What was the first car classified as an SUV?
Sport utility vehicle
According to Robert Casey, the transportation curator at the Henry Ford Museum, the 1984 Jeep Cherokee (XJ) was the first true sport utility vehicle in the modern understanding of the term,[44] although Jeep already used the term literally in their 1974 brochures, for the original SJ Cherokee.[30][31] Developed under the leadership of AMC's François Castaing and marketed to urban families as a substitute for a traditional car (and especially station wagons, which were still fairly popular at the time), the Cherokee had four-wheel drive in a more manageable size (compared to the full-size Wagoneer) as well as a plush interior resembling a station wagon.[44] With the introduction of more luxurious models and a much more powerful 4-liter engine, sales of the Cherokee increased even higher as the price of gasoline fell, and the term "sport utility vehicle" began to be used in the national press for the first time.[44] "The advent and immediate success of AMC/Jeep's compact four-door Cherokee turned the truck industry upside down."[45]
Criticism of sport utility vehicles
Heavier-duty SUVs are typically designed with a truck-style chassis with separate body, while lighter-duty (including cross-over models) are more similar to car construction, which are typically built with a unitary construction (where the body actually forms the structure). Originally designed and built to be work vehicles using a truck chassis, SUVs were not comprehensively re-designed to be safely used as passenger vehicles. The British television Fifth Gear programme staged a crash between a first generation (1989–98) Land Rover Discovery with a separate chassis and body, and a modern Renault Espace IV with monocoque (unit) design. This traditional truck-based SUV offered less protection for occupants than that offered in the modern multi-purpose vehicle with unitary construction. In some SUV fatalities involving truck-based construction, lawsuits against the automakers "were settled quietly and confidentially, without any public scrutiny of the results—or the underlying problems with SUV design", thus hiding the danger of vehicles such as the Ford Bronco and Explorer compared to regular passenger cars.