Your big, beefy, butch RAV4 is ready now
Clearly, someone within Toyota Motor Corporation has had enough of the RAV4 being thought of as automotive wallpaper. The 2019 edition of the Japanese carmaker’s perennially personality-free SUV was unveiled at the New York Auto Show last week. And it’s been working out at the gym.
The fifth-generation RAV is on ’roids, as evidenced by the incoming model’s muscular body panels and lower, more aggressive stance. Don’t look it in the eyes! Don’t look it in the eyes!
Actually, all might not be quite as it seems for Kiwi RAV customers (so breathe, Avis, breathe . . . ). The version on show in New York is very much a US-spec machine, boasting what the Americans call Adventure styling, potentially not destined for our shores.
That’s disappointing. No, we’re as unlikely to add a RAV to our midsize SUV shopping list as the next person, let’s be honest. But the new “prison yard” take on what has, until now, remained an inoffensive but ultimately uninteresting-looking SUV works for us. It’s almost a bit Lexus-ish
. . . which we’re unsure whether would be insulting to either sibling brand.
When you think about it, Toyota is making an effort to regain a more aggressive, performancethemed foothold on the market. The Supra is about to make a comeback, and in Northern Hemisphere markets the little firebreathing Yaris GRMN edition is asking the likes of Ford’s Fiesta ST200 and the Peugeot 208 GTi to put up their collective dukes.
Elsewhere the new Camry, especially in V6 guise, offers a nice mix of exec aggressiveness, without being silly about it in an attach-pointless-TRD-bodykithere kind of way. The 2019 RAV echoes this sentiment. Let’s just hope, for its sake, the Hertz procurement team isn’t intimidated.