HISTORY
We crossed over sooner than you might think
The crossover is nothing new, in fact Mark Smyth would argue that cars with an adventurous spirit and some off-road ability were around since as early as 1977
When exactly did we cross over? Nissan claims its hugely successful Qashqai was the first real crossover and to give them their due they are right, at least in the modern sense. When it arrived in 2006, the Qashqai was the first vehicle to officially be termed a crossover by the marketing people, but was it really the first of the genre? No, not by a very long shot. We can go back decades to find the first crossover vehicle, essentially a car with an adventurous spirit, possibly some limited off-road ability and a higher ground clearance to get you over the odd kerb, onto the parking area on the school sports day or across a field. Identifying the first of anything is always open to some heated debate and we can argue that there were derivatives of the Willys Jeep in the middle of the last century that meet the crossover definition, even more so the AMC Eagle in the US that was a slightly raised estate. Toyota trumps Nissan though, because in 1994 the company launched its Recreation...
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