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2012 marks the 15th anniversary of the compact crossover segment. This milestone was the result of three Japanese automakers attempting to peek into the future to try and gauge what the buying public might want as an alternative to the then-typical family car.
Honda and Toyota were the first to hit the market with their respective CR-V and RAV4 in 1997. It wasn't until 1998, when Subaru launched their offering, that the segment really took off. The Forester, RAV4 and CR-V all found themselves on the “want lists” of small, burgeoning families looking to dump their old minivans or station wagons.
Since then, every other major player in the car business has joined in with varying degrees of success. The gold medal for kicking butt goes to Ford and their Escape. Its 1st generation spanned a decade, but never really lost any steam, hence why the all new version participates in this comparative test.
The only entirely new entry (free of any sort of past) to the crossover game is the Mazda CX-5. Its spectacular-everything since its arrival pushed us to actually put together this test with a total of six vehicles. And then, there's our 2012 Auto123.com Award winner for best Compact Utility vehicle, the Kia Sportage.
With these three players and three established pillars, we put our test together.
As always, we can't evaluate them all. On test day, we were given some grief through Twitter and Instagram because one of the originators was not on the field. The Subaru Forester was another member of the founding fathers, if you will; however, with little or no changes in nearly four years and sales lagging far behind the CR-V and RAV4, it missed out on an invite. This does not mean that it is no good though!
So here goes:
Honda and Toyota were the first to hit the market with their respective CR-V and RAV4 in 1997. It wasn't until 1998, when Subaru launched their offering, that the segment really took off. The Forester, RAV4 and CR-V all found themselves on the “want lists” of small, burgeoning families looking to dump their old minivans or station wagons.
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Since then, every other major player in the car business has joined in with varying degrees of success. The gold medal for kicking butt goes to Ford and their Escape. Its 1st generation spanned a decade, but never really lost any steam, hence why the all new version participates in this comparative test.
The only entirely new entry (free of any sort of past) to the crossover game is the Mazda CX-5. Its spectacular-everything since its arrival pushed us to actually put together this test with a total of six vehicles. And then, there's our 2012 Auto123.com Award winner for best Compact Utility vehicle, the Kia Sportage.
With these three players and three established pillars, we put our test together.
As always, we can't evaluate them all. On test day, we were given some grief through Twitter and Instagram because one of the originators was not on the field. The Subaru Forester was another member of the founding fathers, if you will; however, with little or no changes in nearly four years and sales lagging far behind the CR-V and RAV4, it missed out on an invite. This does not mean that it is no good though!
So here goes: