Toyota RAV4
Toyota RAV4 2.5 Hybrid AWD-i £33,430
WE SAY: TOYOTA’S VALUE-PACKED SUV IS BACK TO BOOST THE COMPANY’S BALANCE SHEET
If, one page ago, I’d asked you to name the world’s fourth best-selling vehicle (and absolute best-selling SUV), would you have said the outgoing Toyota RAV4? Thought not. Yet it was. Amazing, given it comes in just one bodystyle. Even more amazing given it was ugly to look at and horrid to drive.
The new one is massively better in almost every respect. It’s an all-hybrid range, at least in the UK. The FWD version has Toyota’s usual epicyclic power-split engine and motor and generator set-up for the front wheels, albeit with a new 2.5-litre engine and better electrics. The AWD one adds an e-motor for the rear wheels. The platform and suspension are from Toyota’s latest global FWD gen, with lower centre of gravity and shorter overhangs.
Its design is all about creased octagons. No one’s going to be scared by it, yet you’ll find interest and distinctiveness if you look. It’s more of an SUV than a crossover: boxy and roomy. The black lower-body cladding and wheelarches are all SUV tropes.
The hybrid system is better to drive now. The electric urge provides smooth and pretty brisk acceleration response. But, as always, the sound effects get in the way. On curvy or hilly roads, the piston engine’s pitch and volume slur up and down like a trombonist. You’d hope a new engine would be smooth, but this one vibrates the steering wheel when it’s working hard. Still, city wafting is either quiet or silent depending on whether the engine is turning at all.
Direction changes are accurate and progressive, the car gaining yaw and roll quite precisely, thanks to a reasonably alert steering setup and the new platform’s low CoG. No surprise that at the limit all RAV4s understeer, the front-drive one doggedly. Steering is too light for our taste, mind, as it’s been set up for Asia and the Americas.
The ride’s really very good: supple and quiet in its reactions to bumps. Yet the damping stops short of being floaty. That soft suspension, as well as the subtly controlled electric torque, means it finds surprising off-road traction although plainly no rock-climbing ability. OK,
it wears summer tarmac tyres, but a Trail mode button in the centre console activates a brake differential and different ESP strategy.
The progressive outside styling meets a reasonably distinctive cabin – big blocky shapes conveying the sort of robust mental terrain that SUV drivers are presumably inhabiting. It’s nicely finished too. The dash and door tops are skinned in a stitched padding, and several of the knobs and door pulls have a tactile striped rubber wrap. Real rubber… but the cast-aluminium-effect parts are transparently fake.
As a family SUV, it ought to be roomy, and is. The front seats feel like a homely place to sink into. In the back, grown-ups have plenty of room in every direction, and the boot is bigger than you get in most members of the mid-size crossover crowd. But does the powered tailgate have to be so excruciatingly slow?
There might be five USB ports around the cabin and a big inductive charge pad, but there’s still no phone mirroring. Hi-res traffic info doesn’t come automatically; you have to use your phone as a hotspot to feed the car. If they can solve the hard problem of SUV petrol economy, why can’t they sort the easy one of CarPlay?
Ah, the economy. It’s good. You can probably get a real 50mpg, even in town, and you won’t face any diesel penalties. BIK tax is handily lower than diesel crossovers. PCPs are cheap because residuals are high and interest rates low.
So it’s vastly sensible. And not without appeal. Just turn the music up loud before you press the throttle.