Would suit:
Yummy mummys on a budget.
Price:
£20 995-25 420.
Maximum speed:
180km/h.
Performance:
0-100km/h in 11.6sec.
Combined diesel consumption:
7.33 litres/100km.
London, England - Sports utility vehicles, off-roaders, Fulham Tractors, call them what you like, the British public has a peculiarly ambivalent attitude towards this genus of automobile.
We have a similar relationship with cellphones and public schools - I would be quite happy to see people who use a cell in a restaurant or on a train be forced to eat them by a team of special police armed with cattle prods but then I'm pathologically incapable of resisting the ring tone of my own phone in such situations.
You see, my call might be really important. Meanwhile, public schools are clearly responsible for many of the inequalities of society but I already send my eldest son to a fee-paying school because the alternative state school, as far as I can make out, is a kind of Borstal.
We all claim to hate SUV's, so who the hell is buying them all? Because buying them we surely are. Sometimes it seems as if every other car round my way is a 4x4 of some kind. They can't all be farmers unless they've made it legal to farm toddlers without telling me.
And the farmers have taken to wearing Dior sunglasses.
And here comes another one, the new, built-in-Korea Hyundai Santa Fe. Now, many of you will be rolling your eyes in exasperation at this. Not another one!
Aren't all the RAV4's, CR-V's, Freelanders, Land Cruisers, Discoveries, Touaregs, Mitsubishi whatevers and Subaru whatsits enough already?
Well, actually, if we can set aside our distaste for the breed for a moment, the Santa Fe has an awful lot to commend it. None of its rivals quite offers the power, space and equipment for the price.
The 2.2-litre diesel I tried only costs £20 more than the V6 petrol version but it's definitely the one to go for - it is far more frugal and smoother than many diesels. It comes with climate control, heatable leather seats and side crash-bags as standard.
You've got your all-wheel drive but most of the time power is sent to the front wheels to maximise fuel efficiency; the rears only come into play when the system senses them starting to spin.
For an extra £600 you can have your Santa Fe with seven seats, two extra ones in the back that can fold flat into the boot floor.
They are for kids only and a bother to clamber into but they're there when you need them, which is more than can be said for the RAV4 or Nissan X-Trail.
Arms race
But nobody is buying these cars for their traction (loads of conventional sedans come with all-wheel drive) or even their seven seats (after all, the Zafira or Ford S-Max seat seven).
I don't even believe that people are buying off-roaders out of some arrogant urge to look down on everybody else.
Car buying has been an arms race - I date the start of it all to the launch of the original Land Rover Discovery - and the real reason people buy large four-by-fours is the supposed protection they afford in the event of a crash.
And, in a way, they are right.
Human flapjack
Those star ratings for crashworthiness are based on the vehicle crashing into something of a similar mass so a VW Fox, say, might have a decent rating - but only if it crashes into another VW Fox or, even better, a Smart.
But if a Range Rover hits you, you're a human flapjack. Never mind that a lighter, smaller car will accelerate, brake and, crucially, steer better than an off-roader, the perception that scale equals safety is hard to erase.
And, as with any arms race, I'm afraid there may be no way back. - The Independent, London