After 10 years in a rough-riding, truck-based SUV, Nancy Watanabe decided she'd had enough. This week, she's replacing her Toyota 4Runner with a Lexus RX 330, a car-based SUV.
"I wanted something that was lower and drove more like a car," says the Manhattan Beach, Calif., resident and expectant mother.
Watanabe typifies SUV buyers' explosive shift toward car-based SUVs, known as crossovers, which could permanently overtake truck-based SUVs on the sales charts as soon as next year.
"It's the next evolution of the sport-utility phenomenon," says Paul Ballew, General Motors' executive director of global market and industry analysis.
Crossover SUVs use adaptations of car or minivan underpinnings. That makes them inherently smoother-riding, better-handling, quieter and more fuel-efficient than their traditional, truck-based counterparts.
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