Consumer interest in the segment began slowly when Toyota introduced the RAV4 — the first so-called compact S.U.V. — in the mid-1990s, a time when huge, truck-based sport utilities were in their heyday. But over the last decade, the segment has surged; now, nearly every automaker produces its own version of a small crossover, as they race to meet the demand.
In 2004, one out of every 20 vehicles sold in the United States was a compact S.U.V. Now that number is nearly one in every nine. That makes the segment the fourth-highest selling of any vehicle type in the industry behind midsize cars, compact cars and full-size trucks, according to the auto research firm Edmunds.com.
This year, as American auto sales as a whole grew by 5.5 percent, small S.U.V.s accounted for nearly a third of that growth, according to Edmunds.
Sales of the RAV4, for example, rose 24 percent this year through November compared with 2013, according to the Autodata Corporation. Honda’s best-selling CR-V was up 10 percent. Nissan’s Rogue was up 25 percent. And the new Jeep Cherokee exploded out of the gate its first year, selling 160,000 through November.
But if small is good, perhaps smaller still is even better — or so the thinking now goes among automakers, setting off a new race to create even more petite offerings.