2019 Jeep Compass vs Honda HR-V

What's the difference?

Now is Jeep’s time in history.

Or rather, its second time in history… Sure, there was that rather significant period of history which built the Jeep name in 1941, but no time since has embraced the SUV so wholeheartedly until 2019.

Naturally, the SUV-only Jeep is now on a roll, largely credited with propping up its parent company, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles with ever-improving global sales figures reaping the benefits of an SUV-hungry world. 

The brand now seeks to plug the gaps with the relatively recently arrived small SUV, the Renegade, and now, its bigger brother – and the car you’re looking at here - the re-booted Compass.

So, does Jeep actually offer anything that other SUV brands can’t? I spent some time in the Limited 4x4 diesel to find out.

Honda’s HR-V has not exactly had an easy life.

Unlike its big brother, the CR-V, which has stuck around since the very first SUV boom in the late ‘90s, the HR-V small-SUV was actually originally killed off in 2006 thanks to… well… not enough people buying it.

Hard to imagine now, with small SUVs being Australia’s fastest growing car segment. Of course, with the popularity comes the desire for more variants, and everyone seems to want to at least have a semblance of sportiness.

So, as part of possibly the mildest incremental facelift for a car in recent memory, Honda has delivered by adding an RS variant to the HR-V range. But is it enough to give the HR-V the edge in a cut-throat segment? Let’s find out.