Toyota RAV4 GX AWD 2016 new car review

The original 1995 Toyota RAV4 was a short wheelbase, two-tone roller skate. I spent many a kilometre bouncing around in one and ruing the fact you couldn’t hide anything in the pitiful-sized boot. Then there was a long-wheelbase version which was just a roller skate for a bigger foot.

Since the ‘90s the RAV4 has had, ahem, a ‘Ravolution’ and has become quite large. There’s now a roomy interior for passengers and their stuff, a proper boot (with 557 litres of space) and much-improved safety and handling.

There’s some serious competition in this segment: Mazda CX-5, Honda CR-V, Hyundai Tucson and Subaru Forester, among others. Fortunately, the RAV4 is kind of keeping pace, although it couldn’t be said that it’s leading the class.

Our test car is the GX specification. It is very obviously the base spec model. There’s a bunch of functions which I now expect to be standard on a base model car approaching $50k. Maybe not all of them, but at least some of them.

Noticeable by their absence are keyless entry and/or start/stop, rain-sensing wipers, automatic headlights, automatic engine start/stop, some bits of the seat adjustment should be electric, and a decent steering wheel that doesn’t feel like the handle of a cheap broom.

Instead, the RAV4 GX comes with features I wouldn’t necessarily expect such as heated and powered wing mirrors and LED daytime running lights. It’s for this reason I can’t really recommend the GX as the first choice; go for the GXL and bargain the $51,990 price down as much as you can.

The RAV4 isn’t an all-wheel drive for show purposes. It’s got a lockable centre differential. However, if you want to take it off-road you’ll need to replace the 225/65R17 tyres with something a little knobblier.

On the road it strikes a good balance between comfortable cruiser and having fairly responsive handling for a vehicle of this type. It feels big when driving because the edges of the bonnet are raised, making it appear wider than it really is from the driver’s seat.

The multimedia system is excellent. I only ever use Bluetooth streaming or plug my phone directly into the car for any music requirements and they worked flawlessly. It does have radio and a CD player (if you remember what one of those is).

I’m going to reiterate my thoughts from my 2013 review of the RAV4: this particular model is spoiled by some critical user oversight.