10 most underrated SUV and crossover models - why aren’t you buying these? CarsGuide Podcast #228

[Music] it's time to strap in for another edition of the cars guide podcast the show that takes you beyond the test drive this is episode number 228 top 10 most underrated suvs i'm cars guy deputy editor james cleary and joining today to look at the suvs that we think deserve more love than they're currently getting our senior editor tim nicholson hello and our fearless leader editor mel flynn hi everyone thank you james we'll also take a look at the fresh metal we've been driving this week and unearth the comment of the week youtubers you can jump ahead to each section of the show via the time codes in the notes or chapter markers in the timeline so let's go this is really a game of automative show and tell which should be fun because each of us have identified three underrated suvs ones we believe are underrated anyway and we don't know each other's nominees what we do know is there are no double ups or overlaps because our news team is currently pulling together a story looking at this exact topic a news editor tung has been the impartial gatherer of ours and other content so the plan is to take turns announcing a contender until all nine are on the table then we'll have a special tenth to round out the list so i want to start with you tim kick us off with your first low profile suv that should have celebrity status look jc email excuse me as i choke start talking um uh that's probably appropriate actually because you might think i'm going a little crazy when i say some of these things but i stand by these decisions i think um i'm pretty confident look the first one is an interesting one we're starting right at the kind of entry level of the suv segment in fact this model is the most affordable suv you can buy as a new vehicle in australia and that is the suzuki ignis wow okay cool i was i was wondering what kind of response i got in both of your faces yeah yeah let's see look is it an suv sort of it's you know really it's kind of a jacked up hatchback but um i think it's a really adorable design i love suzuki's kind of current generation very japanese micro light cars i give it more sorry i'll give it more suv cred than a subaru xv well right in that you know it's it's fundamentally an suv that's that's a whole other discussion isn't it what is an suv these days but yes sorry sorry no no it's it's a very very good point um look it's such an affordable little car it's just gone up in price but it still starts just a tick under 20 000 um that's for the manual i don't think many people will be buying that manual but it's the only suv under 20 000 in australia and for a little city car that's incredibly economical um i i just think it's really really hard to beat um you know people can go and look at a light hatchback a micro hatchback or anything like that i think this is a really good option especially if you kind of want to stand out a bit and i think the ignis does that really really well it doesn't have a an end cap rating at all it's unrated um so i can't talk to the the safety credentials of the car but um we can say it lacks a bit of active safety yeah look yeah it's a few years old now isn't it yeah it's getting on a bit but um look i drove it i think the year before last or last year whenever the facelift came out and it's just such a fun zippy little card right i'm a big fan of this car do you know what it makes me think it's one of the few escapees from the japanese domestic market that that's made it here you know it's representative of those very quirky charismatic individual little cars that we don't see i love the look of it too i'm with you and full of design details that refer to a historic suzuki model that no one's ever heard of that's right my favorite kind of retro obscure retro yeah okay well that is a flying start thank you tim uh mel the first cab off your rank please okay i'm gonna cheat and i can feel you groaning already james but i'm gonna nominate an entire brand's lineup of suvs is underrated and this will come as no surprises to a surprise to regular podcast listeners but i'm going to say the three peugeot suvs 2008 3008 5008 not an end in sight there mind you you're well said well said um all of them are really good suvs for their class uh dripping with design appeal inside and out specific design detail like you wouldn't mistaken them for any other brand even though i think all three of them um have citroen cousins within the that is so true that's true that's a good point you may not confuse them with any of their citroen counterparts yeah only problems are they tend to be pretty dear um very few dealers relative to to other bigger brands uh and i don't think they're very well marketed right but but like whenever we drive them we just rave about them don't we yeah the the only sticking point i have with peugeot currently is the eye cockpit and it's every time i get in one with the small steering wheel and the main instruments up above the rim of the wheel maybe it's just the construction of my body but i find it hard to get a comfortable position and much in all this historically a small steering wheel means sporty and racy and all that stuff for me it's a bit too close to your lap and it's a bit too small and it's just not my thing yeah sorry that that does need to be mentioned and i completely agree even though my torso length is seemingly perfect for it i see it's just mark that down mel has a perfect torso length it's awesome he's always thought i'm with you though i actually love the icock pit and i'm a big fan of the peugeot suvs and i was looking at vfx the other day and i think the five is so five double away what do you call it five thousand eight sorry thousand eight is like the slowest selling suv in its class and i just think that's sad right right because you know we know that in other markets particularly the domestic market peugeot is a titan you know in in the french market and across europe um into the uk as well i mean it's just such an enormous brand and it's been here for so long but it remains a tiddler you know it's it's really a billiard blip and part of that is because the decades of lackluster offerings you know it's it's it's kind of burnt lots of people uh but like it also represents an amazing recovery like where have these come from you know yeah yeah interesting all right now can i tip in my first uh nominee which is ford escape good one you've got you've got the base you've got st line um front wheel drive you've got vignale all-wheel drive petrol and plug-in hybrid 50 kilometer ev range you've got a price band from roughly 36 to 50k to me it looks good it's in a white hot market segment but it's almost like a well-kept secret you know it's it's one of those ford models a bit like mondeo used to be great car but no one knew about it because it was almost lurking in the shadows rather than being given prominence um by the brand um great steering dynamics in general the all-wheel drive is a bit more composed than the front wheel drive but lots of turbo torque lots of safety it's got to look going for it that two liter petrol is a real important difference and you know really responsive it's like they've forgotten to you know calibrate the throttle response for the window sticker like everyone else yeah made it good yeah i mean the sports car the puma gets so much love in terms of profile within the ford lineup it's it's just almost like the forgotten child and and i think it's got a lot to offer plenty of space more than 400 litres in the boot for for a relatively small vehicle is pretty good the sliding rear seat thing um so you can adjust rear seating and and load space um all kinds of storage it's got sync 3 for the the multimedia um cap price servicing yeah so many reasons to buy but just lots of ford dealerships around for support yep yeah i think though i do worry about ford's marketing because they focus so much on ranger and everest and then you have these brilliant cars like this and as you mentioned jc the puma yeah like focus on these cars i emphasize the word focus because that's no love from board and where is it now and it's just so it's so infuriating well i suppose it's easy to be the marketing director when you're outside the company there's a finite number of dollars and i suppose do you play to your strength or do you try and you know bring up some of the weaker players and if if you want to fish where the fish are it's ranger uh at the moment and maybe a bit of mustang and others thrown in you know and it would come down to what detroit is which string detroit wants to pull i suppose yeah exactly exactly anyway there's my great one okay so we are back to you tim uh for your second please well this is uh quite interesting that mel flynn said this earlier because mine is the citroen c4 ah good on you great so you know this is another one is this an suv this car is the definition of a crossover because it's like a hatchback and a wagon and an suv and a coupe all rolled into one okay um you know we've we've all seen the vehicle it's a very unusual looking vehicle it's not even necessarily to my taste design wise but at least it's different and it gives you know that the citroen buyers don't want to blend in like that the previous c4 was so generic looking whereas this is like what is that yeah um i drove it recently and i drove it not long after the 2008 which i i really sorry sorry 2008 and you know that those vehicles very closely related 1.2 litre turbocharged engine in both of them but the version of the 2008 that i drove had quite a firm ride i think it was one of the higher grade ones and this thing because it's a citroen because they've got that suspension set up beautiful awesome it's beautiful as a brand standard hey honestly because it's got that engine is so responsive this the cabin is quite spacious it's got a decent amount of um boot space i just was i was like why why are you not on in more driveways because no one knows there's no one knows the citron brand is is really existing sadly yeah what color was yours tim that weird burnt orange yeah they're all that orange and i reckon that undersells it i think i think they should just come straight out and call it weird burnt orange so you tick that box um on the option page that would be good it had me ticking it but everyone's already had a go at burned orange like two generations worth of it you know holden's done it volvo's done it everyone's still doing what's done yeah exactly i think to you on citrine give us a pestle or something you know to your point i reckon even though they're now part of the stalantis conglomerate you know they're obviously twinned peugeot and citroen and and they do so well with those small capacity engines they've made it their business to make those engines drivable while they're economical yeah that's been a gun ever since it first appeared in the 308. renault needs to learn a few lessons from uh it's french proving it can be done you're right okay very good okay that's a cracker thank you mel the wheel has spun back around to you what is your next one please another one that comes up often in this point were you waiting for a drum roll then you were maybe if matt pritchard can find that effect great i was filling my lungs with oxygen before i unfurl anyway uh in a nutshell or anywhere whatever shell uh skoda kodiak ah these show which you know like there's a few of these sort of um segments splitting seven seaters around yeah that's very easy to overlook you know it's not a mid-size it's not a proper large but i mean i lived with one for three months i think it was and like still relatively compact outside but a really usable interior yeah really great boot space you know anything that grows from golf tends to have uh really good packaging because yes you know it's all just bonuses as soon as it gets bigger um but also really clever details you know skoda is famous for the rubbish been in the door but umbrellas in the doors as well you know like a rolls royce um you know mine had um like device holders in the back of the the seats yeah um you know which can put anything from an ipad to a phone i was gonna say what kind of device now but yes i presume it's some kind of multimedia device there you go really really clever thing and you know for anyone who needs occasional use seven seats but is daunted by a large vehicle or is wanting to avoid you know perpetrating you know environmental crimes by trying something driving something giant yes uh it's a very clever clever car i reckon you make a good point it's that word occasional i think people need to be quite pragmatic and realistic when they buy a seven seater because typically that will be occasional seating so why go to a massive vehicle to get seven seats when you know that you're only going to use them once in a while and probably for kids you know and yeah no matter how big the car is the only people willing to or keen to go all the way back there climb over the second row tend to be kids and they love it yeah yeah there you go there you go all right well that's a beauty now can i just chuck in though however with the uh i should point out though that with the uh the current model you need to spend kodiak rs money which is still a small sum to get blind spot monitoring and recross traffic alert standard otherwise it's optional but something to be mindful of because that should be standard for the price very good okay good to call that out now i am going to go with here we are back at number six uh merck glb glb all right because from mercedes-benz's point of view it seems to be all about the gla and the glc and b is the forgotten letter in the mercedes-benz suv alphabet i for one love the way it looks i quite like that upright stance it's to me feels assertive the cool nose and tail treatment it's seven seater you know the second row moves four and aft 565 litre boot lots of screens the flexibility it's 64 to 78k is the spread across various models and if you want to get your you know glb 35 4matic that's a bit under 100k but i like the glb and i feel like it's just a forgotten offering another really good example of compact exterior dimensions clever interior yeah yeah look you have my heart now jc i love this thing it's a great car yeah i agree and it's i drove the the 250 and i thought that was a really just such a sweet little car well the 250 as i understand it i was getting a little bit confused but i think it's the two liter turbo petrol um and a front wheel drive or all-wheel drive no all-wheel drive all-wheel drive yeah maybe you can get both and but the 200 is a 1.3 litre turbo petrol so it's got to be a triple right yeah that's the renault sourced engine which is okay like the a-class which hasn't got many fans from the a-class right right but okay the four-cylinder yeah can i just say it really strikes me as a classic mercedes example of form conserve function consideration informing the form yeah um and i think that sort of clever thinking helped build the mercedes brand and i think it's it's a it's a nice little acknowledgement of that i just love the way it looks too just on an emotional level i really really like it all right so there we go we're six down and we've got a few to go and tim we're back to you well i'm going for my final uh choice is a korean brand um you might think they're doing very well in the sales uh so how can this be underrated well i'm talking about the other korean brand and that is sanyong and i'm talking about the kurando right oh great great so this is their mid-size offering so it's in cx-5 rav4 territory um but it's priced from twenty nine thousand dollars drive away and it tops out at forty grand drive away yep five star end cap safety um you've got like heated seats across the entire range 1.5 litre turbo petrol and there's a diesel for the higher grade ones it is packed with features and it actually drives really well as well um is it class leading absolutely not but it's it's a good site better than perhaps some of its chinese competitors i would line up that older japanese competitors 100 percent right 100 i'd probably have that over a next current model x trail to be quite honest the crando it feels like there's some underground club where only members of that club know about corando and they buy it and they love it and and there's lots of positive vibe around it but it's just not a big deal in the broader kind of market once again um relative lack of marketing perhaps they do yeah yeah i mean people just don't know that brand do they or they might be like oh senor that was the thing you know 20 years ago or something didn't they turn into daewoo yeah don't they make uh consumer electronics like tvs and radios and stuff no no they make cars oh okay yeah yeah exactly yeah that's great how do you very much kind of under the radar yes that vehicle but look it's i i think it's a it's a really good thing and deserves a lot more attention perfect perfect that's a beauty all right now back to you all right quick one mazda68 another segment splitter they do sell pretty well but i just want to highlight that the base sport so the petrol front-wheel drive sport with cloth seats little wheels but still all the important safety gear is still priced at 39 990 and it's a 7-seater that's good and i've i've had three child seats across the back seat it's got all the cabin length of a cx-9 it's only shorter than a cx-9 in its nose length which only makes it easy to park um smart car not an obvious choice very good okay love it now i'm gonna finish off our nine mini countrymen now what i will say about the countryman is really it's an acquired it's an acquired taste but it's good in so many ways i mean right now for 52k drive away for the cooper you can have a mini countryman um they're pushing the mini thing as much as you'd want to with this car you know but it's cool for those who are into that tightly designed look and feel i think many a few years ago a good few years ago went too far with that little coupe and roadster it was bmw imposing itself on minions saying we need a million derivatives of this we need to make everything out of mini i think minnie's got a bit more sensible about that in more recent times but i like the customization of mini in general the personality of this car it's a 450 litre boot all of them get roof rails you've got various models through base and then s and cooper s no what do you got then hybrid and jcw so it's got a lot to offer and i think people are not quite polarized but you're either a mini person or you're not but i think that the countryman has quite a lot to offer yeah my only argument against countryman is the the grey area about its active safety like right and cap gives it points for um aeb but bmw and mini sorry um are a bit loose around the effectiveness of it you know whether it's emergency braking whether it will stop the car actually pull it up to a full hole yeah yeah whereas you know basements to cx3 i think even the base one has rear aeb right um anyway but um agreed yep unsung hero even though my money would be on a clubman but that's not an suv or that yeah and you know when it when it comes to emotional i like the original clubman the the first clubman with the offset doors oh yeah i really enjoyed that one um brown barn door back doors all that stuff loved it yeah um all right so there's our nine i can feel people already you know uh grinding their teeth or loving what we're saying or whatever but to get to a nice round number i'm gonna i'm gonna propose a tenth um and that is the passat all track oh good one you know what you did there okay so to me it's like a a well-priced all-road you know you you're getting um the all-wheel drive you're getting the flexibility of a car that you can take on loose surfaces some some very light off-highway kind of duty if you like the skiing you can go there without any dramas and yet it functions as a normal wagon so easily as well i really like the idea of that car and i think it's um pitched at a common sense level um rather than stepping all the way up to an audio road surrounded by unpainted plastic which is great for dirt roads yes relatively low center of gravity compared to a full scale suv but i do know that when you get cars off and now you are prone to painting the plastic you mentioned that earlier off here off air so if it's unpainted plastic they sometimes go back to volkswagen with all of that painted but um anyway yeah that passat is such a good thing like i i think that the sap range generally is fairly underrated and yeah yeah i totally support that choice 100 there we go so there's our top 10 most underrated suvs tell us what you think in the comments you might make comment of the week you never know but we will now move on to our own garage and cars that we have been driving recently and now could i kick off with you please it's an american machine fill us in jeep compass trail hawk yep which is a very interesting car in that it is the as tim pointed out in his recent review the sole remaining diesel available in its class you can only get it as a diesel um so it's pretty pricey at 52 000 um and look the thing is the compass when it launched four and a half years ago wasn't the greatest car it wasn't a new segment benchmark or anything like that and even after last year's facelift it's still not yeah but very expensive and right so the the trail hawk uh the other unique element is that it's kind of um you know suitable for off-road you know it's got highway terrain tyres a bit of ground clearance it's got um big red recovery points front and rear uh but is that what people want to do with the car in its class sure sure is that what people choose a forester for sure uh i'm not sure but as as tim pointed out in his review the looks good has everything right on paper good packaging etc but craic it's expensive and it feels old unfortunately and i drove it home yesterday in the rain and i haven't run a fuel figure yet but i know tim uh i think you've got an 11.2 test figure which which is a lot for any car of that size regardless of whether it's petrol or diesel so you know i think a diesel would be impressive um and the official figure 6.9 so anyway questionable it's quite clattery for a diesel okay it strikes me as an old design um but also those highway terrain tyres and the wet i've found them to be lacking right right maybe climbing hills but i found them to be lacking and it really says to me that jeep really needs to refresh its its mainstream model lineup you know we're about to see grand cherokee finally in australia uh next month uh we know it's pretty pricey but i really hope it can justify that price interesting do you know whenever i hear the word or the description trailhawk i think of our uh mutual acquaintance tim keane who once edited top gear australia magazine the best caption he ever came up with was of a trailer like he said a jeep it was the caption of a picture he goes a jeep on a trail missing a hawk i thought it was brilliant okay now uh thank you very much mel we'll move on to you what's been occupying uh your mind uh for the last week or so so the last few days i've been behind the wheel of uh speaking of uh mills mazda chat earlier this is the freshly updated cx-5 medium suv and the grade that i've been in is the akira and it's the so it's a turbocharged petrol all-wheel drive so it's the flagship of the range i think it's the most expensive oh sorry the diesel akira uh all drive is a few hundred more okay um it's 53 grand before onward costs which is a decent amount of money for a cx-5 but you know it's very well kitted out and and the updates brought some pretty subtle styling changes uh but i actually think they work quite well like the headlights and the taillights they've kind of squared off those and i think that looks really good um but the body paint on the cladding below is a bit controversial i don't know what you guys think of that mel mel just takes matters into his own hands and breaks out the paintbrush honestly honestly or the opposite all right and you're the paint stripper anyway it's such a good thing like you know this current cx-5 has been around for a few years now there's newer competition but um again i haven't spent an insane amount of time behind the wheel but the time that i have i just forgot how good it is it's really quiet it's so that engine is so responsive and the clever engine is smooth delivery that transmission like i could not fault that drivetrain in any way shape or form the ride is good despite the wheels and just to remind everyone it's basically putting the cx-9 engine in the cx-5 yeah yeah yeah yeah that's right you know like a big comfortable talky thing that just delivers its power you know the other thing is in a smaller package from a from a you know reputational point of view cx5 is almost rav4 like in the sense that it has such respect in the market people just roll into another one because they've had such a good experience with the car before the and the whole mazda experience is a positive one for them it's got so much momentum in that way as well totally and even size wise you know it's not one of the biggest medium suvs out there for me i think it's a perfect size parking it is great you know in a few months we're going to see the cx-60 which will sit a little bit above that as minister's first real premium offering um so it's going to be interesting to see if that has any impact on cx-5 sales but bloody good car so many tiers so much slicing and dicing yeah can i just ask tim what color is your cx5 well you'll be shocked to know mel that it is uh soul red crystal excellent all right that doesn't offend me but but the reason why i ask is they're getting a bit adventurous in their colors and i saw one yesterday in the new kind of metallic coffee color yeah oh yeah they're also doing that weird burnt orange as well which is uh i don't know how many people are going for it sorry that was a joke that felt massively flat okay before shutting the garage door i'll just sneak this one in the skoda kodiaq sport line so there we go now one of your one of your nominees so this one it's a bit over fifty four thousand dollars um two liter four cylinder turbo seven speed dual clutch 132 kilowatts 320 newton meters all-wheel drive um the plus is for me it's seven seat it's it's got the seven seats in a relatively compact package and as you mentioned earlier it's classic skoda helpful common sense design you've got those little scuff protectors that come out from the front doors um that's genius um a couple of glove boxes the umbrella was missing from my test car somewhat obviously in all the wet weather in sydney had decided that they just wanted to keep that and use it i was very annoyed but it's it's comfortable uh super well-equipped screens this car i thought looked great because you get the sportline kind of black graphics and the car itself was magic black pearl in terms of its color and it looked great this synthetic suede material with leather on the seats as well 20 inch rims it really has presence visually the thing i found from on the negative side was in normal mode it tends to bog down just in the standard drive mode you put your foot on the accelerator and you want it to go and it sort of thinks about it for half a beat or maybe even longer and that's frustrating in the sport mode it's not so much it it gets revved up a little quicker um there is the rs if you want even more grunt but i noticed that on several occasions and you just grabbed sport mode just by pulling the transmission lever down to s yeah yeah it's such a great volkswagen group trick so brings them to life and i've found that in the you mentioned that the balance between normal and sport these days is much better than it was maybe five to ten years ago it was sport was quite aggressive and normal was very passive and economy focused they've blended those a little better now but anyway i just found that the car would would hesitate before it picked up the throttle and went i think it's an impressive family option but it's got tough competition you know you think about tiguan all space but it's high quality and a thoughtful kind of in very much in line with the skoda ethos it's uh it's a well thought out option as far as i'm concerned yeah and there are a few more in that class you know outlander has seven seat option yeah uh x trail and we're about to get a new x trail yep uh but it's only a smidge smaller than santa fe and sorrento in reality yeah yeah yeah anyway it was an interesting drive i was i was pretty impressed with it okay now talking about whether people are impressed or not it's time for comment of the week and comment of the week is sitting on top of the shipping container at the front of the car's guide forecourt there's bunting balloons here it comes so we had gerard 2 give us a rating for the podcast of five stars so what he said was this podcast is lighthearted yet i still learn something each time i listen they have really interesting and real life topics don't take themselves too seriously and have fun a great listen each week so i think that's actually crafty's mum so thank you mrs craft i could always masquerading as uh gerard ii but that was an apple podcast uh review which i thought was worth giving ourselves a bit of a pat on the back with and look with that we have reached the finish line so i want to say thank you tim thank you jc and thank you mel you're welcome james and thanks to it and thanks to our production practitioner dark sky defender and duck master mr pritchard for his dedication to podcast craft skills today he's wearing a t-shirt saying duct tape can't fix stupid but it can muffle the sound laser pants and chewbacca boots nothing like a pair of wookies on your feet jump into the conversation cars guide is on facebook and instagram or email us at comments at carsguy.com dot a u apple podcast listeners please take a moment to rate and review the show five stars is the preferred number thank you if you enjoyed the episode make sure to subscribe to the cars guide youtube channel so you can stay on top of all our latest content but before we go i made a bet with my neighbor that he couldn't get his car out of the garage within two minutes as soon as we shook hands you could see the regret spreading across his face we both knew there was no way he could back out of it oh [Music] you

Channel: CarsGuide

Views: 41,406

Keywords: CarsGuide, CarsGuide.com.au, car podcast, car show, SUVs, family cars, small cars, 7 seat cars, Citroen, C4, Ford, Escape, Mazda, CX-8, Mercedes-Benz, GLB, Mini, Countryman, Skoda, Kodiaq, SsangYong, Korando, Suzuki, Ignis, Volkswagen, Passat, Peugeot, 2008, 3008, 5008, Jeep, Compass, CX-5

Id: hauqQz9TTIw

Length: 33min 44sec (2024 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 29 2022