Round Four: SUVs with Ezra Dyer

that in there. Yeah, the Broncho Raptor. That's my guy, Ezra Dyer, the northeaster of automotive journalism who moved down south so he could drive more four by fours in the mud. He's now the Carolina's editor for Crrent Driver, and he was driving big, stupid SUVs before the rest of America discovered them. He's going to help us sort out this year's crop of SUVs. On deck this week are the Ford Bronco Raptor, the Honda CRV, the Genesis GV seventy, and of course the all new Range Rover.

I'm Eddie Alterman and this is car show. I think this is the equivalent of, you know, the most luxurious luxury car interior. It's not perfect, it's not Apple, it's Samsung. The Ford Bronco Raptor takes the already ridiculous Bronco and ridiculates it further. Ford bumps the twin TURBOV six out to three leaders and four hundred and eighteen horsepower, straps on thirty seven inch tires, and fits a suspension that travels farther than buzz Aldrin. It's an off road mountain goat,

but is it the goat? So first of all, that vehicle should appeal to me completely because it's an overkill Bronco. But my only thing is I feel like maybe it's not quite overkill enough under the hood. Everywhere else, of course, suspension is ridiculous. It has fender flares that are made of half of rubber Maid's annual production. I think is now going to Ford Bronco fender flares. I drove it out at Car Driver's said best Testing, and it is quite a singular machine. Well, it only has twin turbo

three leader V six. It doesn't have a big honkin the eight like they put in the Raptor R and it makes a paltry four hundred and eighteen horsepower. Right, don't you feel like they pulled a punch there? I mean, what they couldn't fit the three point five leader boost

in it. It's kind of ridiculous, right. But the other thing is the Broncho itself is so dog slow that this thing feels like to me, it feels like this is what the Bronco should have been to start with, Like this should be the base Bronco because it actually gets out of its own way, and the gearing isn't

crazy because it's got that ten speed automatic. I love a manual gearbox, but in that Bronco with the manual, you've got that super short stump pulling first gear and the rest of the gears are super lazy, and it's just like it doesn't accelerate. I don't know, I think this should have been the base Broncho. Well, I mean, it doesn't help, but they only give you the manual

with the four cylinder. But yeah, they do offer I saw they just come out with a reflash for it where they'll jack up basically the four cylinder to the V six power and the V six you can make a little bit more and they'll give it REV matching on the downship. So they've kind of sported up the base Bronco maybe before it already realized that they realize that, wait a minute, maybe we should have made this thing a little bit puncher in the first place, because it's

a big rig. Yeah, and especially by the time you get to the Broncho Raptor, which is like a Bronco

and a half. You know what, the Ford always leaves themselves and out to do a little bit more down the line, and they probably figure morons are paying one hundred and twenty thousand for these things anyway, So let's just let's leave ourselves some headroom to drop a three point five minute two years from now and go Tedda keep some powder dry, right, Yeah, then it'll be the Bronco Raptor, are at exactly right, that'll need the awesolet edition Texas Rodeo. However, they're going to sell it in

you know, different regional markets and that'll be there. That'll be their big thing. But for me, I just aesthetically, I just can't get over those fender flares. And it could have been done almost any other way would be more elegant than the way they did it. It's funny to talk about aesthetics and this thing in the same sentence, but I think you're right. It is a little crude, and I think this should be sort of the base Broncho. As I said, I think it's a wonderful soft, compliant

daily driver, good enough power. The only thing about it is you can't drive it to a funeral. You know, you can't wear a Philadelphia Eagles jersey and Oakley blades to a funeral. This is like, you know, this is such an idiot's car. What's your take on that. I would hope someone would drive a Bronco Raptor to my

funeral and rip some donuts or something. It's got crazy wide axles and wider track and I didn't get to take it off road really much, but it is supposed to be the king of off road of anything you can buy right now, and I can see how that would be. Triple lockers and crazy approach and departure angles and ground clearance and suspension travel like it's kind of designed to do the King of the Hammers thing from the factory, which is amazing. And ridiculous. It is amazing.

And I've driven this thing off road and it's almost like an autonomous vehicle off road. It just goes anywhere you put it, you lock the axles, the thing just creeps over everything. You've got those helper spot or cameras to show you what's going on underneath. I mean, the thing is so incredibly capable off road, this kind of a miracle that it drives as civilly as it does on road. I feel like it's more civil than your

average cheap wrangler on road. But here's my problem with super duper capable vehicles like that is part of the thrill of off roading is not being sure whether you're going to get back out. Yeah, so what kind of terran do you find with a broco raptor where you're really wondering whether you're going to get back out. It's going to be something where you might need a chin a helicopter to extricate you if it does go wrong, because really, how are you going to get that thing stuck?

I'm sure people will, people will find ways. So there is there is that aspect of what is the point ultimately here? Yeah, but it's very hard to do, and you know, I found the thing totally enjoyable and everyday driving I know I was in the minority, but you know, I've like I'm missing half a lope of my brain, so I think, well, it is Yeah, you're not known as a left brain thinker. It is a paradox of

trucks like the Bronco Raptor. These this genre of off road desert racers that we have now with the ramtr Ax and the Raptor which spawned at Colorado ZR two, is that they're really comfortable on road. You know, when you have a foot and a half of suspension travel and you know ninety profile tires, guess what that's going to ride real nice? Yeah, on the broken pavement of our reality. I think that's part of the reason for the popularity of these things is that people like the

way they look. Obviously, and everybody wants to have more capability than they really need in their vehicle. But it does actually as opposed to like a Lamborghini that goes two hundred miles an hour. The crazy part of the capability of these things translates to actual enjoyability on the street. You're just smothering every thing that comes your way out, speed bombs, speed up right right exactly, get a little

air if you can, You'll land like a cat. You know. Well, let's move on to something that's altogether more sane and much more mainstream and enters one of the most hotly contested segments there is, which is the compact luxury SUV segment,

and I'm talking about the Genesis GV seventy. The GV seventy, as the Alpha numerics imply, is the suv version of the Genesis G seventy sports Sedan, although I'm not exactly sure what the V actually means here, vigorous anyway, it's darn vivacious, offering your choice of a two point five liter turbo four or a twin turbo three point five liter V six. It's also got one of the nicest interiors this side of a Bentley Mosan. They just murdered it with this one. They knocked it out of the park.

They picked the exact right midway point in the segment between the super Doughey soft squishy Lexus r X and then the super taught, you know, super sporty Porsche Mcan. This thing is just like splitting it right down the middle. What's your take on this thing? They did somehow manage to find daylight in a segment that is just relentlessly everything is benchmarked against everything else, and there's only so

many ways you can draw a two box shape. Everything tends to kind of look like everything else too, And they came up with an interesting look for one thing, especially with the grill that you know right away, hey, that's a Genesis, and not in a bad way. You know, when a lot of companies come out with a you know, a signature grill, it's like the Accurate Beak or even the OUTI single frame when they came out with that. But Genesis, they came out with a cool looking front end.

It's definitely large, although you know, I hear what you're saying that it's distinctive because it's so chromed out and so big. But I get a lot of people saying it's a Bentley. The point is you know exactly what it is when you see it, and you know, assuming you don't think it's Eventley, I put it this way, it looks way better than it been taken. That's for

damn sure. You're gonna mistake it for Eventley. Bentley wishes it could look like a GB seventy, but also on the inside too, it has just fantastic materials and interesting colors. When it's got that red interior popping out at you, and everything is just so well done in the manner of Lexus of your I would say, like you just want to spin the dials and push the buttons and feel the way the switches were because it's all just

so dialed in and good. It's funny that you say Lexus, because you know Lexus when it came out in nineteen eighty nine nineteen ninety they were really exploiting a big economic advantage, you know, of the end versus the dollar, and they were able to load so much value into those vehicles. The Koreans have a slightly different approach. I mean, they're totally vertically integrated. They make their own steel, they do, but they can deliver so much value for so little money.

And this thing starts at forty three thousand dollars and it's got like one hundred thousand dollars worth of interior in it. It's just incredibly good swayed everywhere you can get contrast stitching and piping you can get different color seatbelts like a Porsche. It's just nuts in there, and it's really good to drive. It's the other thing, yeah, in which Genesis they weren't always you know, they ramped up really quickly into excellent to drive as opposed to

just trying to be like a softer Mercedes. Is kind of where they started. Yeah, and now they're even though that's not a you know, a finely honed sporting machine like a Macon GTS or something. It's pretty sharp and especially with the V six, it sounds good, it's fast, it's fun to drive without having that overtly sporty edginess that's beating you up all the time like a BMW X three M competition or something where you're like, okay,

I get it, it's sporty. Ok. I don't need to feel every seam in the pavement all the time in my midsized crossover, right. Genesis gets that. Yeah, It's like the engine is sporty, but it rides like a jag. It doesn't kill you with sportiness. The V six is sporty enough. It kind of rides like a luxury car, although when you go over bigger bumps, you get a

little harshness in the wheel impacts. And that's the one little area where I'm like, you know, another couple of cycles of suspension development, and they could get it to the bends. But they move so fast, you know, like there's gonna be a new one next year or something. They just they cycle so much more quickly than all the other brands, and that's what causes them to evolve so much faster. Yeah, Like, whatever you think is wrong with the GV seventy, just wait a year, right, And

they're super responsive. That's totally true. And look, this is Genesis as a brand, just their second SUV, and they're fully competitive. It's incredible. And from what I understand, it's you know, we can extrapolate from the GV eighty and tied Woods. It's probably very same. Yes, that's true. Don't forget it saved his life. After the break, we'll be back with a new Honda CRV. Well, let's talk next about a vehicle that's sort of ubiquitous and is all

new for twenty twenty three. And I just drove in and I know you did, and this thing is sort of like the municipal car for every small liberal town. I'm not talking about super roof. I'm talking about the Honda CRV. This thing is just incrementally better than the last one. But that's all it needed to be a little bigger, a little quicker, and a little more sophisticated. That's the new Honda CRV. Honda is really pushing the

hybrid versions here. They started just around thirty three thousand dollars and deliver crazy fuel economy and terrific driving behavior. The hybrid system itself is real high end kit with a two lead turbo four cylinder augmented with two electric motors, one for power and one that's a generator. As the kids say, it's electric motor forward. What did you think about driving it? I think the last one was utterly forgettable in the way that it needed to be to

appeal to millions of people. The CRV is the new Accord or camera in terms of it is the mainstream vehicle that everybody buys who doesn't necessarily care about cars, but wants a solid, comfortable, reliable, efficient, and on and on and on vehicle for their lives that they're going to keep for ten years. Maybe. So the thing that's great about the new one is that they kept all of those attributes, all of the pragmatic things, but they also made it more interesting, so someone who does care

about cars can get it and go all right. I like what they did here. I like the style of it. I like the design, and everything feels super solid and more expensive than it actually is. Yeah, it's better than it needs to be. You know. It's not a cynical sort of vehicle. And that's what I love about Honda's, Like it's sort of the approach they have for Accord and Civic. Most people are just going to use it as basic transportation. They're never going to change the oil.

They're going to park it on the street in Brooklyn, own it for twenty years and forget about it. But somebody who's into driving can take in Accord or Civic and just ring the crap out of it, and it's utterly satisfying. You know. It is just so so good and so there, And the best Hondas have this way of sort of disappearing under you, so you just sort of flow with the thing, you know. The Civic type IR does that for sure, and I think the CRV does that too, And it's just an incredible effort. It's

bigger in every dimension, it's much better to drive. They really turn it it on with this thing, and you can ignore it pretty easily. But I think it's a great achievement. It's also an interesting vehicle from an engineering standpoint,

specifically the hybrid that is just some cool stuff. Basically like you've got an electric car with your own onboard generator right as opposed to you know, the way that a lot of companies do hybrid is, here's a two armed horsepower gas engine and here's a five horsepower at a little glorified starter motor, and we're going to call it a hybrid. The CRVS the other way around. It's basically got big electric motors and an engine that can

basically power those. But it's cool that they made the hybrid sort of the flagship, and they don't even call

it the hybrid anymore. It's just the CRV sport right now, it's a sport touring hybrid or it's right, okay, right, But they're not like they're not leaning on the hybrid part as much as this is the sport this this is the one you want if you want to have a little more fun and more power actually, yeah, than than the gas model and better mileage than the Toyota REV for hybrid, and Toyota is the acknowledged hybrid king.

And you know, never forget that Honda is an engine company first and foremost, and they make all kinds of stuff like riding mowers and weed whackers and you know, four stroked marine engines, and it all starts with the engine in those things. They are to me great engineering achievements, great masterpieces. And I don't know about you, but you know, I'm constantly being asked to recommend cars, and my fear is that I'm going to recommend something that craps out

on somebody. And I always find myself recommending Honda's because of that, to lesser extent, Toyota's and maybe Subarus. But you know, for people who are not super wrecked in the head and totally insane about cars and just want basic transportation that's gonna over deliver, I'm always recommending Civics and Chords and crbs, and they're just very very good, soundly engineered things. Yeah, you can't go wrong recommending a Honda. Nobody's nobody's ever going to come back to you and say,

I hate this thing exactly exactly. Nobody's mad about their Honda. Nobody's pissed at it. Everybody's like as opposed to like when I recommended the Volkswagen Phaeton. Yeah, I mean it's like recommending a land Rover. You know, that's Russian roulette. And that brings us to the last vehicle in the bracket, the all new land Rover range Rover one hundred and five k to start for the short wheelbase version and the top of the line SV version opens at one

hundred and ninety five thousand dollars. We're not in Kansas anymore, man. These things used to be farm implements, and now they're like, you know, they fit six Kardashians. And BMW is back on the scene. Say more about that. Yes, the range Rover is once again powered by BMW VA, just as it was in early two thousands. I feel like BMW and land Rover are like a toxic couple where it's like, I don't know, they're getting back together, well, maybe this

time it'll work. At BMW's friends are like, oh, I remember last time Ford showed up, and then yeah, they're getting married again. Where it's like a death the Nation wedding. You spend all this money to go and everyone's growning. But it actually the thing is, it does work really well. You can see why this keeps happening. I mean, it is the most distinctive suv. You look at it and you go, oh my god, that thing is just gorgeous. That's like the platonic ideal of what a luxury suv

should be. What's better than that? You know, maybe the most desirable suv of all time, And in this generation they've done such fine detail work on the exterior and to some extent the interior. Like around the greenhouse of that thing, there's no gasket. It just butts with the glass perfectly. It's just so precisely made, and you look around that whole thing and you're like, this is just

insane attention to detail. The surfacing of it is so beautiful and so serene almost and so elegant that you almost like, I kind of missed the old crappy one. I don't know if I missed the crappy one, but that the interesting trick that they pulled that's really hard to do is to take a vehicle that has kind of I hate the word iconic. But the Rangerover shape is iconic, and it's super difficult to tune it up for a new generation and not lose the unmistakable look

that it had, but also make it unmistakably new. Yeah, and you know Bentley's wrestled with that with like Continental GT they come out with and you know, come out with a new one. Well it kind of looks like the old one because well, they settled on their shape and they don't want to screw it up. Rangerover managed to take that Jerry McGovern sketch on a napkin and turn it into something that is clearly the new generation.

All your neighbors are going to know you've got the new one, right, but everybody else is also going to know that you've got a Ranger Over that has to be what you're looking at is a range Rover. You don't have to explain it to anybody. No, you have to explain to anybody. And they did it, like you said, through all that fine detailing. It just looks slick and smooth,

but not just like this wind tunnel shaped boring egg. Yeah, you know, I mean, it's still got the distinctive elements that make it a range over right, the floating roof, kind of the raised capitals on the hood. You sit very high in it, so you can still kind of peer down the side of the door to look at what you're doing off road. This thing remains amazing off road. Nobody will ever take it off road, not in this country at least, but it is so incredibly tuned up

for that stuff. And you know, the wee articulations crazy. It can ford a ton of water. But my question with this one is is it too la? You know, like have they smoothed it out too much? The great thing about English car design is that every element is sort of its own individual design. The lights are their own little thing set into the body. It's not like that's smooth Scandinavian style where the lights are sort of wrapped around the body and like the same sort of

form of the body. On this one, it's so smooth. It's so like global in a way, and so like built for Dubai. You go, is this thing does it

really read as an English vehicle anymore? Well? If I put on my Landrover product planner hat for a moment, I would say that their response that I would probably be well that's what the defenders for if you or Discovery, if you want something that's a little bit more idiosyncratic style wise, whereas the range rover has always been this bejeweled thing, and this one is moving that further in that direction. But to your point, it'll still go off road.

So if it'll still it'll still do all the silly things while looking like that. I can see how you say that puts it in the you're flossing in Dubai sort of sort of aesthetic realm, right, they should have like a Falconer's rod option in the bag. I did take a range over off road some years ago, the previous generation and the general public doesn't even realize how

good range overs are off road. So I showed up at a jeep club event on Fort Bragg with a ranger Over and the guys there said, hey, you want to just park and ride with us. I'm like, no, no, no, I can go where you guys go, trust me, And I did. And their minds were blown because they've only

ever seen these things on the street. They've never seen one out in the woods and clomping through mud and going everywhere they were going, and they're you know, lifted XJS, So I think that as long as it retained that ability, then the style had to move forward, and it did. And the fact that we can debate about it is I think a good thing. Yeah. You know, if everybody, if everybody agrees on every aspect of the way something looks,

then it's probably not that interesting. Yeah, and it's probably not gonna la too long and be kind of captivating for very long. And you know, this thing feels sort of ten percent bigger in every dimension except the interior, So it feels like it's escalated size on the exterior, but inside it's kind of snug. Well, that's that's part

of the extravagance, the extravagance of wasted space, right. You know when you have that the tumble Home, you know they could have made the body side straight up and down. But when you look at it, like from the back, and it looks like you've got a TP on top of a square basically because the roof can's in so hard. That makes it look cool, but that also makes it less practical inside. But look, the least practical things are

the ones that command the most money. When they're making the two door Ranger over the last generation that was the most expensive one, and people will pay premium to be inconvenient if it looks cool. That's true, Yeah, to work a little bit harder for style to suffer a little bit. And it is one thing about the Ranger over that as expensive as it is and always has been, it still represents kind of a bargain because you do say, well, what's above this? What am I going to get that's

better than this for an SUV? And the answer is usually there isn't one. Yeah, I mean the g Wagon I think is sort of in that same sort of zip code, that same sort of you know zone, but it's cruder, it's you know, it's not quite as refined, and it's more money when you think it's also one might say an acquired taste. Yeah, I've acquired it. You've got to have You've gotta have a g Wagon attitude. After the break, Ezra and I will rank all four SUVs. We're back and it's time to decide which of these

four SUVs make it through to the final round. All four of these vehicles are pretty spectacular in their own way, from the kind of entry level or starter levels CRV all the way up to the range Rover and sort of everything in between, where do you net out? Like, so I would put the Broncho Raptor last just because it has some it is further to go. I would agree with that because yes, a you feel like they pulled a few punches despite how ridiculous it is in

so many ways. But also it's a very focused, niche thing, and it's always easier to build something that's highly specialized and highly compromise. In other way, it's like, yeah, it's going to be great offer of a get horrible mileage and cost a lot and on and on and on, but be really good at this one thing. It's a lot harder to make something like a CRV that's good at a lot of things and appeals to a lot

of people will out being boring. Like the more you spend building something and the more you charge for it, the better it can be. Really and so a two hundred thousand dollar range Rover to me is not such a huge achievement, you know, it's not a quantum leap forward. And to me, that's my number three vehicle in this bracket. Like, I think the range Rover is great. I love it, super desirable, somewhat non vehicular in its movements, sort of

like driving a couch. But man, I want one. I think they're super cool and I like it's the perfect thing to pull into the fancy grocery store with. Yeah, it's like I want a Hinkley yacht too, right, I want to Wally b. Yeah, but it is easier to build a Hinkley yacht than it is to build something that's going to be accessible for everybody. As we've said, with a lot of cars in that price range for

that amount of money, it ought to be great. It is, but it ought to be Yeah, the execution matches expectations. So so I see where you're going. Is CRV and GB seventy, which are both excellent vehicles and yet had to be built to a price. They had to be built to a price, but you can't really tell exactly exactly. And I think the one that overachieves there is the GB seventy. It's so incredibly good. That's my top pick.

That's the one I'm pushing forward. It came out of nowhere, blew everybody's minds split the segment exactly down the middle. The most I think buyer appeal of anything in that segment for the widest possible buyer a little bit like CRV, to be honest, But the CRV is just like, it's not as cool as a GB seventy. You know, it's an incredible achievement, and it's incrementally better than the last one, which is also a great achievement. But the GB seventy is just like, that's a moon shot to me. So

are we only picking one here? Only picking one to go forward? We're only picking one? Well, Eddy, I hate to agree with you on everything, but you know, if I look at this as which one of these would I actually want to go by? Now, Like, if I were laying my own money on the line, which is the most compelling vehicle that I would want to go get? It would be the GB seventy. That's a car that

I would want to show up in. It's got desirability, it's got curb appeal, super comfortable, great user interface, all the things all right, and actually, which I regard as a bonus anti badge appeal. A lot of people don't know what a genesis is still, So you're not paying whatever the tariff is on that Mercedes Star on your hood, You're not paying that for a genesis. They're strivers. They're trying to overtake those other companies, and you can really

tell from their products. Yeah, they're just trying harder, they're working it and they're sweating every little detail. Yeah, they want that badge to mean something in the future. I still feel like, if you pick up one of those right now, you're early. You're leading the way, right, You're a thought leader, You're an early adopter. No one ever says that to me, but yeah, hypothetically I'm a thoughlier. Yeah, yes, I'm comfortable with the GV seventy. Moving on, Okay, great, excellent.

So this luxury compact SUV slays the range Rover, it slays the stalwart Honda CRV, and it slays ultimately the multi species Broncho Raptor. Thank you, Ezra. You are hilarious and great and so full of insight. Can't thank you enough. Man, thanks for having me. Man. Now, Producer Sam Dingman and I get behind the wheel of the GV seventy to see what the fuss is all about. I just noticed seatbelts are cut. Look, I mean, look at the level of detail and this thing. You can tell that the

guy who designed this designed Bentley's and Lamborghinis. I mean, it is so deluxe and it's so beautifully executed. Look at this line, this line of chrome that starts at the door, the back of the door, goes through the vents, kicks up over the instrument binnacle, which is has this exposed stitch by the way, then goes through all these other vents around to the other door, and just creates

this kind of seamless connected interior space. And you know this design, this eyebrow design over the binnacle kind of repeats in the third stoplight. I mean, there's all these little touches that are so incredibly thoughtful and smart, and just like this is hard stuff to do, especially at this price point. I mean, I think this is the equivalent of, you know, the most luxurious luxury car interior. It's not perfect, it's not Apple, it's Samsung. Okay, let's

drive it a little, let's take it out. Okay. So I'm turning the crystal neurld gear selector to drive, and we're going to drive this car in its native habitat. I do have to admit turning the knob to shift gears did feel a little bit like I was turning on a washing machine, It's true. And then you have you park it or you put it in park by pushing the cycle button. Yeah, okay, now we're back and drive.

The ride is so supple, the transmission is just silky smooth, and yet at the same time there's a little growl in the engine. You know, it's sort of having it both ways. It's it really is like, you know, it's your lexus in your BMW all in one right, right, it's that middle ground. It is just absolutely serene. There's no wind noise, not a lot of tire noise. It just really calms you down and keeps you kind of fresh. You know, all the glass is coded non reflective quiet glass.

I mean you see that in all luxury cars. But it's not only the decibel reading. It's also the quality of the sound. And the quality of sound is really good in here. I think it's really really dry and nice and you know. Calming Car Show is written and hosted by me Eddie Alterman. It's produced by Emily Rosstec and Jacob Smith. Our editor is Karen Shakerge. Original music and mastering by Ben Holliday. Our executive producer is Mia Loebell.

Our show art was designed by Sean Karney and airbrushed by Greg la Fever special thanks to Sam Dingman, producer extraordinaire. We really had to twist his arm to get him in the passenger seat. Our patron saints, as always are we Tom Allad and Justine Lane. Car Show is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you have this show and others from Pushkin Industries, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content and

uninterrupted listening for just four ninety nine a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple podcast subscriptions. To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts that the