What goes wrong with Toyota RAV4?

Answered by CarsGuide 2 Sep 2020

Thanks for getting in touch with us. Our first thought was for you to consider a Mazda 6 wagon from Japan, since it is one of the few new wagons left on offer within your price range, is economical and reliable, a pleasure to drive and low enough (at 1480mm) for your garage situation. But it doesn't quite meet all your requirements in that it hasn't much ground clearance (at just 125mm) and back-seat legroom isn't great. It's worth remembering that the 6 wagon is 80mm shorter in wheelbase - the distance between the front and rear wheels - than the corresponding sedan version. It's a bit tight in there.

Alternatively, you might want to consider the just-discontinued Holden ZB Commodore wagon or Ford Mondeo wagon, as both offer substantially more rear-seat legroom than the Mazda 6 wagon, as well as the choice of a turbo-petrol or turbo-diesel engines. These are European-sourced models (Germany and Spain respectively), with big boots and towing-friendly torquey engines. However, again, low ground clearances might be an issue here as well.

So, our advice is to measure your garage roof and see if either of the medium SUVs listed below can fit, because if they do, then these would be the absolutely ideal vehicles for your need.

The better of the two, for its overall quiet refinement, all-weather all-wheel-drive grip and excellent all-round vision is the Subaru Forester from Japan. It ticks all your boxes in terms of needs and suitability, while providing heaps of ground clearance at 220mm. Plus it offers excellent standard safety kit, economy, reliability and resale, as well as decent performance. Just know that it stands 1730mm tall. If that fits, then find yourself a demo at $35,000 and enjoy one of the best family-car buys at any price available today.

Then there our second favourite, the wildly-popular Toyota RAV4, also from Japan. Much of what we said about the Forester applies here too, except it is front-wheel drive rather than AWD at your price point. There is a RAV AWD but it is a hybrid AWD system that takes the price into the mid-$40,000 region, so that's out of contention. The base RAV4 2WD also has a smaller engine (at 2.0-litres) than the Subaru, but it is equally response and agile. Where the RAV4 eclipses the Forester from your perspective is height – it is shorter at 1685mm high, while still allowing 195mm ground clearance.

Both Japanese SUVs are huge inside, with loads of space to boot. If their height doesn't end up being a problem, then know that either will provide many years of faultless, reliable, economical and enjoyable service. Good luck, we hope this helps. 

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No car is perfect, but we've gathered everything relating to the Toyota RAV4 reliability here to help you decide if it's a smart buy.

Answered by CarsGuide 2 Sep 2020

Car makers do not publish driver height or weight recommendations, but instead usually develop vehicles to suit the height of a 99th percentile male (193cm) down to a 5th percentile woman (150cm).

For shorter-statured people, both the Toyota RAV4 and Toyota Camry offer seat-height and steering-wheel reach and height adjustment, meaning that there should be no issue finding a comfortable seating position. However, given that SUVs such as the RAV4 generally have a larger and deeper glass area as well as higher-set cushions than sedans like the Camry, we recommend the RAV4.

We hope this information helps.

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Answered by CarsGuide 21 Mar 2020

You really need to go out and test drive both vehicles, because they both have their plusses and minuses and those will be graded according to your personal preferences. Overall, the RAV4 is a bigger vehicle (almost as big as the original Kluger, in fact) so that might come into the reckoning based purely on the size of your parking space at home.

The RAV4 rides a bit more softly but your choice of the range-topping VTi-LX in the Honda is a good one because that’s the only model in the line-up that includes autonomous emergency braking, lane-keeping and adaptive cruise-control. That said, the RAV4 has all those features, too, but extends them to the bulk of the models offered, not just the top-spec version.

On warranty and fuel economy, both compare pretty closely, so it will come down to the little things that you personally find important; things like the Honda’s doors that open almost to 90-degrees and the Toyota’s vast rear seat legroom and cavernous luggage space. Over to you.

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Answered by CarsGuide 29 Feb 2020

The Ford Escape plug-in should be an interesting vehicle when it arrives, with 165kW of power and something like a 50km electric-only range. It will be here sometime this year, but the exact timing is still a trade secret.

The Toyota RAV4, meanwhile, isn’t a plug-in hybrid, so it can’t be recharged form your home solar panels (which the plug-in Escape could be). Frankly, if you’re making four times the power your household needs with your solar array, you’re in the pound seats for owning a plug-in hybrid which could put that excess electricity generation to very good use. That’s especially true if most of your driving is around town within a 20km radius or so of home-base.

That said, the new RAV4 Hybrid is gaining rave reviews as well as recording very sharp real-world fuel-economy figures. But a plug-in hybrid in a household with excess solar capacity could almost be run for free.

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Answered by CarsGuide 8 Feb 2020

The RAV4 in its current guise is the best the model has ever been. Of course, that’s exactly how it should be, but some car-makers don’t always crack the newer-is-better code. You’re right about the new RAV4 Hybrid being the headline grabber, but that’s because it’s the big change in the RAV4 formula and the one that is likely to attract the most new customers to the franchise. There’s nothing wrong with the two-litre CVT RAV4 per se, but you might find the performance of the smaller petrol engine a bit on the weedy side, especially with a full load of bodies and luggage on board. And, as with any CVT car, the advice is to drive it before you decide, and make sure you don’t find the CVT’s behaviour too foreign. Some people do, others never notice it.

The Kia Sportage Sport is another good package but suffers the same lacklustre engine performance issue in two-litre petrol form. It does, though, have a conventional six-speed automatic transmission rather than a CVT. And while the Sportage was facelifted in 2018, its basic design goes back to 2015. Which, in fact, makes it an older design than the Mazda CX-5 which was first launched here in 2017. Any of the three vehicles you’ve nominated will do the job but history suggests the Toyota will hold more resale value when trade-in time rolls around. And congratulations on the new addition to the family.

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Answered by CarsGuide 8 Feb 2020

The world of hybrids is moving very fast, Hannah, and the rule of thumb is that newer is better purely because the technology is improving all the time. You’re obviously concerned with running costs and your carbon-footprint, so the latest hybrid technology with a full factory warranty would seem to be an obvious way to go.

That puts the new Corolla Hybrid firmly in the frame as both a car with the latest planet-saving and life-saving tech as well as Toyota’s five-year/unlimited-kilometre warranty as well as a ten-year warranty on the hybrid’s batteries. For some reason, Lexus hasn’t budged on its four-year warranty, meaning that a 2017 CT200h might only have a few months of factory cover to run if your bought it now. You’ll also potentially pay more for the second-hand Lexus than you will for the brand-new Corolla.

The only real drawback with the Corolla Hybrid is that its luggage space – because of the battery-packs – is quite shallow. But beyond that it’s a great car with the hybrid driveline thrown in for just a couple of grand extra. That’s a bargain and it’s one of the reasons the new Corolla will be a lot of Australian families’ first hybrid.

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Answered by CarsGuide 18 Jan 2020

There are circumstances under which you would stay away from a modern turbo-diesel, but they have more to do with how you’ll use the vehicle than they do with the vehicle itself. The rule of thumb is that you should really only buy a diesel version of a particular car if you plan to use it for at least one decent trip at freeway speeds every three or four weeks at the very least. Along with that is the proviso that you’ll cover enough kilometres each year to balance the higher purchase price and servicing costs of a diesel against the lower fuel costs.

The highway-driving caveat is all about long-term reliability and emissions. Modern turbo-diesels are often fitted with what’s called a diesel-particulate filter (DPF). This filter, designed to trap some of the more harmful exhaust emissions) eventually fills up with the soot from the diesel’s exhaust and, when that happens, it’s designed to burn off that soot and regenerate itself, ready for another go round. But if you only drive short distances or only ever at suburban speeds, the filter can often not get hot enough to perform this burn-off and regeneration. When that happens, the filter warning light on your dashboard lights up and it’s off to the dealership for a – sometimes – costly manual regeneration. In extreme cases, the DPF may even need to be replaced and that’s not cheap either.

So, if you’re not planning regular trips at freeway speeds, conventional wisdom says a modern turbo-diesel is not for you.

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Answered by CarsGuide 18 Jan 2020

completely redesigned the RAV4 for an Australian launch back in January 2019, so don’t expect wholesale changes until the mid-life facelift probably in another coupe of years. That’s as far as the basic engineering goes, of course, but in specification and option terms there could be some shuffling around as Toyota is continually homing in on the sweet spot when it comes to equipment versus price-point.

The other thing to watch out for – and Toyota is very good at this – is the limited-edition variant of the RAV4. These variants usually offer a load of standard equipment at a bargain price and are a car company’s way of clearing the shelves. Look out, too, in coming weeks, for good deals on RAV4’s (and any other make and model) with a 2019 build-date as these are often heavily discounted in the first few weeks of a new year. Again, it’s a shelf-clearing exercise, but it can mean very good deals.

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Answered by CarsGuide 20 Sep 2019

It could be the ECU, but I would think it’s more likely at that age that the transmission needs a rebuild. Have a transmission mechanic assess it for you.

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