Wait, don't buy an SUV! Here are 15 rugged used car alternatives

It’s not in the least bit newsworthy to inform you that SUVs are ‘quite popular’. The UK’s top ten sales chart is dominated by the things and beyond those bestsellers, there’s dozens (upon dozens) of alternatives. It’s a segment that continues to grow as Chinese brands muscle in on our market.

As a TopGear.com reader, though, we’d like to think you can peek beyond the superficial and see that most modern crossovers, with their front-drive layout and brash alloy wheels, aren’t particularly off-road-ready. So why not spend a mere fraction of your lease deposit on this tasty Subaru Outback instead? Genuinely rugged and with a subtler, estate car body, it’s everything those modern SUVs aren’t. Not least because its 3.0-litre boxer engine (and the Outback’s resulting thirst and tax bills) care little for modern-day tropes like ‘efficiency’.

Subaru seemingly started the rugged wagon trend way back in the Nineties, inspiring Audi in its pursuit of a plusher, more premium alternative. Its Allroad badge first adorned the bootlid of a quattro A6 Avant way back in 1999, the raised ride height and black bumpers actually lifting the aesthetic of the C5-gen wagon rather than hindering it.

A cult classic was born, not least because you could have it with a stonking 4.2-litre V8. We’ve stumbled across a much more sensible V6 diesel here, priced at £7,000 with low-ish miles and decent history behind it. Handsome things, and the recipient of a much welcome comeback in newly wide-bodied form.

Ah, much subtler. Volvo’s two great areas of expertise – boxy estates and unimpeachable dependability – coalesced wonderfully with the launch of the XC70 in 1997. It installed itself as a mainstay in the range from thereon, existing beside the XC60 and XC90 SUVs until relatively recently. (XC is an abbreviation of Cross Country, since you ask, a moniker since deployed on the brand’s rufty-tufty saloons and estates.)

Quite how many wagons lie ahead on the Volvo timeline we don’t yet know – the Swedes’ signals have been quite mixed on such matters – but let’s hope there’s a place for a black-bumpered, four-wheel-driven wagon in its future line-ups. You can tide yourself over in the meantime with this five-cylinder diesel XC70 D5 wearing rather classy black paint, all for a fiver under eight grand. It’ll look even better splattered with mud.

Mercedes wanted in on the XC and Allroad market too, mind. Its All Terrain badging launched in 2017 on a lavishly equipped E-Class Estate. And a glorious thing it was too, marrying the brilliant comfort and refinement of Merc’s biggest (and quite frankly enormous) wagon with some genuine ruggedness; it rode 29mm higher than its base car and you could crank its air suspension up by another 35mm for tough terrain. Its All Terrain mode offered crossover ride height in something far, far cooler.

Prices are pretty robust – accept hefty miles and you might sneak into one for £15k – but that’s usually the sign of something pretty special. Even if Merc never responded to our repeated pleas for an AMG E63 All Terrain…

The Peugeot 505 is a bit of a legend, staying in production for nearly twenty years and selling comfortably over a million units in the process. It impressed not only with its pert, rear-wheel-drive handling, but a robustness that ensured once French production ended in 1992, more global markets picked it up and continued manufacturing to meet demand.

While you can track down a GTI saloon for a bit of fun, it’s one of the 500-off limited edition Dangels you want. An aftermarket 4x4 transformation with a huge hike in ride height and shorter gear ratios, this was no black bumper makeover designed merely for the school run. Proof coming no greater than the 557,000 kilometres covered by this example. The gavel just dropped at €11,000 on its auction; better keep your eyes peeled for another…

…or you could snap up its modern-day equivalent for just four grand and head to the aftermarket to carve up a fresh incarnation. The 508 RXH possessed a diesel hybrid powertrain (now there’s a rarity) to endow it with four-wheel drive. It sat 30mm higher than a stock Peugeot 508 Station Wagon for some genuine off-road ability and appeared even more handsome, however timid its extended arches and bumpers look against its absurd ancestor.

And here was a hybrid long before such things were dish of the day. A 161bhp diesel drove the front wheels and a 37bhp e-motor took care of the rear; there was no option to plug it in, but you could still squeeze a few miles of e-range out of it with a light foot. Not as cool as the Dangel – but not a car short on intrigue all the same. Especially for such a small pile of cash.

If you crave a little more simplicity than the Pug (yet just as much class), then how about a Volkswagen Passat Alltrack? An Audi Allroad for shrewder shoppers, it was a brilliant thing, pairing the de rigueur 2.0-litre TDI powertrain (long before its controversy) with greater ride height and gnarlier bodywork without making an imprint on the Passat’s firmly established practicality.

Cool things – and there’s a tonne of choice second-hand. This neat black example pairs a well-established manual ‘box with diesel power and wears a reasonably modest 110,000 miles for its five and a bit grand asking price.

The Volkswagen Group being what it is, the Allroad and Alltrack blueprint was shared with the generosity of a grandma proudly dishing out her hotpot recipe to everyone at Tuesday crafts club. Seat briefly got in on the act, first with its Altea Freetrack people carrier (fancy a punt at £689 with no warranty?) before the much more convincing Leon X-Perience estate.

It didn’t sell in vast numbers in Great Britain – Seat shifted just 16 examples during its final year on sale here – yet its cocktail of torquey turbodiesel power, flexible four-wheel drive and smart styling is an eminently appealing one. Not least at a whisker over seven grand.

Should even the Leon not be small enough for your driveway – and you can live without its four-wheel-drive underpinnings – then Skoda’s diddiest Scout model looks an absolute steal at under two grand.

Scout and Outdoor treatments were applied across the Skoda Octavia, Yeti and Superb, but there’s something very charming about the teensy Fabia estate sneaking its way into the same party. You’ll pay just £20 a year in road tax for a car keen and able to take on anything – so long as ‘anything’ broadly involves an occasional tip run or a very efficiently packed camping trip.

Proof beyond reproach that the Allroad recipe reached every rut and recess of the Volkswagen Group. Hiking up a Huracán and putting the power of its 5.2-litre V10 engine through much knobblier tyres feels like the byproduct of a cheese dream, and yet the Sterrato launched alongside a Porsche 911 Dakar distant cousin to briefly endow the world with a Rugged Supercar sub-niche. Heady times.

We can’t lie, it was spectacular, though its place on this list is surely only for those a) rich enough and b) whose only want for practicality is smothering their local potholes and speed bumps with a bit less stress. It won’t rival an A6 or Passat for family duties, but it has this list utterly licked for outright fun and extravagance. Not least at, um, £240k…

The dying light of Rover gave us all manner of brilliantly mad things. The 25, 45 and 75 saloons all got wild, MG makeovers, the latter even switching to rear-wheel drive and possessing a hulking great V8 engine if you really wanted. There was even an X-Power SV supercar to take on the (then) might of TVR.

At the humbler end of the showroom, meanwhile, the ageing, Rover 200 platform pioneered a whole new segment, beating the Nissan Juke by a whole seven years when the Streetwise launched as an ‘urban on-roader’ to a chin-scratching public in 2003. The shallow depth of its development budget was clear, and we know with crushing hindsight that it couldn’t save its manufacturer. But just think of the kudos you’ll garner at next year’s Festival of the Unexceptional as you roll through the gates in your £995 Streetwise…

Was Rover onto a genuinely winning idea, one stifled only by the cruelness of customer snobbishness? Audi looked to have been coveting the Streetwise philosophy when it launched the A1 Citycarver nearly two decades later. We rather liked the thing. “It’s got all the bits we like about an A1, but it rides properly and looks tough yet cute, like a bulldog puppy,” read the TopGear.com review.

Its extra 50mm of ride height – the combination of 35mm taller suspension and another 15mm of tyre sidewall – ensured it skipped merrily over the urban ruts and bumps that could fox a specced-up A1 in standard form. Small wonder it’s still £16k all these years later, then.

Another outright curio was spun from Volvo’s decision to extend its proven (and wholly sensible) Cross Country philosophy to a saloon rather than estate car. This S60 nabbed 65mm more ride height and all the black plastic cladding of its wagon siblings but looked odd without their much more practical hindquarters.

There’d be no perching on the boot to shelter from the rain as you pulled on your wellies here – nor any sticking wet dogs behind a protective guard to keep the seats free of muck. Despite its four-wheel drive, then, it feels destined to buff the edges from your urban commute rather than haul you ably into the middle of nowhere. Still a very noble cause, mind you.

Anyone who’s visited a European airport in recent years has likely ridden in the back of a Toyota Corolla Touring Sports (aka estate) to get there. Its whisper smooth and stupendously efficient hybrid powertrain has made it the number one choice for hauling excited holidaymakers and their overstuffed cases to Terminal 2 with nary a concern.

Trek spec gained 20mm in ride height and some underbody cladding, all the better for hoofing over those speed bumps pockmarking the pricey Drop Off zone if the check-in desk’s closing you’re bellowing at your driver to get you at the conveyor belt in time. With no four-wheel drive option it doesn’t appear ready to embrace anything much tougher…

Is it a saloon? An SUV? An estate? No one – perhaps not even Citroen – appears entirely sure. This too swerves a 4WD option and unlike everything else on this list, it doesn’t appear to especially embrace tough rubber cladding, either. Yet the soft, aloof suspension and commanding driving position of the C5-X are surely everything the regular SUV buyer anticipates. Served up in a shape they surely didn’t.

We love ‘em – even if, as per the posh French car norm, the buying public largely didn’t. This one looks a relative steal for a trifle over ten grand, and we can guarantee you won’t ever lose it in a car park full of Qashqais, Jaecoos and Sportages.