“Toyota”, the silver RAV4 Limited from 2007
This one had a name. Even the dogs knew it. Say “Toyota” out loud, and even now, they’ll spring out of their basket, and run to the entry door. “Toyota” was their car more than ours. It smelled like dogs, to begin with….
My wife had a colleague in the Logistics department of her company – a French expatriate, who was at the end of his tour of duty in the US and was ready to go back to France. When French expatriates resettle at home, they can bring their personal belongings with them without any tax or import duty, provided they’ve owned what they’re importing for more than six months. And that applies to cars, too.
Being in logistics, our guy knew he could easily find a container to ship a car back home. So he bought a new Toyota RAV4 Limited, almost fully loaded, and drove it for six months. As he was about to load the car in a container, he had some doubts, called Toyota France and asked whether they would help him register the car in France. “No way,” they said. “The US RAV4 is not the same model as the European RAV4, it’s not homologated over here and if you bring it here you’ll be on your own”. Facing the prospect of having to register an American Toyota with the notoriously finicky French “Service des Mines” without the support of the manufacturer, he got cold feet, and sold us the car.
Horace (the French bulldog) showing very clearly that the Toyota is HIS car. And no, he can’t write – he’s just pretending.
We kept it for 13 years. More than we’ve stayed in any home in our entire married life. And I only sold it because I was tired of it – imagine, the same car for 13 years. There was nothing wrong with the car, except it smelled like dogs, and I’m pretty sure its new owner will be able to add another 100,000 miles to it.
A compact SUV with 4 cylinder 2.5 liter engine, the third generation RAV4 was considered the best of its class when it was launched in 2006 – journalists were impressed by its road manners and its steering – Motortrend even wrote it “felt like a sports car in hiking boots”. Its engine felt strong – stronger than the 2 Liter engine of the Miata rated for the same 167 HP – and the car was very pleasant to drive. It did not isolate you from the road or from the powertrain the way modern SUVs do, it was generally lively and surprisingly agile in emergency avoidance maneuvers.
Not a mere front seat dog – a driver’s seat dog.
Being a Toyota, “Toyota” was expected to be well built and reliable, but 2007 was probably a bad time for the car maker (remember, the sudden acceleration syndrome) and we had to go through a few recalls, and even a “recall of the recall”. The fundamentals were rock solid (the body, the paint, the engine, the gearbox, the seats, the interior trim), but the suspension and the tie rods required multiple interventions along the 13 years we lived with this car, and we changed the disk brakes almost as often as the brake pads themselves.
13 years of ownership bring their share of trouble – in particular when you let a young nephew drive the car for a whole summer. Here I’m in the process of replacing the rear passenger door.
Fuel economy was not stellar – around 22mpg whatever the circumstances, but gas is cheap over here, and we don’t drive that much.
Toyota – after the repair. I’m better at swapping doors than at painting. I had placed an alert on eBay and after one year, found a matching one.
Choosing a replacement was not easy. Logically, I should have replaced “Toyota” with a RAV 4 Hybrid – a choice of reason – but I kept on finding modern SUVs boring and their electronic security nannies insufferable. I still longed for a convertible and wanted what would probably be my last gasoline powered vehicle to be a choice of passion. The practicality of a SUV, an unfiltered feed back, no electronic nannies, a removable top, and a strong personality.
You can hardly find a picture of the car without the dog being around. Unalduterated love.
Does it exist? Sure, it does. They’ve been making them in Toledo, OH since 1941…
A body repairman after my own heart. I still remember the thrill of finding a straight, shiny hood painted the right color on a car being freshly received by my favorite junkyard when I was there one day while still in high school. That was soooo much easier than the whole straighten-bondo-prime-paint routine.
The Rav4 is another vehicle that is everywhere – except in my own life. I have never ridden in one, and don’t know of a single one in my circle of family/friends/acquaintances. I must not hang around with normal people. Don’t answer that.
Me neither. I’m ok not being around normal people.
Same here. I’ve ridden in two Highlanders, both hybrid, but not sure I’ve so much as sat in a RAV4. Don’t have any friends with them, either, though they are everywhere in our neighborhood.
I had an incident with the tail gate of my nearly new F150, while unsightly it was a minor ding which my eyes were drawn to every time I walked up from the back of the truck. As luck would have it my nephew was working at a major chain of “recyclers/dismantlers” here in the NW and gave me a lead on a zero miles F150 PU damaged in shipping which had a BRAND NEW pristine tail gate in the same Ruby Red paint color as my truck. When I visited the yard. I was told the the forklift driver dropped it of the forks damaging it, they still wanted $1400 for it ….damage and all….I passed and just put a sticker over the dent.
Toyots are funny like that, they dont support used ex JDM imports here unless they bring them in and refurbish them as signature class used cars, I see lots of these later RAV4s on the road they are popular.
What I don’t get is how you drove it for 13 years and don’t have any of bumper corners bashed in with the signature Camry corner dents (which obviously aren’t limited to Camrys). All 4 corners of my 15 year old Highlander have those as do at least half of the other Toyotas I see. I used to take care of them with properly colored (like your door replacement) junkyard parts, but I finally gave up and just let them be in more recent years.
But yes, you point out what seems clearly to be Toyota’s strong suit…durability that surpasses ones interest in continuing to drive them.
Oh, and kudos to your dog. He’s clearly a boy who knows what he wants. I hope he likes the new car as much…
Have been in and around these a bit, enough to respect them for their reliability and goldilocks “do-it-all” nature. And you’re right these were probably the last crossovers that were still pretty simple and fun to drive. My in laws have a 2013, first year of the following generation, and it feels so cocooned-in and isolated, and has some much cheaper interior bits despite the veneer of stitched vinyl padding on the dash, etc. But even these 06-12 cars have rather chintzy interiors. Combined with the stiff ride (What gives them that good handling) and fairly poor noise insulation, as well as very short/small seat cushions, one of these would not be my top pick for a road trip car. My brother just had a V6 model in the shop with over 400k miles on the original drivetrain. Original timing chains on the 2gr, the car just needed some fuel injector cleaning to set right. Truly impressive. GM can’t get their 3.6L to go more than 100k before it needs chains/tensioners it seems.
Thank you for the comments – 2 additional comments: Jeff, the images on this site are 600 pixel wide – the poor quality of my touch up attempts on the front bumper does not show, but believe me, the “Camry corners” are not pretty.
As for the car being fun to drive (all things being relative, it’s still a Toyota SUV), the guy who bought it from us was looking for a safe/slow vehicle for his daughter (they all say that), but once he had bought it and had the title in hand, he left us to the care of his wife, and spent the rest of the afternoon driving the car like a teenager. He was having a great time. (OK, he’s normally driving a Kia Sedona… )
It’s the longstanding Toyota Syndrome: it’ll run far longer than you care to own it for. You do get a final little pip of satisfaction from resale value when that time comes.
This RAV4 won a surprising number of comparison tests. Test drove one before buying our VW wagon. It does have an unexpected playful character from behind the wheel, something pared down a bit in the 2013 generation and removed entirely for the current one. This is the nadir of the late-aughts Toyota cost-cut interior, however, and combined with the notorious short seat cushions that Toyota put in their compact and subcompact vehicles back then, I didn’t find it something I’d be happy with despite the brilliant interior packaging.
Also had one during a trip to Costa Rica a decade ago. It had the manual transmission unavailable in North America. And it was terrible. The clutch was numb with a very abrupt takeup and the shift knob was a vertical cylinder with edges that were uncomfortable on the palm. It’s like they were trying to kill any interest in stick shifts just to simply their assembly lines.
As an American who got his first car in 1971 and his first non-European car in 2014, I find your perspective as an expat Frenchman really interesting, especially because you had a few cars in France. I had 3 gas Peugeot 504s in the ‘90s and really liked them. My Saturn L200 was an honorary European car because it was based on the Opel Vectra B.
If I were a European thinking of emigrating to America, I’d regret giving up the wider variety of cars on sale in Europe.
You went from a car that smelled like cheese to a car that smelled like dogs!
I’m guessing that next Wednesday’s COAL will be a Jeep.
How many miles does this 2007 Toyota Rav4 have and what’s the asking price.