In my mind the biggest competitor was seating for 5 or else seating for more (6-8). Included was the full sized trucks (potential seating for 6).

However, once I settled on 5 (in comfort), I needed to satisfy the following:

good in-town manors
excellent highway ride
real off-road ability to "drive up" to the cottage (locking diff preferred)
space for "stuff"
towing capacity (~5000)
Performance: strong breaks, good-handling
safety: side air bags - front rear, rollover curtain, high safety ratings (IIHS, NHTSA), skid control
strong pref: some sort of "AWD" I was tired of part-time 4x4 & sand bags.


I was in the used market, and created an enormous spreadsheet with all sorts of trucks and suvs, specifications (That mattered to me) and pros&cons. It becomes clear that very very few vehicles can satisfy all my constraints.

Next, I excluded all the "unique" or extremely expensive vehicles:
Sequoia, MB G-500, Land Cruiser, Land Rovers.

That settled me down to:
xterra (the value leader, but not refined)
prev gen pathfinder (also cheap, but just couldn't compete)
JGC (not well liked by CR, personally I didn't connect with it)
Jeep commander (new only, not overwhelming as I didn't want the throwback cherokee look)

Ridgeline (zero ground cleanance, geez!)
Tundra, Titan, F-150 (problem is the open bed)

The competitors depend on what you want to do with it. I also considered any SUV w/ some ground clearance, then a "bush truck" to be left at the cottage...but I ruled this out.

For all on-road driving, I would think there are better choices.


J