Comparison Test: Small All-Wheel-Drive SUVs

It's getting hard to pin an SUV badge on the vehicles occupying most of the attention of American buyers these days. It used to be easy when all SUVs were modified body-on-frame pickup trucks with adventurous, outdoorsy names like Tahoe, Expedition and Durango. So what the heck does X5, FX45, CX-7 or RAV4 say?

We've gathered three such vehicles for this comparison: the all-new 2006 Toyota RAV4, the 2007 Hyundai Santa Fe and the 2007 Mazda CX-7. It'd be uncomplicated to call these three "mini SUVs," but when they're loosely based on midsize sedans Toyota Camry, Hyundai Sonata and Mazda 6, it'd be more correct to call them midsize crossovers.

Product planners and marketers are scrambling to come up with ever more specific categories, names and features for what many people, Inside Line included, have simply resigned themselves to calling "crossovers." Call them what you will — recreational activity vehicles, urban activity vehicles, sport activity vehicles — they're all based on the idea that a responsibly sized unit-body car is a better platform on which to build a vehicle for urban buyers who go to work five days a week, but who also aspire to be an active bunch that occasionally goes places and does things where all-wheel-drive traction and added ground clearance will come in handy.

Within this segment, the specific attitude and attributes of a vehicle boil down to sport, luxury, style, capability or some combination thereof. This comparison brings together the RAV4 Sport AWD, Hyundai Santa Fe Limited AWD and the Mazda CX-7 Grand Touring AWD. Each possesses all-weather all-wheel drive, a peppy engine, clever features and comparably affordable pricing hovering around $30,000 in as-tested configurations.

Testing
We lived with these three vehicles for two weeks: driving them to and from work in stop-and-go freeway traffic as well as loading them up for the weekend with car seats and family gear. Then, we subjected each participant to our normal battery of instrumented track testing.

Finally, as a test to see if each one could fulfill the promise of a minimum of off-highway use, we followed an 18.5-mile route (37 miles roundtrip) from a paved road to a barely discernible rock-strewn trail arriving at a shady campground above 6,000 feet elevation. This scenic mountain drive is rated "easy" in several off-road guides.

The moving target
Toyota takes credit for pioneering the car-based crossover with its RAV4, introduced a decade ago. Fair enough. Over the years, the amiable RAV4 has earned respect and sales success while it has increased in size and capability. For 2006, it's newly available with a sophisticated and powerful 3.5-liter V6.

Our tester combines this fresh engine and a revised "Sport" grade with its model-specific equipment and styling, plus automatically adjusting all-wheel drive. The RAV4 has come a long way from its cute and quirky beginnings and if you haven't driven one recently, you'd be shocked at how grown up it has become.

That's a Hyundai?
Hyundai joins the fray with a completely (and thankfully) redesigned and reengineered Santa Fe for 2007. Gone is the frumpy-faced styling and pre-dented plastic side cladding. The reinvented Santa Fe also finds some much needed motivation with a new 3.3-liter V6. And as is the Hyundai way, our Limited AWD tester was loaded with standard equipment and an impressive warranty. Where the RAV4 puts emphasis on sport, the Santa Fe follows a more luxurious path from the way it drives to its interior amenities.

A novel approach
Mazda announced there will be no Ford Escape-doppelgänger Tribute for the 2007-model year, taking a year off until the '08 model Tribute debuts, and frankly we don't mind a bit. In its place, the slightly more expensive but far more interesting CX-7 comes out swinging with an all-new rakish design and innovative driveline.

Resisting the temptation to wedge a V6 under its hood, Mazda instead looked to the turbocharged 2.3-liter four-cylinder engine and AWD making news and earning accolades in the Mazdaspeed 6 sedan. You might criticize the CX-7 for being neither fish nor fowl, but this identity crisis mirrors what we believe the public is now seeking — whether you realize it or not.

The artful dodger
As we discovered, each of these vehicles excels in a specific category or two, but one follows the straightest path that we believe is the shortest distance between what you need from an SUV and what you want in a car. In other words, the Mazda CX-7 more artfully and more repeatedly hits that sweet spot at the intersection of essential and aspirational qualities. More than a jambalaya with some of this and some of that, the CX-7 effectively crosses over categories with the expert agility seen from very few vehicles.

The manufacturers provided Edmunds these vehicles for the purposes of evaluation.