This site may earn affiliate commissions from the links on this folio. Terms of use.

Look for a lot of big SUVs and high-terminate SUVs at the New York International Car Show this year. Automakers are betting fuel prices volition stay stable the next couple years at $2.50 a gallon or less, so the cost of upsizing won't be and then costly. While NYIAS is held in crowded Manhattan at the Javits Centre, the tri-country area of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut is the country's biggest market for upscale cars and, increasingly, bigger SUVs and crossovers.

SUVs and crossovers have been outselling sedans for the past 3 years. New SUVs shown in New York will include the total-size Lincoln Navigator, the midsize Range Rover Velar, a 707-hp Jeep Thou Cherokee (Texas oil country loves ya), and (below) the Buick Enclave and Infiniti Monograph.

2018 Buick Enclave Avenir: a new, more than premium trim line

Buick Enclave Avenir: for those who tin't spend enough

Buick had a happy problem with its aging (2008-2017 model years) midsize Enclave. Ninety per centum of buyers were already selecting the ii highest trim lines (model variants) of the full-size crossover SUV, according to Duncan Aldred, worldwide VP Buick and GMC. Solution: Add an fifty-fifty higher trim line, called Avenir, for those who needed more luxury and more tech. Over fourth dimension, all Buick models will get the Avenir trim line, just as the GMC has a Denali trim atop each of its models.

The Avenir trim line will be where the most engineering lives. Buick counts 17 radar, photographic camera, and ultrasonic sensors on Avenir. The all-wheel-drive option has a torque-vectoring, twin-clutch rear differential for meliorate treatment on rainy and snowy roads; it's already on the midsize Buick Envision. Buick claims more than tertiary-row leg room than on Acura MDX, which isn't hard when Envision grows two inches to 204 inches overall, eight inches longer than the midsize Acura.

The Enclave ships this autumn. Buick has built a potent record for reliability, it sells well outside the US, and the Enclave Avenir gives GM a full-size luxury car while Cadillac figures out what to practice in the full-size space. The Escalade is actually the same length as the Enclave, but the former'due south battering ram looks make it seem much bigger and it starts at $75,000. The Avenir won't cost that much. Some buyers want an SUV to look expensive — just not be all that expensive.

The nose of the Infiniti QX80 Monograph styling concept.

Infiniti QX80 Monograph: the incredible hulk

You desire large? Infiniti'due south product QX80 already has a commanding presence (it's 208 inches long) and the styling concept QX80 Monograph is even more so. For shorter motorists who walk up to the Monograph (top photograph and above), their shoulders are barely higher than the Monograph'due south shoulder line, where the sheet metal ends and side windows begin.

There's a big, double-arch grill (movement over, McDonald's) that creates for Infiniti "a powerful new face." Overall, says Infiniti, the Monograph represents a possible future direction a year or 2 downward the road: "an exploration into how we could raise our future Infiniti offer in the luxury SUV segment." The current QX80 sold 17,000 units last year, ninth amid luxury SUVs base-priced at $50,000-plus.

A production QX80 likely won't go the 24-inch chromium black wheels, but the matte silverish-grayness paint is an centre-communicable possibility. Gasoline really is inexpensive now at $2.twoscore a gallon on average, versus $3.25 a gallon the previous decade. With relaxed environmental restraints probable through 2020 under the current administration, affordable gasoline should remain in practiced supply, so more than and bigger SUVs are on the horizon.

The New York show has printing days today (Apr 12) and Thursday, and and then opens its 2017 public run Friday,  April xiv through Sun, April 23. And, yes, in that location'll be plenty of hybrids, plug-in hybrids, EVs and forty-mpg meaty cars, as well. Stay tuned for more than New York auto testify coverage.