Over the next few weeks, we’ll be explaining all the categories and contenders for Drive Car of the Year 2024. Testing is currently underway, with the final winners to be announced early next year.

Here we’re looking at large and extra-large prestige 4WDs under $150K with no-nonsense capability for adventurous Australian families – who want more style and status than lower-priced vehicles can offer, with no compromise.

This is a category that might look familiar from 2023. We knew it as Best Off-Road SUV last year, but is now price banded and so is considered as a new category, Drive Car of the Year Best Luxury Off-Road SUV Under $150K. It includes a tidy array of luxury off-road models, now all under consideration for their ability to go mud-plugging with the best out in the bush while also scrubbing up to be not the least bit out of place when delivering its occupants to the opera in town. 

These are vehicles that, despite their cost, have all the mechanical and electronic systems to get them as far off-road as possible as a standard vehicle can. Some have a particularly off-road focus, while others are designed to be just as equally at home on the blacktop. There is no lack of safety or technology for most of them, or indeed luxury equipment.

Whichever way it goes, it’s going to be a tight contest.

There’s the Ineos Grenadier, such an interesting take on the iconic boxy SUV and to many eyes the spiritual successor to the original Land Rover; then, the Jeep Grand Cherokee, now having moved up well into luxury status with most models well beyond $100K, while the evergreen Nissan Patrol has been significantly rebooted and armoured for off-road work as the Warrior by local outfit Premcar. The LandCruiser 300 needs no introduction and surely must be a readers’ favourite to win this category as Toyota’s best and biggest SUV. 

Because the Drive Car of the Year Best Off-Road SUV Under $150K is, basically a new category this year (last year the category had no price cap), everything that meets the definition of off-road and is under the price barrier of $150,000 is eligible for consideration.

Drive’s rules require that, for a car to be eligible, it must:

The winner of the 2024 Drive Car of the Year Best Luxury Off-Road SUV under $150K will be announced in February 2024.

Before then, we will announce the finalists, all of which deliver on the buyer’s expectations for cost-effective urban motoring. One thing is certain: this category promises to be one of the toughest confronting our 11 experienced judges.