the grocery store. soccer practice. ikea. those might be places you're more likely to find your typical small luxury suv. a drag strip? not so much. but any car that wants to call itself "luxury" has to be able to perform. it gives you more confidence when you're driving on the road, merging on on-ramps or passing. we went to great lakes dragaway in union grove, wisc., to see which of the seven competitors from our 2018 luxury compact suv challenge could put up — and which ones needed to shut up.
1. 2018 alfa romeo stelvio
zero-to-60 mph: 5.33 seconds
quarter-mile: 13.82 seconds at 98.4 mph
the alfa romeo stelvio was our fastest contender from zero-to-60 mph and in the quarter-mile, and that was no surprise. what was surprising was just how quickly it ran: when we compared the data between the stelvio and the giulia sedan that alfa also makes, we found the stelvio was just a tenth of a second slower in both acceleration and the quarter-mile. not bad for a small, family-hauling suv.
2. 2018 audi q5
zero-to-60 mph: 6.15 seconds
quarter-mile: 14.55 seconds at 93.9 mph
coming in second place was the audi q5 with its turbocharged four-cylinder. it had the second-fastest zero-to-60 and quarter-mile times. this is a proven used engine — audi uses it across its lineup, and it provides great acceleration that outpaces its numbers.
3. 2019 infiniti qx50
zero-to-60 mph: 6.54 seconds
quarter-mile: 14.80 seconds at 94.2 mph
coming in third place was infiniti's qx50 with its brand-new, 268-horsepower variable-compression turbo used engine . it might have been noisy, but that noise paid off because it had the third-fastest zero-to-60 and quarter-mile times.
this was just a small part of our testing of these suvs. for the rest of the track results, watch the video above — and for the full results of our challenge, photo galleries and other information, check out the links at the top.
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