Nissan Murano

NISSAN'S strange place with the Murano. It sells more every year—annual sales are nearly double what they were after the Murano came out for the 2004 model year—but the Murano was getting stale. Plus, fresh new entries are overwhelming the segment: There were only a handful of crossovers five years ago; now there are more than 25, and that number could go up to 35 by the end of 2008. How does Nissan make the Murano better without changing what makes it sell?
The new model adheres to the basic Murano theme—sporty drive, functional yet stylish cabin, wrapped in a unique-looking shell.

KIA Borrego

AS WE go smaller and greener and move away from big, body-on-frame V-8 sport/utilities to more compact crossovers, Kia branches into a new segment with its V- 8 - po we red, b ody-o n -f ra m e, seven-passenger Borrego sport/ utility. It features the same powerful (about 375 horses!) 4,6-liter V-8 you'll find under the hood of Hyundai's new Genesis. Kia says the V-8 Borrego (Mohave in South Korea) will go on sale just ahead of the Genesis V-8. So let's talk timing. When Kia began developing the Borrego some four years ago, gas was under $2 per gallon, automakers were still touting the sustainability of the big-truck boom, and Toyota was working on its huge new Sequoia.

Lexus LX570

Bodacious Ballerina SURE, SHE'S A DANCING HIPPO, BUT SHE'S LIGHT ON HER BIG FEET. A JET-LAGGED, carb-loaded mind is wander-prone, so while the Lexus rep described how the cross-linked variable-rate shocks use a spring-rate valve to help limit dive, squat, and roll in the new LX 570, improving its dynamic handling, I daydreamed first of hippopotami in ballerina skirts, then of the rubenesque Motormouth Maybelle dancing to "Big, Blonde, and Beautiful" in the musical adaptation of John Waters's "Hairspray.'This largest Lexus has no more business vamoosing through chicanes than it does scaling 45-degree slopes, fording two-foot-deep streams, or straddling nine-inch-tall rocks; yet it's capable of doing all the above.