Now in its second generation, the Audi Q5 is a compact luxury crossover and the brand’s answer to rivals like the BMW X3 and Mercedes-Benz GLC. These are the best small luxury SUVs available for 2022 and include a mix of 20 model-year vehicles. Importantly, they’re furnished with the same luxury appointments, materials and features that were once the province of luxury sedans.įor this list, we focused on vehicles between 180 and 187 inches long, a broad swath of the compact SUV class.
Though some boast genuine off-road capability that exceeds most drivers’ confidence levels, they’re more about style and luxury than their bigger brothers or hard-core off-roaders. They instill a sense of ruggedness-actual or perceived-in the driver, aside from the proven inclement-weather benefits of all-wheel drive. Their popularity is easy to understand they generally offer a higher ride height and larger door openings, making ingress and egress easier. Even Jaguar, Lincoln, and Porsche entered the fray, and competition for customers remains fierce. The concept of luxury SUVs trickled down to the compact and sub-compact classes in record time. Lexus fired back with the RX in 1998, Cadillac with the Escalade in 1999, and the rest is leather-lined and walnut-trimmed SUV history. In late 1996 Acura introduced the elusive and near-mythological SLX, followed in 1997 by the Infiniti QX4 and Mercedes-Benz M-Class. True, manufacturers had already begun loading SUVS with luxury features-the 1995 Lexus LX was just a polished Land Cruiser-but it wasn’t until the mid-to-late 1990s that a confluence of events kicked the segment into high gear. Twenty-five years ago, the idea of a luxury SUV, let alone a compact luxury SUV, was an anomaly.
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