Toyota RAV4 review (10/07/2013)

THE TOYOTA RAV4 has been one of those cars which flies under the radar a little bit. While it has not achieved fairly stellar worldwide sales by stealth, it has become so ubiquitous, it is for many people a bit like birdsong: you know it’s there and you know it’s nice, but you kind of take it for granted.

It may be that the RAV4 invented the compact SUV market on its own, but down the years it has been so relatively anonymous among the increasingly prevalent numbers of compact SUVs emerging onto the marketplace.

Now the RAV4’s sales figures do show that it has been a stellar success for Toyota who have shifted 4.5m of them worldwide since they launched it in 1994 and nearly 10,000 of them here in Ireland since we first saw it the following year. But, it has somewhat faded into the background of an evolving marketplace, perhaps in part due to its drab persona.