Don’t be wooed by the good-looking CX-5 or swayed to go for the Forester’s all-wheel drive which you may not need, for example. There are advantages and disadvantages inherent in each model, so it’s important to drop yours on the one which suits your situation best. RAV4 sits in what the car industry calls the medium SUV segment, which means it competes against the Hyundai Tuscon, Kia Sportage, Subaru Forester, Mitsubishi Outlander and Mazda CX-5 for your cash. Let’s start with the bad, because at 4.6m long, nearly 1.9m wide and some roof racks away from 1.8m high, if you’re still rocking a single-car garage, or you live in a tight apartment building and park beneath sewer pipes and such - or perhaps your local supermarket has a height restriction, you might need to rethink to a small SUV, hatch, wagon or medium sedan like Kia Seltos, Hyundai i30 or Subaru Levorg. You need to do this because the RAV4 today is not like it once was, and that’s both for better and for worse. A tighter package, despite its aesthetically-deceptive, wide frontal bicep flex posture. This fifth-generation RAV4 has been given a whole new skeleton which is 57% stiffer than the previous version, meaning its centre of gravity is lower, the ground clearance is increased 15mm, and the front/rear overhangs are shorter thanks to a minor increase in wheelbase length inside a slightly shorter bumper-to-bumper length.Įssentially, there’s more cabin room and the whole car is fractionally shorter. Today it would fit inside the dimensions of a Toyota Corolla - what can I say, small cars got big. The first-generation RAV4 was just 3.8m long with a tow bar, 1.7m wide and weighed just one five-foot woman less than 1.2 tonnes. In fact - unusual these days, I know - Toyota was the first manufacturer to offer an SUV, which they called the “Recreational Activity Vehicle - 4-Wheel drive”, hence the name. Toyota got on the SUV thing really, really early.