SUBURBAN LEGENDS

WE’RE IN SEARCH OF JUNIOR GREATNESS AS THREE OF THE FINEST COMPACT SUVs GET PUT THROUGH THE ROAD-TEST WRINGER

- ANDY ENRIGHT

“GOOD DESIGN is thorough down to the last detail. Nothing must be arbitrary or left to chance. Care and accuracy in the design process show respect towards the user.” You may know this as one of Dieter Rams’ 10 principles of good design. Rams, one of the 20th Century’s great thinkers on industrial design, formulated these tenets in the 1980s but they’re as valuable today as they ever were, all underpinned by one central commandment: “Weniger, aber besser” which translates to “Less, but better.”

You can probably think of many cars that embody the polar opposite of this theme. “More, but worse” could apply to the wares of any number of mass-market manufacturers. Pile it high and sell it cheap. The inevitable consequence of this is a race to the bottom of ever-tightening margins. Premium manufacturers realised a long time ago that customers are willing to pay handsomely for good design, and those margins have been eyed enviously by the mainstream brands. Take these three small SUVs as prime examples. Mazda, Toyota and Kia all have certain limits to their brand equity, how far you can stretch upmarket, and yet the C-HR, CX-30 and Seltos models assembled here sit at or very near the top of their respective ranges.

The target customer in the circa-$40K bracket could certainly run to a bigger RAV4, a CX-5 or a Sorento but chooses not to. These downsizers embrace the notion of less but better, but which of the three best delivers that rare result of a small car that delivers big-car feel-good factor?