How To Really Tell The Difference Between An SUV, A Crossover And A Hatchback

Thankfully, Americans are starting to lose interest in putting yet another Child Crusher 9000 on the streets, but we still love our SUVs. Or is it crossovers? What even is the difference between an SUV and a crossover anymore anyway? And when we’re talking about small crossovers, what’s the difference between that and a hatchback? Is it all-wheel drive? Is it really just ride height? Well, luck for you, Jalopnik is on the case. This search-friendly post will answer all most some of your most burning questions, and in the end, at least a few of you will feel like the time you spent reading this wasn’t a complete waste of your time. That’s the Jalopnik guarantee, or we’ll give you your money back.

In order to get to the good stuff, though, we have to rewind to a time before the SUV really took over and talk about pickup trucks. Yes, this is relevant. No, it will not be on the test. Traditional pickup trucks — no, not you, Honda Ridgeline — start with a big ol’ beefy metal frame that’s strong and good for truck stuff. Then the automaker bolts a bed and a cab to the frame, adds some wheels and a powertrain, and you’ve got yourself a truck. It’s a little more complicated than that, and new trucks are more sophisticated than old ones, but we’ve got a lot of ground to cover. 

That’s also the origin of the term “body-on-frame.” Start with a frame, add the body, and there you go.

Your Toyota Camry, on the other hand, is not sitting on top of a ladder-shaped frame. Its structure is all built-in as part of the car, which, as you can probably guess, is where the term “unibody” comes from. They weld a vaguely Camry-shaped box together that’s strong enough to survive a crash, stick a bunch of doors and other panels on it, add the interior, and there you go. You’ve got a Camry. Because of engineering reasons, it isn’t as good at Serious Truck Stuff as a body-on-frame vehicle, but how often do you do Serious Truck Stuff? 

And no, borrowing your brother’s truck to move apartments doesn’t count. That’s Light Truck Stuff, and your other brother’s minivan (a unibody design, just like your Camry) could haul the same boxes just fine, and it would even keep them dry in the rain. 

So back in the day, some people got an idea: What if they took a truck, replaced the bed with more cab and then put a couple of seats back there? Other people liked the idea enough to buy them, and the SUV was born. That also isn’t too far from the (non-mini) van’s origin story, but SUVs looked more like trucks and were therefore cooler. As for who came up with the term “sport utility vehicle,” I once heard Jeep got tired of people calling them Jeeps and decided to create a new term to distract people and protect its trademarks. Even if that isn’t actually true, I like the way it sounds, so that’s the story I’m sticking with. 

Back in the 1980s, Jeep also gave America the Cherokee, which was boxy and a seriously capable off-roader, just like those body-on-frame SUVs, but it had a unibody design like a Camry. Eventually, that idea proved popular enough — and cheaper to build — that other automakers also began offering their own unibody SUVs. Those were still arguably crossovers, but they were also SUVs because the term originated as a catch-all, not as a strict definition. You can’t seriously tell me the XJ Cherokee somehow wasn’t an SUV.

In order to better understand how we got to where we are today, I’m going to have to bring up politics for a second. You can’t exactly talk about the federal government creating a new agency to regulate pollution without mentioning politics, and also, you’re the one who clicked on a Jalopnik post. If you want politics-free car news, the website you’re looking for is called Automotive News.

Back before the Environmental Protection Agency existed, pollution was so bad, even Republicans thought creating the EPA was a good idea. Heck, Nixon even created it. They may not have liked the government interfering in businesses’ God-given rights to trash the planet to get rich, but they also wanted to breathe, and all that acid rain was a big bummer, so federal regulation it was. Part of the EPA’s mission involved regulating vehicle emissions, but the folks coming up with the regulations didn’t think they needed to regulate trucks nearly as aggressively as cars, since so few people drove trucks, and basically everyone owned a car. That, in turn, created a bit of a loophole in the regulations, where as long as a vehicle was considered a light truck, it could pollute more than regular cars. 

Automakers, being businesses trying to make money, quickly figured out it was more expensive to make engines pollute less, and that hurt profits. Get more people into light trucks, though, and their profits would go up. Coincidentally, crossovers are considered light trucks, too. How convenient. So, fast forward to today, and why aren’t there more sedans on the roads? Because of that “oh no, we can’t expect small business owners not to pollute too” loophole and the strong resistance to requiring that passenger SUVs and crossovers meet the same emissions standards as sedans, hatchbacks and wagons. 

All those car-like features automakers added to trucks and SUVs? They got people out of cars and minivans and into F-150s and Suburbans. It didn’t hurt that people liked driving them, too, especially once they started feeling less safe as more trucks, SUVs and crossovers took over the roads. And if something can be considered a crossover, it helps the company’s bottom line in more ways than one, since they both cost less to develop and also sold better. Can’t sell a hatchback in the U.S. anymore? Make a few tweaks to turn it into a crossover, and there you go. You’ve got a profitable car to sell. 

Just look at the Chevrolet Bolt. Everyone who saw that car knew immediately that it was a hatchback, but according to Chevrolet, it was a crossover. The Ferrari Purosangue? That’s a V12-powered super hot hatch that’s officially sold as a crossover. Just the same as the Hyundai Palisade, only smaller. 

Ultimately, as far as SUVs go, the only people who care about the difference between a body-on-frame SUV and a unibody crossover are people who tow or off-road enough for it to matter and online pedants who think correcting people is a substitute for a personality. Crossovers are SUVs, even if they aren’t body-on-frame SUVs, and that’s fine. It’s not like the One True Car God declared that SUVs can only be body-on-frame and promised to torture everyone who ever called their Nissan Rogue an SUV forever after they die. 

On the smaller side of things, though, it can still get a little confusing, so here’s a helpful guide for vaguely rectangle-shaped cars:

• If it sells, it’s an SUV
• If it doesn’t sell, it’s a hatchback or wagon

That’s it. That’s all you need to know. Hyundai Veloster? That got canceled and didn’t sell well, so the Veloster was a hatchback. The Kia Soul? Well, that’s still around and appears to be fairly popular, so that’s an SUV. Easy, peasy.

Sure, you can talk about seating position, ride height and black plastic cladding, but all that does is just make it more complicated. Whether it looks like a hatchback (or worse, a station wagon) or not, if it sells, it’s an SUV, and that’s the end of that.