The world seems to be going SUV mad at the moment, be it at the bottom rung of the ladder with the likes of the new Honda HR-V all the way up to the super-luxury SUVs of the likes of Bentley and Lamborghini. If ever there was one segment (and in truth SUVs cover many segments) that was booming this is it.
But a thought struck me recently when images of the Land Rover Discovery Sport emerged: while everyone seems to be concentrating on the Sport part of SUV with sloping, coupé-like rooflines and short overhangs with aggressive looking bumpers, is anyone still catering to the Utility part of SUV?
You know what I mean when I say utility right? In this sense it should be (or at least was) a no-nonsense, rough and tumble vehicle as capable of carrying a herd of sheep in its substantial innards as it is of completing the school run and parking up at Tesco. Land Rover is a past master in this field. For all its posh-ness nowadays the original Range Rover was designed for doing just those things and as it became more and more popular with the horsey set the Discovery assumed its old mantle. Now I know the Disco Sport is actually a replacement for the Freelander, but you can bet your bottom dollar that the next full-size Discovery will take on the design language of its smaller brother.
Some may say that the Defender fills the hole nowadays, but that is being put out to pasture as soon as Land Rover can figure out what to do with it and you can guarantee that its replacement will not be as bare-to-the-bones, fix-it-with-a-big-hammer-and-some-gaffer-tape rugged. It will probably have heated leather seats, more driver aids than you can shake a stick at and an infotainment system connected to the cloud - pretty much like every other modern vehicle then. And there is no way in hell it will be as upright and boxy as the current model; that is not the favoured design language.
Just look at the Nissan X-Trail for proof of this. It used to be a slab sided, high roofed, fairly dull looking SUV. Now it appears to be a slightly bigger Qashqai. Sure it is a better car, and yes it does look better than before, but has it lost its raison d'être? I think it has. Better to have just released a Qashqai+2 and given the X-Trail a modern makeover that stayed true to its heritage rather than bowing to pressure and creating a quasi-crossover rather than a SUV.
Much as Jeep did with the new Cherokee. The bods assembled at Fiat's Balocco proving ground for the Cherokee's launch skilfully batted away talk of it being a crossover, instead talking up the 'trail-rated' Trailhawk model. But that version aside it is obvious that the Cherokee is more at home in a multi-storey car park than it is rock climbing in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. It is too low, the body work too close to the ground and the bumpers too rounded off to truly tackle any of the rough stuff.
Maybe we just need to stop referring to them as SUVs - BMW already calls its models either SAV or SAC (stop sniggering down the back), dropping the utility from the name entirely and replacing it with activity instead.