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Add Your Review!
Toyota RAV4
| Model | Toyota RAV4 | |
| What things have gone wrong with the car? | The engine really is fairly weak for an SUV. In those high mountains I talked about the engine can't maintain speed. The transmission shifts suddenly and violently into 3rd or 2nd gear, and doesn't seem to want to pick a gear. When I buy my next RAV4 I will look for a stickshift, so I can better control the shifting. In almost a year and 20K miles we've only had one mechanical problem, due to a short in the towing light hookup. We just pulled the fuse for the towing, since we hardly ever tow anything. | |
| General comments? | This is absolutely the best car I have ever owned. After having a policy of never financing vehicles, my wife and I decided to bite the bullet and trade in my Cherokee to buy the RAV4. We found a 1997 4-door AWD automatic with about 80K miles on it. We bought it last September, and have not regretted it once. This is my wife's car, most of the time. She's a graduate student in pottery, so she ends up hauling around a lot of clay and finished pots. You can haul a lot of stuff in there. The RAV4 has a lot of room considering its size, and I've found that if you remove the rear seats you can fit just about anything in there. I once moved two massive Victorian armchairs and an area rug with little trouble. I've towed a trailer with it before, but I wouldn't recommend doing this too much, due to the small engine. I commute over some very high mountains along the NC-TN border, and whevever it was snowing I would just trade keys with my wife. Once I was the only person to show up at work one day. I had commuted in the RAV4 through the snowstorm 70 miles over mountain peaks, and the rest of my coworkers, who only live 4 or 5 miles of city streets away, stayed home! I've actually TRIED to lose traction in this thing, just to see if I could, and wasn't able to pull it off. It's amazing for a full-time system. I'm getting ready to sell my Honda Civic, and I think I'm going to get another RAV4, this time with a stickshift (see weaknesses). I love this car, and would (and will) buy another one! | |
| Previous car | Jeep Cherokee, Toyota Corolla, Honda Civic, Honda Accord, Subaru Outback. | |