Suzuki SX4 S-Cross review (15/01/2014)

It amuses me when I hear people gushing on about what an amazing achievement the Nissan Qashqai has been for the Japanese marque, supposedly having invented a whole new market segment for family cars.

Utter tosh, of course, as there is nothing ever completely new and innovative — technology aside — in the motoring sphere. Rather what we get are variations on ideas that have already been well plumbed.

Now that is not by way of dissing Nissan for having come up with a family car with SUV pretensions; in fairness to them they decided to ditch the conventional family saloon/hatchback route and chose to go down a little trodden path which, as it happened, the public was only gagging for. Of course nobody knew it at the time, but the Qashqai was the forerunner of the new ‘Crossover’ segment and, because of its extraordinary success, now has as many competitors as you could shake a stick at.