Opinion: The SUV craze is improving the performance car landscape

There’s no denying that, when a manufacturer puts its mind to it, an SUV can be transformed from a benign and unremarkable workhorse into an immensely capable high-performance machine. There are examples to be found in every segment of the market from a Mini Countryman to a Lamborghini Urus but, regardless of the deft tuning and development, relatively heavy, high-riding vehicles are inherently compromised when compared to their passenger counterparts.

Okay, if the Purosangue cuts a lap of Spa faster than an SF90 then I’ll gladly eat my cat but, until then, an SUV will never represent the pinnacle of performance for a driving enthusiast.

Concerningly, if this evolutionary trend continued on in a basic linear trajectory you might predict the death of the traditional mainstream performance car. As consumer demand stokes the SUV furnaces the popularity and availability of hot hatchbacks, coupes, wagons and sedans will slowly fade in parallel with the decline in sales of their less performance-focused variants.

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And this apparently imminent extinction should keep me awake at night – but it doesn’t. I can foresee a very different fast car future and the automotive landscape as a whole. The developmental path of high-performance vehicles is not a line, it’s a circle and I can explain using your mobile phone as an example.

The world’s first cell phones were so big it was more practical to shout. But electronic miniaturisation started to shrink them and generations later, personal communication devices have reached the equally stunning opposite end of the spectrum.

During the late 1990s, many production cell phones dipped under the 100g milestone and measured less than 100mm in length. However, this was the turning point and devices started to swell along with the amount of information they could access via the internet. After that, display and battery technology advances inflated screen sizes further still – especially when people realised they could watch porn on their phones.

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As a collective conscience, consumers realised things were getting stupid and something had to change and a phone reversion started. Today, you can still buy an iPhone that looks like the Coburg drive-in but, critically, the same company is also offering two smaller models that offer all the same features but will actually fit in your pocket without maternity pants.

Almost exactly the same thing is happening to cars. When the SUV revolution started, options were limited to large, boxy and rather ungainly models that, while slightly better to drive on road than full 4x4s, had the handling of a billiard table. But pioneers such as the Toyota RAV4 and Subaru Forester started to introduce more car-like traits into the gene pool. Since then, all manufacturers have been striving to make their SUV offerings as safe as cars, as fun as cars, and as pretty as cars.

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Manufacturers have been so successful in infusing car qualities into SUVs that they are becoming, well... cars. Audi, BMW and Mercedes all offer a version of each of their SUV models openly referred to as a ‘coupe’.

And it’s happening across the board – tall sidewall tyres are shrinking around growing alloy wheels, hill-descent buttons are being swapped for launch-control, and more durable unpainted plastic expanses of bodywork are receding like a pre-tsunami tide. A continuation of this evolution therefore leads not to a desolate and dull car wasteland but a new (not completely unfamiliar) performance car nirvana.

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Marketing departments will always try and sell the emperor’s new clothes with invented classes such as Rolls-Royce’s high-bodied car (HBC), Kia’s grand utility vehicle (GUV) and the sports activity vehicle (SAV) from BMW.

But this circling back around from ‘all-terrain’ vehicles that never see anything more challenging than a nature strip to models that are more fun to drive, more efficient, faster and better looking is demand-driven and an indication that the world’s car-buying community could slowly be coming to its senses.