What’s an SUV? The confusion won’t end any time soon.

After my recent review of the 2024 Buick Envista SUV, reader Rob Stewart had a good question:

What makes the Envista, which doesn’t offer four-wheel drive, an SUV? Who decides what to call vehicles that straddle the line that used to separate cars from SUVs?

Rob, it’s not me. It’s you.

What is considered an SUV (sport utility vehicle) has morphed from a handful of off-roaders into many of America’s most popular vehicles.

The category includes everything from small, front-wheel-drive personal transporters — like the Envista and Hyundai Venue — to family haulers like the Toyota Highlander and the Chevrolet Traverse, to rugged off-roaders like the Jeep Wrangler and Ford Bronco.

Big trailer haulers like the Chevy Suburban, luxury vehicles like the Lincoln Navigator and Porsche Cayenne, even the presidential limo, nicknamed the Beast, are considered SUVs. The Beast, by the way, is the only vehicle on the road whose specifications are protected by national security.

Every effort to create a detailed, quantitative definition of the term “SUV” has collapsed in the face of that variety.

So as unsatisfying an answer as that is, I figure an SUV is anything its owner thinks is an SUV.

Is that an SUV, a car, or a station wagon? Yes.

The most comprehensive attempt to lock in a definition is probably one created by the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy, but even those labels lead to some head-scratchers.

My favorite was when the Chrysler PT Cruiser hardtop was categorized as a small SUV, while the PT Cruiser convertible was labeled a compact car. Um. …

For a more recent example, check the classification of three electric vehicles — the Kia EV6, the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and the Cadillac Lyriq — on fueleconomy.gov, the EPA/DOE website that is the definitive source for energy consumption, fuel economy, emissions and more. One of these things is not like the others.

Here’s what fueleconomy.gov says:

• 2023 Kia EV6 is considered a small station wagon.
• 2022 Hyundai Ioniq 5, a large car.
• 2023 Cadillac Lyriq, a small SUV.

The vehicles’ styling, features and brand images vary greatly, but the vast majority of shoppers and owners almost certainly consider all three to be SUVs.

Even the experts can’t agree

When I was an officer of the North American Car of the Year jury, we had endless debates about where to draw the line between car and SUV. Some jurors wanted a minimum, verifiable degree off-road ability. Others thought an SUV had to have a pickup-style body-on-frame chassis, or a longitudinal engine — one sitting front to rear under the hood, as opposed to transverse, where the engine sits crosswise between the front wheels — or a transfer case with a second set of gears for challenging off-road conditions.

We kept running into three problems:

• Regardless of what we decided, hundreds of thousands of buyers were going to keep calling Honda HR-Vs (for instance) SUVs, and shopping them against more capable vehicles like, say, the Jeep Compass. We made our work less useful to consumers if we drew an absolute line somewhere they didn’t.
• Most modern Jeeps (the Wrangler and Wagoneer are exceptions) and Land Rovers have unibody chassis, the kind traditionally used for sedans, but they’re as capable off road as any body-on-frame pickup. If the Land Rover Defender and Jeep Grand Cherokee aren’t SUVs, what are?
• The overwhelming majority of buyers don’t know, care, or need to know, whether their vehicle’s engine sits under the hood longitudinally or transversely. That used to be a key to offering between front-drive versus 4WD, but modern engineering has erased that distinction.