[RWebb]

These things have proliferated like crazy over the last 30 years, and a lot depends on what you want, and price.

Subaru has the best traction (outside of real 4WD) BUT has a high incidence of cylinder head gasket failures. Both of mine have had it, and they want to stiff me for $3k of repairs on a 45,000 mile Forester so I will avoid them in the future.

I expect to buy a Mazda CX5 GT-R (which has a nice turbo in it). These drive very well (zoom-zoom) and have good (not great) gnd. clearance and traction. Pretty nice interior quality too. Reliable & few customer complaints.

Ford is about to update theirs, so it may jump up the spectrum.

A friend looked at the Macan and BMW Mseries and got the latter. I drove it on a fav 911 twisty last month and it was fun and fast - more fast than fun...
- views out the rear window are poor

** an expensive SUV doesn't make a lot of sense to me as I beat it around in the boonies some and the lousey nutball drivers here will beat it up in parking lots or on the road.

I have a bunch of notes on mid-range ones if you want - Honda, Nissen, Toyota... LMK & I'll post