the cab and into the bed$ would kill my mileage less. I could afford a cover at the time, but not a shell.
But in the 1980’s camper shells were being made for the new imported trucks and also for the American Sport-Trucks that were being made to compete with the Japanese models. They were typically no taller than the top of the cab and the ‘doors’ were a flip-up window and the truck’s tailgate. At that time, sport-truck dealers and camper-shell sellers were different industries.
At some point one of the Big 3 must have said, “Hey, why don’t we just make a truck with a shell already on it?” The SUV was born!
As they were gaining popularity, one of the after-dinner-hour news programs ran a feature showing their investigations into a disturbing trend: These new SUVs couldn’t make J-turns (135-degree turns) at more than 35 miles an hour. They kept flipping over. And while the Big 3 manufacturers response was “Fine. Don’t do that.” the National Car Safety Bureau (or whatever the government calls it) was saying “No, that’s not a good enough response. Engineer them better.”
And SUV’s got bigger and Monster Trucks also became popular and got bigger. Both were very macho. And this was the early 1990’s and there were wars going on in the Middle East. Your mileage may vary, but I figured there was a correlation between us fighting to prove America’s superiority to those oil-rich nations and nationalistic citizens’ insistence on driving gas-guzzling machines.
And then there was another of those early evening news programs that talked about SUV’s and the odd fact that the Big 3 had managed to convince Congress that they were sedans built large rather than trucks modified to hold more people. The desired result (which they achieved) was that they were taxed as sedans – at a lower rate than trucks – which meant the manufacturers made better profits.
In the mid-1990s I returned from Japan to some weirdly interconnected bits of odd local news (different from the guy driving a stolen tank down the 163 freeway): There had been a bizarre accident in which a monster truck swerved left on the freeway, entered the emergency lane, snagged its giant wheels on the center divider but had its body continue to the left, and flipped over. It landed, cab down, atop a Cadillac convertible with it’s top down, instantly killing the driver who happened to have been my neighbor. What was very specific and weird, but apparently it wasn’t unusual enough. That was the last straw in a series of monster trucks flipping over and the City or County or State or National Highway Safety guys issued some kind of regulation that said the bottom of a truck’s fenders can’t be above the rim of its wheels.
Meanwhile, another controversy was rumbling. SUVs were suffering tire blow-outs and roll-overs. The Big 3 blamed Bridgestone for making shitty tires; Bridgestone blamed the Big 3 for making SUV’s with their centers-of-gravity too high and said their tires were fine. One of those late evening news programs reported that the inflation specifications issued by the Big 3 were far below the specifications issued by Bridgestone. [I’m not a statistics guy, but I’ll say it was something like ‘beyond acceptable variance’ or, you know…too far into the tail beyond the normal bell curve or – like I said, Statistics was ever my bane).
Around that time, I was riding a motorcycle and my friend kept pestering me about having low pressure in my tires. I argued that I got better traction without having to buy gummies (stickier racing-style tires) and he corrected me by noting that running tires with too little pressure puts more surface area on the road (good for traction, yes) but that also makes the rubber heat up more than they’re designed-for and increases the risk of a blow-out – very bad for a vehicle with only two wheels to begin with.@
So it seems the Big 3 had ‘solved’ their J-turn problem by making the shock absorbers spongier and having installers under-inflate the tires to give them better traction – but that under-inflation was leading to blow-outs and the spongier shocks allowed a crippled SUV to roll over more easily. Nevertheless, I believe the American Courts found Bridgestone to be at fault for those problems.
And the years rolled on and more and more automobile manufacturers added some kind of a _UV to their catalogue. And people started talking about planetary temperature increases correlating with human usage of petroleum and its byproducts.
And then 9/11 happened. And the USA went to war with Iraq. And to show support for the righteousness of that war, or at least support for US Troops, Americans started buying HMMWV-style vehicles for use on domestic roads. [To be fair, they were already being sold but they became a fad.] And for a while, nobody seemed to care about fuel efficiency ratings or automobile pollution.
The US Government had been thinking about pollution and fuel economies for a long time. My little 1982 Dodge failed to pass its Smog Test in the late 1980s. I was told it would have passed the year before (and it did pass the year before that) but the standards were getting increasingly strict so I could pay for an exception the first time it failed and then I would have to either get things fixed or give it up. That was one of many reasons I had to give it up.
There’s a thread around here that discusses Ford’s announcement that they were planning to stop offering cars by 2025 – except for their utility trucks, F### utility vehicles, and their signature Mustang. It dovetails quite nicely into this thread because, well, 2025 is just a year away. Naturally, Ford is giving all sorts of excuses and marketing spin and, naturally, the other two of the Big 3 are following suit.
But the fact of the matter is that their Big3 Lie, from back in the 1980’s, is now biting them in the a$$. Back then, they argued that these new configurations called SUVs were not trucks which were taxed more heavily, but sedans. Over the years, the world has tightened regulations on automobile fuel-efficiency and pollution output – particularly for sedans – and forty years later, they would rather drop sedans than admit they lied.%
On top of all this is the fact that the last two Democratic Presidents facilitated or enacted (certainly didn’t hinder) plans to get the USA to be less-dependent on fossil fuels. If I’m not mistaken, one of them said something like “every car manufacturer must offer an electric vehicle by 20XX” and, quite frankly, I don’t think it was very long before Ford said, “We’re going to stop offering sedans before that date.” I don’t know if that was just a decision of defiance, or of throwing in the towel and conceding that they couldn’t or wouldn’t figure out how to comply. Chevy has a decent Volt; I don’t know what else is offered from the original Big3, but it seems Ford refuses to play the game.
Last, but not least: I was recently trying to find a modern version of the old Toyota Longbed, and stumbled across a YouTube video called something like “Why aren’t there small trucks any more?” that explains that the US Government standards were foolishly designed in a way that requires manufacturers and importers to improve their trucks’ fuel efficiency – not as aggressively as the sedans, but improvements are required as well. The lovely table that the presenter shows includes exceptions for trucks with especially wide wheelbases and large hauling capacity.
The presenter focuses on this exception in order to claim the regulations force truck manufacturers to create behemoths and try to market them as appealing vehicles. I disagree. When I read that table, it appears to me that the figures were designed to provide an exception for the big industrial machines – cargo haulers and construction machines and construction industry utility vehicles – so that the regulations wouldn’t stifle the construction and service industries by taking away the machines they need to accomplish their goals. Doing so would force a lot of industries to grind to a halt and thereby seriously FCUK the economy. It seems to me that the civilian truck makers are claiming that they are making civilian trucks that fit the industrial truck specifications and then generating a market appeal, but they are really gaming the system, merely doing an end-run around the fuel-efficiency and smog-reduction regulations because they lack the will to invest in the research to make their engines so efficient that they can satisfy the requirements for small trucks.
–G!
& I have a blurb out there in the My Favorite Vehicle thread, in which I brag about out-sprinting two huge trucks. I won’t rehash it here, but I can only guess those other two trucks were getting worse mileage than my little Dodge.
$ He was not familiar with the pressure-bubble that builds up back there to create an aerodynamic effect. Neither was I; I didn’t learn about that until decades later, when a friend showed me research on a Tundra enthusiast site.
@ In contrast, gummies use a sticker rubber compound but they are engineered to account for the stickiness versus the surface-contact friction and heating. And, for that matter, my friend reminded me that I was on a commuter motorcycle, not a track-racing rice-burner, so standard road tires with standard inflation should be quite fine for my needs.
% I suspect if they did so they’d face stiff fines and maybe even be required to recalculate taxes owed on sales for the last couple decades. That could make them bankrupt. They might even face some serious PR backlash if they had to admit that, as well. That would further stifle their income. [But this is all wild speculation.]
Might you have the wrong measurement units? 300 cm is 3 meters, or just shy of 10 feet.
A quick search gives me 202″ L x 75″ W x 62″ H for an 09 Taurus and 175″ L x 71″ W x 68-70″ H for an 09 Escape. The Escape is substantially shorter, four inches narrower, and only about half a foot higher. Not sure where Sam got his numbers; my first thought was a typo of 30 cm but it’s really closer to 70 cm. Unless there was a big difference in the Canadian spec for those models and the Escape was a foot longer.
The difference is probably the moose guard on the front. 
I think I added a zero. It should be 30cm. But I can’t remember which exact model years were compared. The point remains that the Escape is significantly shorter than a Taurus, and WAY shorter than a large sedan like a Crown Vic.
I had an Escape and a Taurus parked side by side in my garage for a few years. The difference in length was very obvious.
My current Escape (2014) is only a couple of inches longer than my wife’s 9-2X, which is basically a compact Subaru WRX hatchback. Unless I am driving fast for fun, I much prefer driving the Escape around town.
For the people that don’t understand US car regulations:
An SUV is a car that can be fitted through the “light truck” loophole in CAFE standards.
The term SUV has no meaningful engineering (or even marketing) meaning. It has jack-all to do with construction or anything that is not purely legalese.
I had a '79 Brat, which is clearly not a car but calling it a pickup would be absurd. There is a very narrow category of vehicles for which “SUV” could mean something. Most things that are called that these days, though, really seem to be just slightly reshaped cars.
That’s comparing and older car with a newer one, designed with the new safety practices in mind and an estate/wagon vs a larger hatchback, not an SUV, so the difference in mass isn’t that great (I bet the Renault would have fared much worse against a great big land rover or hummer from the same era as that Volvo). With cars designed in the same era, with similar safety features, it does all boil down to physics (mass and center of gravity).
I always wondered what to call those Brats. Pickups? The VW Golf pickup is a… pickup. But yes I see how that is absurd.
Yesterday’s Brat is today’s Hyundai Santa Cruz
Funny, but wiki calls the BRAT a coupé utility, while it calls the Hundai Santa Cruz a pickup truck. Doesn’t make it right, though.
Today’s paper had a review of the new Crosstrek - referred to it as an SUV.
Makes sense - and manufacturers have kept the design because “it’s what you expect” or something.
That’s interesting because my new Outback has a deep footwell. I’m coming from a Grand Cherokee which did not have that. After 5,000 miles I am still getting used to that.
I think tall lips under the doors / deep footwells also have a “structural function” iow probably increase torsion resistance of the body by making more solid “corners” that keep the body more square in off-camber situations.
to visualize:
I agree 100%. While it may have helped in stream crossings, I don’t think that’s the primary reason.
And the auto section in yesterday’s paper had a review of “Crossover SUVs.” From memory, it referred to prior models as “jacked up station wagons.”
Especially in old-school Jeep-type vehicles where doors and roofs were not a permanently attached part of the vehicle.