Y'know, that's something I was thinking, too. Many SUVs are suffering from their own popularity. Would ANY SUV be appropriate for severe off-road use if it was manufactured recently? I don't know. What I have noticed though, is some of the larger SUVs are substituting soft-ride car suspensions for the previous hardened truck suspensions. OK, so it's more appropriate for the way the vehicle is actually used by most owners. But what about the few who actually want to take the thing off-road? -Dave (would go off-road if he owned an SUV)