We were stopped in the middle of nowhere by a river rushing across the road, so we left our cars idling on the wet, patched pavement and stood in the rain to watch it. We were on the back roads of Texas Hill Country, and spring rains had turned many dry creek beds into fast-moving streams and rivers. We'd come here because it seemed like the right place to wring out a cross-section of high-performance SUVs, a distinct mutation of the sport-utility species, one whose lineage we trace back to the original BMW X5. We stood contemplating the churning brown water, but a modicum of good sense--and a healthy fear of ending up on YouTube courtesy of some unseen observer's camera phone--stopped us from trying a water crossing. (Fording attempts claimed the lives of three other drivers in south-central Texas during our visit). Later, the sun would shine on our efforts, as we pushed our five sporty sport-utes along the picturesque and challenging byways that crisscross Hill Country.
BMW added sporty driving character to the sport-utility vehicle for the first time back in 1999. But once the X5 created a new branch in the SUV stream, that stream quickly swelled with entries from Mercedes-Benz, Infiniti, Porsche, Cadillac, Land Rover, Chevrolet, Jeep, Acura, and Audi, all of which have introduced SUVs with some degree of sportiness.... Read full article