Where is CAR’S

Top 12 Best Buys feature, you may ask. A staple of the March issue since the inception of the awards nearly two decades ago,

this year it migrates to next month’s issue to coincide with an exciting announcement about the expansion of CAR’S footprint further into digital and print platforms. But more on that in April…

Back to this issue, in which we cast a spotlight on a brace of rejuvenated icons. Like the Porsche 911 has come to define the sportscar segment (we drive the 992-generation on page 36), so too has Toyota’s RAV4 been credited with originating the lifestyle midsize-suv market. If you’ll excuse a spot of nostalgia, I vividly recall the day back in 1996 when my father arrived home in a brand-new, dark-green, three-door RAV4. We were living in a mining hamlet in the Northern Cape and Toyota’s soft-roader looked impossibly alien in that arid environment among the bakkies, hatchbacks and sedans that formed the bulk of the SA car market. Thirteen-year-old Terence thought it was the coolest thing he had ever seen…

Nowadays, of course, SUVS and crossovers are a common sight and Toyota has just launched its fifth generation of the RAV4. Sporting styling that’s equally distinctive to its forebear, road-test engineer Peter Palm travelled to Barcelona to establish whether, like that first RAV4, the new one has substance to back up the style.

Another icon reborn is the Japanese brand’s Supra, which we detail on page 12 after having driven a final prototype of the vehicle for the November 2018 issue. Elsewhere, tech editor Nicol Louw goes behind the scenes at the Dakar Rally to find out what it takes to build and run a race-winning vehicle (page 100), while features writer Wilhelm Lutjeharms pores over drag icon Mick van Rensburg’s fascinating collection of cars (page 32) and slides in behind the wheel of South Africa’s oldest Lamborghini (page 58).

There’s lots more to enjoy this month, so get reading!