SUV, crossover & wagon

Mazda promised a US diesel CX-5 for 2017 — it didn't actually arrive until 2019, and only for a single model year on the top Signature trim.

Acura didn't tune this MDX's suspension in a parking lot — it sent the three-row family SUV to the Nürburgring to get it right.

To launch the third-gen MDX, Acura didn't just buy ads — it built 8 comedy shorts with Jerry Seinfeld and became exclusive sponsor of his show Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.

The 2019 RDX's touchpad doesn't work like a laptop's — it uses absolute positioning, so wherever you tap the pad maps directly to that same spot on the screen.

While rivals reached for bigger V6s, the first RDX went the other way — a turbocharged four-cylinder, making it one of the only four-cylinder luxury SUVs of its generation.

This redesigned RDX was supposed to share the screen with the Avengers — Acura and Marvel announced a promotional tie-in for the 2012 movie, but the RDX's own scene ended up on the cutting room floor.

Alfa Romeo built its first SUV ever with a carbon-fibre driveshaft, a part normally reserved for cars half its weight.

Audi actually planned a hybrid Q5 for launch — then scrapped it because the nickel metal hydride battery pack kept failing crash tests.

Buyers in North America stopped getting a German-built Q5 with this generation — Audi shifted production to a brand-new factory in Puebla, Mexico.

The BBC called this Q7 out by name in 2016 — one of several SUVs on sale that were literally too big for a standard parking space.

The first Audi Q7 offered an engine no other automaker has matched before or since: the world's only series-production passenger-car V12 TDI diesel.

Audi’s first standalone electric SUV found over 10,000 owners worldwide within its first year on sale.

The F48 X1 tore up BMW's own playbook — it dropped the rear-wheel-drive 3 Series platform of its predecessor for the front-wheel-drive UKL2 architecture it shares with MINI.

2013 brought the X1's mid-cycle refresh: restyled inside and out, and BMW's EfficientDynamics fuel-saving tech rolled out across the whole lineup.

Before this car, an M-badged X3 simply didn't exist — 2019's X3 M and X3 M Competition were the first time the X3 line ever got a full M version.

BMW's "compact" X3 grew so much for its second generation that it was nearly as large as the original X5 — a car once considered full-size.

Bigger usually means heavier, but BMW shaved up to 55 kg off this X3 compared to the model it replaced — a grown-up SUV that actually went on a diet.

BMW didn't design or build the first X3 alone — Magna Steyr of Graz, Austria co-designed it and built every single first-generation X3 under contract.

BMW poured $900 million into its Spartanburg, South Carolina plant specifically to get ready for X-model production — including the brand-new F26 X4.

This X5's armored Security model is built in two countries at once — assembled at BMW's Spartanburg plant in the US, then its actual armor fitted at a separate plant in Toluca, Mexico.

BMW built a stretched, China-only version of this X5 — the G18 — with a wheelbase 13 cm longer than the regular car, matching the wheelbase of the flagship X7 and XM.

The E70 X5 was the first production car anywhere to use FlexRay, a high-speed electronic bus so fast it was reserved just for talking to the adaptive suspension.