Thread: Toyota RAV4 2.2 D-CAT 150 Invincible first drive review

Likeable Toyota RAV4 4x4 grows and matures but loses originality and still falls short of the classs highest dynamic standardsThe all-new Toyota RAV4. With the cars 20th anniversary approaching next year, Toyota made much of its status as self-proclaimed founding father of the modern monocoque-based compact SUV at the launch of this, the fourth-generation car. From behind the wheel, however, its not instantly obvious if that status is more a blessing or a curse. One of Europes few remaining growth segments, the compact 4x4 market must look like a bewildering place to the makers of 1994's original, three-door Recreational Activity Vehicle. Over the past two decades, as buyers have moved out of family saloons and into these lifestyle utility specialists, so choice has burgeoned. You can now have seven-seat practicality, sporting dynamics, fashion-savvy style or premium brand cachet for the price of this new Toyota. None of which the RAV4 has ever had an answer to, and all of which continue to be unknown to it. Old-school, rough-and-rugged, ready-for-anything 4x4 character has been Toyotas reply to all that. The trick has worked quite well to give this soft-roader a distinctive selling point thus far. But Toyota knew even that wouldnt give this car enough to trade on in 2013. So it has parachuted the new RAV4 plumb into the middle of a fragmented class that, as Toyota sees it, has the likes of the Nissan Qashqai and Mitsubishi ASX at one end and the BMW X3 and Range Rover Evoque at the other. If you plot a graph comparing the price and overall length of every small and medium-size 4x4 you can think of – from the Hyundai iX35 to the Audi Q5 – this new Toyota marks the very centre, the sweet spot. Thats where the Japanese firm expects the most demand for SUVs to exist over the next five years. But is that where a RAV4 belongs?