What is Australia’s best value SUV?

We gathered 11 of the nation’s best-selling mid-size SUVs and spent five days researching them, measuring them and driving them to reveal which one represents the best value for Australians.

Medium SUVs have nailed the Goldilocks formula when it comes to what Aussies want. They’re a good size, well-equipped, affordable, economical and pack decent on-road performance.

But with 36 different models on offer, how do you know which one is your Goldilocks?

We chose to test cars based on their popularity with Australian new car buyers so far in 2022. We invited the brands with the most popular Medium SUVs priced under $40,000 to participate.

Each participating brand provided us with their most affordable petrol-powered, front-drive variant, or if that was not available, the next one up.

The only vehicle more than one step above its respective base model is the MG HS Excite X AWD.

Every vehicle in this Medium SUV Megatest was evaluated by our team of six experts against six major categories: Ownership Costs, Interior Space, Equipment, Safety, Infotainment, and Driving.

Each of those categories had between 12 and 25 criteria, meaning we compared more than 100 data points on every car in our mission to identify the best medium SUV.

In addition to that, we used subjective testing to evaluate a vehicle’s driving performance and the quality of active safety systems and infotainment systems.

We evaluated the ownership costs such as driveaway pricing, fuel use, insurance quotes, resale value, servicing costs and warranty coverage.

Where a test car came with extra-cost options – such as the Ford Escape’s head-up display and electric tailgate – we excluded these options from our scoring and took them off the price.

We checked every car against a 20-point list of basic equipment that all cars should have, but not many do. For example, four of our cars do not offer climate-controlled air-conditioning. Two of them do not have push-button starters, and one doesn’t offer dusk-sensing headlights. Only two have leather upholstery and three provide a wireless phone charger.

We measured everything from headroom to knee room and luggage loading height. That last one is important if you’re lifting prams or groceries into the boot.

We scrutinized the various infotainment systems – the most used feature inside a car – for what they have and how well they work.

We dived deep into the safety features to understand not just which car offers more, but how seamlessly they integrate with everyday driving.

We did not take these vehicles to a race track to test the limits of their performance, nor did we test their trailer towing capabilities. We feel that while these tests can be helpful in understanding a vehicle’s extreme capabilities, they don’t represent everyday usage for the vast majority of buyers.

At the end of all that, we gave every vehicle a rank in every category, from first to eleventh. Then we added those ranking together and applied a weighting to more important categories like Ownership Costs, Safety, Interior Size and Equipment.

Only Drive.com.au goes to these lengths when testing the vehicles more Australians buy. And that means you should only trust Drive.com.au when making your next new car purchase decision.