Off-Road Competence
This year, Motor Trend drove Sport/Utility of the Year candidates on a hard-packed trail and on soft sand near Death Valley. We also used a nasty 100-foot hillclimb for back-to-back comparisons. The hill's grade ranged from roughly 30 to 45 degrees, with loose, softball-size rocks, hard-packed dirt, soft sand, worn sandstone, a trail split between rough sandstone and loose sand, and then hard sandstone at the peak.
The Mitsubishi Endeavor surprised with an excellent chassis and adept off-roading.
The Pathfinder Armada and Durango could tackle this hill with ease, while most of our car-based SUVs's capabilities were clearly aimed more at rainy, muddy, or snowy roads. There are interesting exceptions. Near the eerily lunar Trona Pinnacles, we drove across a two-track trail that should've caused ground-clearance problems for the X3, Pacifica, and SRX. But our only casualty? We punctured the XUV's oil pan on a rock, pushing its drain plug right into the sump. The area is "protected" by a plastic replica of a skidplate. The sump hemorrhaged, but our driver shut off the engine and saved the Vortec 4200 I-6 from self-destruction. "It's almost silly to have four-wheel drive offered with so little ground clearance on a heavy SUV," notes off-road maven Mark Williams.
The Dodge Durango towed the crippled XUV the 25 miles to Lone Pine, earning the title, "Miss Towgeniality." For standard off-road use, the Durango driver can select 2WD/4WD High/4WD Low settings with a cheesy dial that looks like it was designed to control the air-conditioning. Still, the Dodge outperforms the XUV on extreme paths.
"It just powered through every different type of traction challenge the hill dished out--ruts, sandstone, rocks, sand," remarks John Matthius.
Nissan's armada-size Armada easily is the best off-roader among the traditional 4x4s. "It has much versatility with 2WD, Auto, 4x4, 4x4 Low, and Neutral settings," Williams says. "It lets the driver know that Nissan thinks its owners are smart enough to decide what they want."
But it's the unibody VW Touareg's standard four-wheel drive that really impresses, especially considering its standard ride- and handling-biased street tires. On the rocky steppes at Moab, Utah, where VW had introduced the vehicle to the automotive press earlier this year, the Touareg had proved able to climb and descend as well as a Jeep Wrangler or Hummer H2, and it was just as game in our testing. That's with the Touareg's standard lockable center and optional locking rear differentials and three-level height-adjustable air suspension. If you buy a V6 or V8 Touareg with the standard coil-spring suspension, don't expect quite so much trekking ability. The Porsche Cayenne, also with optional air suspension, is another impressive off-roader, but with a stiffer ride and quicker reflexes.