2021 SUV OF THE YEAR

Enter the battleground

- Jason Gonderman

It’s that time of year again; time to crown our 2021 Four Wheeler SUV of the Year. The journey that embarks on the following pages is the culmination of hundreds of hours of hard work that encompasses several months of pre-event planning. The days spent testing are long and the nights often seem longer. We are up before sunrise and work until the last light leaves us. Our team is tasked to work tirelessly, oftentimes in the harshest conditions Mother Nature can dish out. Nothing can weaken our resolve.

Our judging panel is comprised of some of the most knowledgeable minds in the off-road industry. They come to us with backgrounds in off-road, diesel, lifted, new, and classic off-road vehicles. This ensures that our judging staff is just as diverse as the vehicles that we’re testing. We all eat, sleep, and breathe off-road.

This year’s test was unlike that of any year prior, held in a time where the world has been plunged into the darkness of a global pandemic. To keep everyone safe and healthy, we kept our staff to the bare minimum, avoided unnecessary ventures into public spaces, invested heavily in personal protective equipment, and constantly sanitized vehicles and equipment. And while mask wearing was mandatory during testing, you can be assured that if someone is spotted in photos without, they were physically distanced from others.

For our 2021 SUV of the Year competition, we invited all models that were either all-new or significantly updated for the 2021 model year and available to us at the time of testing. Four manufacturers accepted the invitation, sending a total of four SUVs for testing.