Believe it or Not, You Can Have an SUV and Economy, Too

About a decade ago, both Honda and Toyota came up with a bright idea about the same time (it sometimes happens like that in the industry). The basic idea was this: 1. take a standard car chassis like the Camry or Accord; 2. peel away the body; 3. add a part-time universal and half-shafts; 4. add some electronics, and voila, you have a mini-SUV.

Honda called its 1997 entry the CR-V, while Toyota called theirs the RAV4. Either way, they were vehicles that made a lot of sense then and still continue to make sense today. And, while we're getting a bit ahead of ourselves here, the reason they continue to make sense is that they offer sensible size; room for five; a nice level of amenities, and all-wheel-drive. All of this is in a package that's car-sized and very stable and in a vehicle that you could term an SUV (now more fashionable a crossover), instead of the stodgy old term station wagon (think about what they looked like and they were still wagons).

Getting back to our main thread, here, Honda continued to develop its basic line and kept the basic outline for a little under a decade. It was a two-box design. The first box was the engine compartment, while the second was the passenger compartment/luggage space. Toyota, too, used the two-box design to its fullest. (A three-box design, by the way, is where you have an engine compartment, passenger compartment and trunk.)

Each car grew in size, but still kept the standards that made them the almost instant successes they became. They were built on mechanically reliable chassis and were also mechanically reliable. They were powered by economical four-cylinder engines and offered a choice of an even more economical five-speed transmission or four-speed, overdrive automatic.

There was one quirk that you had to note on each vehicle and that was until about two years ago, each of them put their spare tire on the outside of the rear door. That did look cool, but as insurance industry folks have acknowledged, turned even low-speed incidents into multi-thousand-dollar fixups.

Still, that didn't deter millions from buying, driving and enjoying their CR-Vs and RAVs. Other automakers - slower on the uptake, but who still notice things - saw where the market was moving (away from full-sized and even mid-sized SUVs, powered by small eights and sixes) and came out with their own versions. Ford brought out the Escape; Chevrolet (GM) introduced the Traverse and similar models; Nissan brought out its Rogue and Murano; Hyundai brought out its Santa Fe, and the list goes on. Even the luxury side of each automaker brought out a crossover (for convenience sake here we'll term every one of the cars in this class crossovers from this point forward) with the Lexus RX300 lineup, the Infiniti FX35, Ford's Edge, Mercury Mariner, Mazda CX-9 (actually the basis of the Edge) and others like the Acura RDX.

Still, if you look at the basic outline, you'll see it hasn't changed all that much. It's still basically a four-cylinder vehicle with an overdrive transmission that offers great mileage and lots of practicality.

There are several nice things about these vehicles, too. The first is because they were born as car platforms they retained the stability of autos. They had low roll centers (picture a Chevy Tahoe and its rather high roofline and stance and try to see where the center of that vehicle is. The actual roll center is somewhere about the base of the windows and this means it is rather top-heavy, more unstable in crosswinds and has what is known as a high polar-moment (it has a high roll center).

CR-V/RAV-sized vehicles have lower roll centers so they are inherently more stable which brings us to the second point. They are large enough to accommodate four to five in comfort and handle their luggage or whatever else they are carting around. And this leads to the third good point of these vehicles is that they have nice rides and are easy to maneuver.

By every measure, the crossover is a very practical vehicle. It becomes even more practical when you add a hybrid to its name as Ford and Chevy have done.

And this finally brings us to the central idea of this piece: you can have an SUV and economy, too. The reason, quite frankly is this: most of these vehicles are still powered by four-cylinder engines that are in the 1.7- to 1.9-liter range, which is more than enough for any situation that you may find yourself in and even in all-wheel-drive (you can't call them four-wheel-drives, because they really are not - it's not splitting hairs, either), you will find your mileage consistently in the mid-20s, even around town, especially if you stay off the accelerator.

The key to this ability is a simple fact that you may not realize if you own one. Your crossover stays in front-drive most of the time. That's right, these vehicles are essentially front-drive machines that remain in front drive until sensors at each wheel, at each half-shaft, and on the transaxle itself begin to sense differences in traction between the four wheels.

As the differences become greater, the microcomputer systems that control the all-wheel-drive systems kick in and tell the transaxle to start transferring power to the rear wheels. The wheel that has the most traction of the rear wheels will get the majority of the power while the other wheel will back down little bit by little bit until the traction is equal to all four wheels. When the need for the extra power to the rear wheels has passed, then the vehicle reverts to a front-drive model.

This really wasn't possible before about 1997 when the microcode and microcomputer technology were finally sophisticated enough to enable the automakers to begin developing their crossover vehicles.

And, now you can see why it's not splitting hairs to say this is not really a four-wheel-drive SUV. It is simply because much of the time the crossover is really a front-drive vehicle and it is only when it is need that it becomes an all-wheel-drive vehicle, as in all wheels are driving the vehicle. This is only a part-time function.

In the standard SUV, you'll find that all four-wheels are driving at any given moment, most of the time (even this has been mitigated somewhat by electronics that offer an alternative that lets you choose an "Auto" setting where the vehicle choose between rear-wheel-drive and four-wheel-drive, however, if you were to measure the output on most wheels of these systems, you would find you still are in four-wheel-drive, most of the time).

It's not that the full-sized SUV segment isn't trying to improve technology. There's the "Auto" setting that was just mentioned and now they have systems that shut down two or more pistons on highway cruising so that say a Chevy Tahoe will run on all eight cylinders to reach cruising speed and then when it hits cruising speed, four of the cylinders will be shut off, increasing fuel economy. These vehicles, though, are so heavy the best you'll probably every do is about 22 mpg overall.

So there you have it, you can have all-wheel-drive or an SUV and economy, too. It just depends on whose system you are using and how it was developed.