News flash: The automobile industry has developed its latest market niche. That news may not be hot off the presses, but in an age when it sometimes seems that we've seen all the possible automotive variations that engineers can come up with, it's extraordinary to witness the birth of a new era. So what is this new and fast-growing segment of the market? We all know and love the rebirth of the roadster, but that's not a new idea. We're talking about the segment that pundits are predicting will change the way cars look forever: the four-door mini-sport-utility vehicle.

Unlike the resurgence of the roadster, this time the vehicle category is unlike anything that has existed before. That's not to say the vehicles themselves didn't exist - look at the Jeep Cherokee and Suzuki Sidekick for examples - it's just that there weren't enough of them to form an entire "segment" of the marketplace. Then companies like Toyota started building truckish four-wheelers from leftover car parts, and, well, things started to change. At first, we called them "hybrid vehicles" because of their mutant crossover origins, somewhere between trucks and cars. But some of the vehicles turned out to be not so much hybrids as all-new designs of completely different origins. Call them "mini-SUVs," "mini-sport-utes," or, more diminutively, "sport-cutes." Whatever term you use, small sport-utility vehicles are all the rage among 20-something buyers in search of cheap monthly payments, some decent cargo room, and the ability to jaunt through the weeds and over the rocks of the road not normally taken.

A comparison test is the only way to pit strength against strength and fault against fault in any objective sense, so Edmund's staffers took the task for a week of on-road, off-road and track testing to determine the mini-ute pecking order. Our only criteria were that this vehicle category could not exceed 70 cubic feet of cargo room with the rear seats folded and that the price tags could not exceed $25,000, the point at which entry-level models of some of the (larger) compact and midsize sport utilities that are crowding the roads these days are available. Our test vehicles had to be small and relatively inexpensive.

We set out to answer the age-old question of "What's the best?" by rounding up all the mini-utes we could get our hands on. For the record, the absence of the Jeep Cherokee from this test was not intended. The granddaddy of mini-sport-utes, the Cherokee was not available when or where we needed it, and even renting a replacement Cherokee proved to be impossible. The Chevrolet Tracker, another obvious fit for this test, was ruled redundant by virtue of the presence of the Suzuki Grand Vitara, which possesses a more powerful engine but is otherwise identical.

What we were left with says a lot about the manufacturers who have jumped on the mini-ute trend. The Honda CR-V, Kia Sportage, Nissan Xterra, Subaru Forester, Suzuki Grand Vitara and Toyota RAV4 are all Asian makes. Hyundai is only a few months away from the release of their Santa Fe, and Ford is still a year away from their first attempt at this market. With the exception of the Cherokee, which makes use of some aged engineering, American and European manufacturing interests in this market are nonexistent. Land Rover's Range Rover and upcoming Freelander fit the size of this range, but they are priced too high to compete directly with our contenders.

Mini-SUVs represent a compromise. They're for people who want cargo room but not the kind of vehicle that seats nine, as in the Chevy Suburban or Ford Expedition. They're for people who want car-like ride and handling characteristics but want to be able to sit high and see over most of the crowd at the grocery store parking lot. And they're for people who enjoy the occasional foray to the nearest state park for some camping, but who really don't enjoy abusing their vehicles on the Rubicon Trail. However, that's not to say we didn't conduct an off-road rally of our own to round out the test. So buckle up, and get ready for the rough stuff.