Comparison Tests
From the March 2013 Issue of Car and Driver
You do not see Maine lobsters dragging themselves dumbly across the Sahara. This, we suspect, is because lobsters secrete urine from their heads and so they might become mired in the sand they just turned into mud. Also, a lobster in the desert is just too pathetic a thing to consider. Similarly, you won’t see a cougar paddling around the deep ocean gathering up cheeks full of krill for Sunday brunch.
The point here (other than to inform you that lobsters urinate out of their heads) is that creatures evolve to suit their habitats. Have a look at the lovable—positively huggable!—little buggers pictured on these pages. The Audi Q5, BMW X3, and Land Rover Range Rover Evoque have been unnaturally selected by intelligent designers to thrive in their environment. And that environment is Birmingham, Michigan. Nothing whatsoever like its industry-heavy British namesake, the Michigan version is five square miles of faux 19th-century Parisian buildings, some built about five years ago. There are two Starbucks just 0.3 mile apart, specialized boutiques of various sorts, large homes both gracious and gaudy, and a median household income more than twice the state average. And yes, there are a few cougars prowling town, too. To keep the residents well stocked, there are Land Rover and Audi dealerships right downtown. To get their BMW fix, residents must drive four whole miles to even wealthier Bloomfield Hills. This is a hardship many are willing to endure.
SUVs and places such as Birmingham have had their grotesque booms and sad busts. And both are, for the most part, back to a certain level of success, albeit one that is less ostentatious than before. And so we’ve gathered these three modest luxury utes, each powered by a turbocharged 2.0-liter four-cylinder engine, an automatic transmission with two-to-four more gears than the engines have cylinders, all-wheel drive, a modicum of practicality, and essentially no off-road pretensions.
Audi was an early adopter of the formula, bolting the corporate direct-injected and turbocharged 2.0-liter into the Q5 for the 2011 model year. The only Audi that outsells this adorable ute in the U.S. is the A4, and not by much. For 2013, the Q5 received the most minor of face lifts to subtly bring it in line with the company’s new and almost imperceptibly different grille design. Audi also added a hybrid model and swapped the torque-light V-6 for a supercharged V-6. New multimedia options and electric-assist power steering are the only other additions of interest.
Land Rover was early to the premium-brand, small-SUV market, but not with a vehicle that anyone appeared to want. That changed for 2012 with the introduction of the Range Rover Evoque, a vehicle so self-conscious and unusual-looking that the company couldn’t bring itself to spell the word “evoke” properly. Whether in the five-door or the bonkers three-door “Coupe” model, this Rover is powered solely by a 240-hp version of Ford’s turbocharged and direct-injected 2.0-liter four.
Like most other major carmakers, BMW has gone batty over turbocharging, so much so that it killed its sacred cow, the naturally aspirated inline-six, in favor of the four-banger. The X3, also available with the turbocharged 3.0-liter inline-six, is the most recent target of the company’s engine-swap program. The second-generation X3, larger, smoother, and more expensive (it’s now almost the same size as the original X5), arrived for 2011. The 2.0-liter is fresh for the 2013 model.
The price of entry, even for these most modest of luxury wagons, is about $40,000; $50,000 for a well-equipped version. The Audi, with the Premium Plus suite of luxury goodies, has the lowest list price in the test at $45,120. If you want a more expensive Q5, you’ll have to order the bigger engine or the hybrid. The X3, loaded with five option packages costing more than $1000 each, came in at $52,345; the Evoque was at the high end of the scale with a semi-shocking price of $56,795 for this Prestige Premium package example. There are other choices in this segment, including entries from Cadillac and Mercedes, but none of them hews to our new-age-powertrain requirement.
Pricey fashion accessories they might be, but we expect our three contenders to also offer at least a dash of practicality, fuel efficiency, comfort, ease of maneuverability and, perhaps most important, bitchin’ LED headlight accents.
We spent an inordinate amount of time trundling around Birmingham’s neighborhoods and surveying the reactions of shopping-bag-toting denizens to our wagons parked downtown. And, lest they get off too easily (the vehicles, not the shoppers), we took them out to our 10Best evaluation loop to give them a proper thrashing.
And when we were done, we chose to avoid the lobster mac-and-cheese entrée at a local eatery.
