The crossovers that were ahead of their time

Designed, engineered and built in the UK, the new version has been completely redesigned to maintain its position as the country’s favourite crossover. The Qashqai has come a long way since the first ‘Compact Crossover for Europe’ was unveiled at an event in Paris in 2006.

Much was made of the fact that the Qashqai was the first crossover – a myth that Nissan was happy to run with. Although it popularised the concept of the crossover, other brands had tried something similar in the past. Here are some of the crossovers that were ahead of their time.

We start by taking a look back at the car that inspired a nation to ditch their hatchbacks in favour of something different. At the world premiere of the Qashqai in 2006, Nissan described it as “a crossover as it inhabits the area where passenger car attributes meet those of a 4x4”.

Model ranges looked very different in 2006. Nissan offered three passenger cars (Almera, Primera and Note), and no fewer than five SUVs. Here, then, are some of the crossovers that did the crossover thing before the crossover was actually a thing.

‘The Talbot Rancho is as much at home in the Cotswolds as it is parked outside a pied-á-terre in St. John’s Wood.' This line from a 1981 press advert highlights just how far ahead of the curve Matra was when it designed and built the Rancho. Launched in 1977 as the Matra-Simca Rancho, this faux 4x4 was based on the front-wheel drive Simca 1100.

The press slammed the Rancho for being all show and no go, but this mattered little to the 56,700 or so people who bought this pioneering crossover. A roof rack, towbar and wing spotlights came as standard – everything you required to live the outdoor life. Even if going outdoors meant nipping to the deli in St. John’s Wood.

On the other side of the Atlantic, American Motors Corporation (AMC) was forging its own path. The AMC Eagle was built partly in response to the influx of Japanese cars, but also because AMC was saddled with an ageing product range. Roy Lunn, who joined AMC as chief design engineer in 1971, sensed an opportunity to create a vehicle with the comfort and equipment of a passenger car, but with the go-anywhere attributes of an SUV.

He used his contacts at Ferguson Research – famous for its role in the development of the four-wheel drive Jensen FF – to create America’s first modern crossover. Available as an estate, saloon and coupe, the AMC Eagle pioneered the concept of a car that was as good to drive on the road as it was at dealing with rough ground. It kept AMC alive until the acquisition by Chrysler in 1987.

One could argue that the original Suzuki Vitara of 1988 popularised the concept of a lifestyle SUV, but the Toyota RAV4 is closer in spirit to what has become known as a crossover. Launched in 1994, the RAV4 – that’s ‘Recreational Active Vehicle with 4WD’ – was designed to spend more time on the road than getting its tyres dirty.

Toyota called it the first “urban 4x4”, while our sister magazine What Car? plastered the RAV4 over its cover, declaring it to be ‘the world’s first GTi off-roader’. Sure, many SUVs of the 1990s spent a lot of time on the road – the school run was littered with 4x4s of all shapes and sizes – but the Toyota RAV4 was one of the first compact SUVs that felt like it belonged there.

It wasn’t long before other manufacturers jumped aboard the lifestyle vehicle train. The Compact Recreational Vehicle (CR-V) was Honda’s response, a car designed for people who do lifestyle things at the weekend. How people managed to go windsurfing, mountain biking or rock climbing before the arrival of the CR-V is anyone’s guess.

Most of the time, the CR-V sent power to the front wheels, but the rear wheels would come into play when things got a little hairy on the school run. For maximum lifestyle, the CR-V featured a waterproof compartment beneath the boot floor – eat your heart out, new Ford Puma. You also got a folding picnic table as standard and the option of a portable shower.

The couple in this press photo are probably thinking one of three things. How long do we have to sit at the bottom of a dry ski slope looking like a pair of C&A catalogue models?; are we getting paid enough?; and what were Suzuki smoking to come up with this? It’s likely to be a combination of the three.

It’s a regular on those ‘worst cars' lists you see on the internet, but does the Suzuki X-90 deserve the outpouring of derision? Shouldn’t we be applauding Suzuki for creating a two-door, two-seater, pint-size SUV with a T-section removable roof and a saloon-style boot? Sure, it was slow and pretty terrible to drive, but the 4x4 versions were rather good off-road, which is more than you say about the majority of modern crossovers.

The 1970s was a turbulent decade for Lamborghini. With sales hammered by the 1973 oil crisis, and the company hit by the departure of the founder Ferruccio the following year, Lamborghini slid towards the brink of bankruptcy. The failed projects involving the Cheetah and BMW M1 failed to give Lamborghini the shot in the arm it desperately needed.

So it was left to the Fiat 127 Rustica to offer a glimmer of hope. Lamborghini built this forerunner to the Fiat Panda 4x4 in Sant’Agata, using the Brazilian-built Fiat 147 as the basis for the tough little runabout. It was a quintessential crossover, featuring a raised ride height, reinforced suspension, protection for the front and rear lights, shorter gear ratios designed for off-road use, and an optional roof rack. Reports suggest that some 5000 were produced before the plug was pulled in 1981.

This press photo tells you everything you need to know about the target market for the Willys-Overland Jeepster. The company had moved to the production of four-wheel drive civilian vehicles at the end of the war, but it needed something with a softer edge to appeal to average motorists. The result was the Jeepster: a rear-wheel drive passenger car aimed at a younger audience.

According to KaiserWillys.com, the Jeepster was unveiled in April 1948 and was powered by a four-cylinder engine mated to a three-speed manual transmission. With its whitewall tyres and chrome bumpers, it certainly looked the part, and the Jeepster wasn’t lacking in equipment. Unfortunately, its inability to venture off-road and cope with inclement weather proved to be its undoing. It was phased out in 1950.

We should point out that the Subaru Leone isn’t a crossover in the modern sense. Although the lines are becoming increasingly blurred, a crossover tends to be a front-wheel drive car with the styling of an SUV. Like the AMC Eagle, the Leone went the opposite way, by taking all-wheel drive to a more general audience who spent most of their time on asphalt.

‘Never before has a car offered four-wheel drive at a price less than many two-wheel drive estates' proclaimed the press ad for the Leone estate. ‘The switch from front-wheel drive to four-wheel drive is made without declutching, without even slowing down.' Something we take for granted in 2021, but a big deal in the 1970s. Definitely a crossover of sorts, albeit one that paved the way for cars like the Volvo XC70 and Audi Allroad.

When designer Tom Peters received a lifetime achievement award for his work, the supporting press release from General Motors was quick to highlight his most memorable vehicles. The Corvette Indy show car, Pontiac Banshee, Cadillac Sixteen, Corvette C6 and C7, Camaro… the list goes on. The Pontiac Aztek wasn’t mentioned.

Peters probably rues the day the producers of Breaking Bad decided to give Walter White an Aztek. It thrust the much-derided lifestyle vehicle into the mainstream and to the brink of acceptability. The idea was great: blend the practicality and off-road capability of an SUV with the performance of a fast saloon. The execution was anything but.

Millions of gamers will remember the Mazda Demio as the National B race licence car in the original Gran Turismo. It created a weird juxtaposition in the UK: a car driven to garden centres by elderly people being enjoyed by youngsters armed with PlayStation controllers. Things were different in Japan, where the Demio attracted a younger demographic.

Can it be classed as a crossover? Absolutely, because the Demio was a supermini designed to look like a miniature 4x4. A forerunner to today’s Suzuki Ignis, albeit without any off-road ability. You could even fold the seats to create a double bed, which would have come in handy if you fell asleep after a tiring afternoon picking out which tulips to plant.

We’ve deliberately steered clear of concept cars, because it’s relatively easy for a designer to go full crossover when you’re not limited by budget, safety regulations, genuine purpose and taste. We’ve included a few, including the Nissan Judo concept of 1987. With a pair of ski cases on the roof and a winch on the back, the Judo means business.

The roof was designed to slide backwards, creating an open-air lifestyle SUV without having to find somewhere to put the roof panels. Its 2.0-litre turbocharged engine sent power to all four wheels via Nissan’s Advanced Total Traction Engineering System. Sadly, it never made production, but it certainly influenced the design of the X-90. Turns out Suzuki wasn’t smoking anything after all – it just had a look at what Nissan was doing in the 1980s.

The Austin Montego Lifestyle SUV never made it beyond the clay model stage, but it highlights some of the clever thinking – not to mention wasted opportunities – at Austin-Rover in the 1980s and 1990s. As you can see from the images on the AROnline website, many of the SUV hallmarks were present.

Raised ride height, roof-mounted storage and a spare wheel mounted on the tailgate turned the Montego estate (pictured) into a kind of softer alternative to the Land Rover Discovery. A wasted opportunity or a bullet dodged? Either way, it speaks volumes that Steve Harper, one of the designers involved with the project, went on to be involved in the design of the Volvo XC70 softroader.

Buoyed by the success of the CR-V, Honda went all out when it designed the HR-V. It may have used the same ‘Dual Pump' four-wheel drive system as the CR-V, and the 1.6-litre engine from the Civic, but everything else was all-new. Not least because two-door ‘breadvan' SUVs weren’t really a thing in 1999. 

Honda christened it the ‘Joy Machine’, which is as cringeworthy today as it was at the turn of the millennium. Today, we take joy in the fact that Honda had the guts to launch a car like the HR-V. It’s all the more impressive when you consider that it was based on the humble Logo supermini, so it truly was a triumph of fine packaging. Unfortunately, not even the introduction of a front-wheel drive version could stop the HR-V from sliding into obscurity.

Subaru won’t thank us for including the Forester on a list of crossovers, but it was designed to capitalise on the growing lifestyle SUV market at the end of the 1990s. Like the Toyota RAV4 and Honda CR-V, the Forester was a rare example of an all-wheel drive car that actually felt good on the road.

The difference being that the Forester was also exceptionally good at dealing with loose surfaces and roads resembling a special rally stage. Speaking of which, the turbocharged version felt more like a workaday Impreza than a regular SUV. Sure, it’s not a crossover in the spirit of the Qashqai, but as a car designed to perform two roles, it was exceptionally good. 

In 2005, a year before the premiere of the Nissan Qashqai, Fiat unveiled the Croma Comfort Wagon. It was, in effect, a crossover, as it combined some of the benefits of an MPV with the practicality of an estate. In a parallel universe, the MPV-estate might have conquered the world, but the Qashqai ensured that it didn’t.

A year earlier, Fiat tried its hand with the Stilo Uproad. Again, it offered the space and practicality of an estate, only this time it came with the ruggedness of an SUV. Designed for “people who love nature and wish to satisfy their taste for adventure and challenge”, said Fiat. 

While most people associate the Chrysler Pacifica with the current minivan, the original version was a different proposition. It was the company’s first crossover and the first vehicle to be jointly engineered with Daimler. Chrysler famously paid Celine Dion millions of dollars to promote the Pacifica, sceptical buyers were less than convinced, and the Pacifica was pulled from sale after just five years. 

Looking for all the world like a crazy concept, the Nissan Rasheen was actually a production car for the Japanese domestic market. It premiered at the 1993 Tokyo motor show, before going on sale in 1994. A few have been brought to the UK on personal import, though it's a proper unicorn.

Nissan says the “convenient city runabout” was a “pioneer of today’s casual crossover SUV”, and we’re not going to disagree. A range of four-cylinder petrol engines were offered, with power sent to all four wheels. The 2.0-litre Rasheen Forza was less exciting than it sounds. Still, it was cool crossover from Nissan’s post-Pike era. It was replaced by the X-Trail.

Our Matt Prior is a fan of the Rover Streetwise, so it must be good. In a feature on flawed cars we actually like, Prior said: “The 2003 Streetwise, based on the likeable but dated Rover 25, was MG Rover squeezing the remaining juices from the lemons BMW left behind when it sold the company.”

A lemon? Whatever could you mean, Prior? Oh how we scoffed when Rover garnished the 25 with plastic cladding to create a kind of Matra Rancho for the new millennium. The French loved the Streetwise, for reasons that are obvious if you’ve ever visited a French city or counted the number of dents on their Gallic runabouts.

The Ford Escort Seeka show car was unveiled just a year after the Toyota RAV4 made its debut as a concept at the 1989 Tokyo motor show. With more than a little help from Ghia, Ford created a kind of Millets version of the Escort estate, complete with a split-tailgate, a flip-top luggage container with a pull-out awning, and a detachable boot floor that doubled as a picnic table. Now you know where Honda got the idea.

It also featured a barbecue and a fax machine, making it the perfect car for work, rest and play. This or a Ford EcoSport? The Seeka didn’t make it as far as an engineering prototype, although its 1.8-litre engine went on to power the Ford Mondeo.

Is the VW Golf Country a crossover or a proper 4x4? Again, we’ll refer you to the point about blurred lines; we’re simply looking for an excuse to marvel at VW’s decision to build a proper off-road version of the Golf. The raised ride height, bull bars and wheel arch extensions gave it the look of a German Fiat Panda 4x4.

Around 3000 were produced, with the Golf Country enjoying success in the snowy and less accessible areas of Europe. This thing could mix it with hardcore SUVs, so maybe that answers our question about its crossover credentials.