10 Biggest News Stories of 2019: Toyota RAV4 Rises Again, Kia Telluride Peaks

If SUVs were the Borg — the ant-farm-like society of cyborgs who all work in unflinching conformity for “the Collective” — then 2019 was the year American car shoppers were officially assimilated. And, while the car culture has been trending that way for years now, at this point, “resistance is futile.” Need convincing? Look no further than Cars.com’s top 10 most popular stories of the past year: Only one single article was not specifically about SUVs or multiple SUVs (and the one that wasn’t was about which cars in 2019 have autonomous features, only further validating our Borg analogy).

Related: 2019 Toyota RAV4: Everything You Need to Know

While the past year saw the introduction of some exciting and well-received all-new SUV models — the Hyundai Palisade, cross-brand sibling the Kia Telluride and the Lincoln Aviator spring to mind — it was a perennial crowd-pleaser that dominated our most read stories. The 2019 Toyota RAV4 not only features prominently in our No. 1 story of the year — the results of our 2019 Compact SUV Challenge class-spanning multicar comparison test, coming in fifth of seven rival models — it also takes up two other spots in the year’s top 10, including our exhaustive breakdown of which 2019 RAV4 trim level you should buy, at No. 2, and a rundown of five things we like and five things we don’t about the Toyota favorite, at No. 7.

Also figuring heavily into the year’s news haul was the aforementioned Kia Telluride, which shows up three different times among our top content. Our breakdown of the six things we like and the two we’re not so fond of in the Telluride lands at No. 3; a compare-and-contrast highlighting the major differences between the platform-sharing Palisade and Telluride, at No. 6; and that time we made a case that the Telluride inadvertently renders its three-row Kia sibling, the Sorento, obsolete, at No. 9.

And let’s not forget about the also-beloved RAV4 rival, the Honda CR-V, which showed up big on our top 10 list in the form of the six things we like and six things we don’t, at No. 4.

Will you be shopping for a new car … or, let’s face it, a new SUV in the new year? As always, Cars.com’s editorial staff seeks to arm you with the info you need to make the most informed decision you possibly can by the time you reach the dealer lot — and we love knowing that the more readers who click on a given article, the more car shoppers we’ve helped. To that end, here are the top 10 news stories Cars.com readers couldn’t get enough of in the past year:

1. What’s the Best Compact SUV of 2019?

2. Which 2019 Toyota RAV4 Trim Should I Buy: LE, XLE, XLE Premium, Adventure, XSE or Limited?

3. 2020 Kia Telluride: 6 Things We Like (and 2 Not So Much)

4. 2019 Honda CR-V: 6 Things We Like (and 6 Not So Much)

5. Which Cars Have Self-Driving Features of 2019?

6. What’s the Difference Between the 2020 Hyundai Palisade and 2020 Kia Telluride

7. 2019 Toyota RAV4: 5 Things We Like (and 5 Not So Much)

8. Which 2019 Three-Row SUVs Offer Captain’s Chairs?

9. Telluride-or-Die: New Kia SUVs So Much Better Than Sorento, It’s Fratricide

10. 2019 Mazda CX-5: 10 Things We Like (and 4 Not So Much)

More From Cars.com:

• 2020 Kia Telluride Review: The New Big SUV Benchmark
• Find a 2020 Kia Telluride for Sale Near You, Now
• 2019 Toyota RAV4 Review: Delivers More, Costs More
• Find a 2019 Toyota RAV4 for Sale Near You, Now
• Shopping for a 2019 Honda CR-V? Start Here

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