I fully appreciate the input from mdxstang and skirmich, but I feel they take my reasoning out of it's context. Perhaps it is me not being from the US that I state things somewhat different/ perhaps unclear.... the message doesn't get through ;-)
Me using the ML63 as example at first was a bit wrong, but as I stated later: here in Europe, almost all SUV-s (even the Honda CRV with just half the HP can do 118 MPH) are capable of a higher topspeed than 112 MPH, so I was unpleasantly surprised to find out the MDX being limited to this.
Trying out the topspeed has nothing to do with dragracing, (which I feel to be silly), I really don't understand why you make this connection/ remark.
When driving on the Autobahn in Germany where a cruising speed of 90-110MPH can be quite normal on the unrestricted stretches, sometimes pushing the accellerator to overtake or to just speed up for the fun of it has nothing to do with dragracing... and is not dangerous or irresponsible as many cars drive at these speeds there.
To state that sporty and fast/ high speed are 2 completely different things.. I disagree, they can perfectly mix together into a nice driving experience.
This topic just started with me asking about the topspeed with after that the topic perhaps getting away from that a bit and I do realise I am absolutely not the average driver. I am a licenced racedriver, I compete in our countries MX-5 (Miata) racecup and have a nice diverse small collection of other fast(er) cars.
This was the reasion for me before owning a Cayenne Turbo, a ML500 and the ML63 which I have for sale now, I wanted a roomy general purpose fast daily car.
Reason for getting the MDX was that I am fed up with the gas guzzling and high maintenance/ repaircost (longterm quality is a bit of an issue and disappointing with MB) of the ML63.
So I wanted a "Japanese quality sporty" (so no Audi/ BMW) SUV with V6 or V8 and choice in these is very small here, hardly anything available.
Only the Infinity FX fitted the bill, I testdrove a FX50 and it drives really nice, but that has very limited interior space and is also very rare here.
I then by accident found the MDX (one of only 2 G3 in my country, both were privatly imported) and it fitted most requirements, so I got that.
NO SUV will ever be a sportscar, but a good mix of practicality and some spirited driving capabilities would be nice.
I will have to disagree about the MDX AWD being on par with the ML amg.
The only other G3 MDX in my country IS the AWD version and was for sale too, so I have testdriven that too.
Regrettably that one just was too expensive for my taste, so I bought the FWD as daily car with keeping in mind that if I want to do some really spirited driving, I can take one of my another more sport oriëntated cars that I own too.
The AWD MDX is a bit better through the curves than the FWD MDX but still suffers from the same heavy SUV leaning over in corners, all over driving experience it is probably about the same as a regular ML, but certainly not on par with a ML63 amg.
However this is to be expected, the suspension on the amg version is quite a bit more sporty than on the regular ML and it is in a completely different price league..
By the way: according to the registration papers my ML63 weighs 2210 KG/ about 4875 lbs, so it is 400 lbs lighter than you state.. still 705 lbs more than the MDX though..
However.. all besides the point, I still don't know if the topspeed of my MDX limited to 112 mph is normal.....