RE: Time to make the Wife happy...
I forgot to mention this in my original posting. A neighbor of mine and friend has an old Hyundai Santa Fe. It has 120k mileage on it and he constantly brags how he has done ZERO maintenance to his vehicle other than oil/filter changes every 7500 miles and it keeps chugging along with no problems and has never failed him. I'm a handyman and a very experienced (backyard) mechanic and he's constantly laughing at me for the preventative maintenance I do on my vehicles. He hasn't even changed his tranny fluid or radiator fluid in 120k while I'm replacing differential fluids on my 2 Jeeps every 15k miles per the factory service schedule.
Like I said, If I didn't own two diesel Jeeps (the torque and turbocharging are a necessity in Colorodo's high altitude and steep mountain grades) I'd be driving a Hyundai Santa Fe. The Tuscon is ok but if you drive a Santa Fe after the Tuscon you'll never go back to considering the Tuscon.
My kid brother owns a Kia. Kia is owned by Hyundia if i read things accurately. Kia's prices are less and the refinement and finish are not as good as Hyundai's. With that said, he loves his Kia Sportage and it has been very good to him for the past 3 years.
I looked into a VW Toureg (same as Porsche Cayenne) but there are lots of horror stories about brakes and tires wearing away prematurely and high unexpected maintenance issues/costs. I really wanted the 3.0L Toureg diesel but the horror stories associated with VW's kept me away and as one who owned an 04 and 06 VW Jetta TDI (diesel), I can attest to engineering shortfalls in those engine/powertrains.
If you get an BMW X5, seriously consider and test drive their 3.0L diesel. its quiet, gets incredible fuel economy and should last a long time. most auto magazines are biased againsts diesels and usually report lower than actual mileage figures-they revied a VW TDI and claimed low 20'mpgs several years ago and I averaged 43mpg on mine after it was broken in...they only measured fuel flow into engine for mileage calculations and didn't account for fuel that is sent back to the fuel tank as part of the injection system. My 07 Jeep Grand Cherokee Diesel easily gets 26mpg on the highway on the straight and level, never less than 20mpg in mixed city driving, and gets about 17mpg towing my 4k camper though I did see 9mpg towing at 65mph up a very steep mountain pass ;-) as I passed everyone in the left lane.