1997 Toyota RAV4 Base Pack review from North America

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The Rav4 is a great car, for all its pluses, it's hard to notice the one negative it has. First I'll start with the pluses.

The Rav4 looks really nice from the outside, a lot of people have said that Toyota styled the 1st generation Rav4 to appeal to younger people, and in a sense I believe this to be true. There is a lot of plastic on the outside, but it seems to be really durable and will probably last longer than the metal on the car :D.

On the inside, the driver and passenger have a lot of room to sit comfortably in. The seats, while not the greatest in the world, are decent and will keep most people comfortable. The Rav looks like it had a lot of options available to it, but sadly I only have a base pack with A/C :' (. The rear passengers, unless they are really small or are kids will have trouble siting comfortably for long periods of time (I have had my friends complain after about and one hour in the back seat-cramped legs was the number #1 complaint!) Toyota gave the 4 door Ravs the leg room of a 2 door! The rear trunk space of the car is really good, I'd imagine with some creativity you could get quite a few things back there.

The nice thing about the Rav is that the rear seats can either fold up to the driver/passenger seats to make much more cargo space or can fold flat to make a decent sized bed in a pinch (ie: You're on a 8 hour drive and have to catch a few Z's) One minor complaint I have about the interior is the dated '90's looks it has (two-tone with an array of different colors in the middle of the seats/door cards, you guys know what I mean ;) )

The AWD system in the Rav4 is pretty good. On top of getting power to all the wheels all the time, there is a CDL (center differential lock) button on the dash, which when used will force a 50/50 split between the front and rear diffs (only to be used when the going gets tough) This feature is only available in the manual transmission; the autos lock the center diff automatically. The RAV can do some light off roading, but nothing extreme like rock crawling/mud bogging. Overall I'd rate the AWD system a 7.5 out of 10.

The engine on the RAV4 is like a double edged sword; on one side it's extremely reliable; they usually have a service life of 250,000 miles (400,000kms), but it's not uncommon for them to go the extra mile and last till 350,000 miles (640,000kms). My dad works at a Toyota dealership and people come in with Rav4's with 400,000-650,000kms on the engine! That's insane! Another good point is that this is a non-interference engine, meaning that if your timing belt should break, your valves/pistons are safe from danger.

The gas mileage in my case has been very good, I was told it would get about 30MPG hwy, but I've actually gotten a best of 28MPG and as low as 25MPG (when I want to be heavy footed). City mileage is unknown to me as I do 96% Hwy driving. And now the one and only major negative on the Rav is... its engine, once you get to about 120km/h the Rav seems to run out of steam. It'll still hit 160km/h, but very... slowly. The reason being is because once you get to 120km/h, you're out of the engine's power band (3000-4000 RPM). So if you plan to pass on the highway, plan far in advance to make sure you have enough time to make it.

It should be noted that the automatic transmissions on the Ravs are as bullet proof as they come, but the 5 speeds, while still being reliable, have dodgy 5th gears, a lot of them don't have the problem or will just have the beginnings of it, but when it does have to be replaced (or if you choose to replace it), it's about $300 in parts (5th gear assembly). If you can to the work yourself, it's fairly easy, if not, then it's about $300 labor.

Overall the Rav4 is perfect if you want the safety of AWD, more ground clearance and don't normally use the back seats much.