Comparison Tests
In June 1968, Richard Robison, his wife, and their four children were gathered around the living-room table, playing cards in their summer cottage, two miles north of Good Hart, Michigan. That’s when a killer wielding a rifle opened fire through a window. He then entered the cabin and, brandishing a handgun, concluded his grisly business, shooting all six family members and bludgeoning the daughter with a claw hammer.
Twenty-seven days passed before police discovered the bodies, along with bloody footprints, shell casings, and the hammer. But to this day—more than 43 years later—the crime remains unsolved.
Long since razed, the Robisons’ cottage stood just off Route 119, the so-called “Tunnel of Trees” road. For more than 20 miles, this almost continuously damp byway twists and coils and randomly opens to towering views of Lake Michigan, 100 feet below. Fog rolls in, and dense stands of birch and pine lean at grotesque angles above the roadway, creating a perpetual crepuscular gloaming. It’s nirvana as long as you’re E.A. Poe.
Our goal was to assemble the universe of miniature utes sporting all-wheel drive, then wring them out on Route 119, damn the swirling mists, the snow, and the sinister twilight. From the get-go, our candidates were few. That’s because neither the Kia Soul nor the Nissan Cube is offered with all-wheel drive. Honda’s Element has been returned to the elements. And the Mitsubishi Outlander Sport offers neither the character nor the sport (0 to 60 mph in 9.9 seconds) to entice. And so we were three.
The recipe for success in this curious niche is still somewhat obscure. But sure-footedness in foul weather is certainly part of the formula, as is a useful amount of cargo-carrying capacity. A successful mini-ute must also drive like a car—SUVishness is a vice. Moreover, some sort of recognizable personality should emerge.
You should know that when our trio halted in Good Hart—less a village than a general store at a crossroads—one of us deposited the Nissan Juke’s keys on its roof to ensure they’d not be locked within. Alas, the Juke can be started if its fob is merely in the neighborhood—such as on the roof. That’s how it accidentally got flung unseen atop the roadway when our travels resumed.
For 30 minutes, four of us searched for the black fob. When we found it—amidst a clump of snowy leaves on the berm—we realized it had inexplicably clung to the Juke’s convex roof for 1.9 miles, then had fallen weirdly onto land that would have overlooked the Robisons’ cottage of doom.
That was in mid-January on a day so dark that headlights were mandatory from dawn to dusk. Exactly no one was in the woods with us. The temp hovered in the 20s, no animals were perambulating—seemingly not even birds—and it was mere hours before an atmosphere-sucking blizzard put the utes’ AWD systems to a critical test.
It gave all of us a chill. A big chill.
