If you think about it, it's been a long time since people used SUVs the way they were meant to. Actually, it might all have changed the moment we started calling them SUVs instead of off-roaders because that's when their ability to cross rough ground became irrelevant.
People liked the higher driving position and the robustness of the vehicle, meaning they didn't have to worry that much about hitting a pothole or a bump in the road. They couldn't care less about ground clearance, four-wheel-drive, locking differentials, or any of that nonsense. They were driving a big, heavy vehicle that gave them a sense of power and safety and that was all that mattered.
Slowly but surely, SUVs got perverted even further. Simply going from home to school wasn't enough anymore, you now had to be able to do it with great haste as well. The performance SUV was created, and even though it sounds absolutely ridiculous the more you think about this concept, by this time the public had embraced the high-riding vehicle concept so much that it could find an excuse for anything.
On the other hand, if that hadn't happened, we wouldn't have this race to talk about. Plus, no matter how much you hate the current trends in the market, it's hard to ignore just how cool the Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk is. I mean, you can stick the Hellcat engine on a bus and it'll instantly become the best bus on the planet. You know, or under the hood of a pickup truck.
As for the Tesla crossovers, we all know what to expect from them. Instant torque mixed with the perfect launch control and plenty of power means that their colossal weight doesn't play as much a role as it normally would, enabling the Model X and Model Y to be two of the quickest accelerating vehicles out there, let alone SUVs.
The question is, however, are they quicker than the Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk? As the presenters put it, this race is against the V8-powered brute and the Model Y - the Model X is simply there to look over its younger sibling and make sure things don't get out of hand. There are two race - standing and rolling - and if you think you know how they go, you are probably wrong.
"Boy meets car, boy loves car, boy gets journalism degree and starts job writing and editing at a car magazine" - 5/5. (Vlad Mitrache if he was a movie) Full profile
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