Weekend Athlete: 2007 Toyota RAV4
Once you fold the rear seats, the cargo area is flat, which is nice, but not one of the things I add or subtract a lot of points for. What I do care about is how large the cargo area is and the size of the opening through which you must pass your gear. Here the RAV4 scores points because both are large.
Where it loses points is on the seat mechanism and the rear door.
The good part of the seats is that they flop over with a nice, intuitive pull of a lever. However, folding the seats up requires pulling the lever one way while pushing the seatback the other way. Not only is this a bit awkward, it requires using two hands, and that’s not ideal.
After the door is open, you only have access to the cargo area from one side. That’s something you get used to, I guess. However, you have to watch where you park because that door swings wide and takes up a lot of room. Obviously, parallel-parked spots are a challenge, but I could also see it being an issue in a tight race parking lot.
Rating: 7.5 out of 10
I rank it 7.5. It just doesn’t stand out compared to its small-SUV competition, but it’s far from a failure. It’s priced between $20,000 and $27,000, and that’s OK, you just have to watch your option list, I guess.
The thing is, its Scion xB cousin carries stuff almost as well but is much, much cheaper. Put another way, when I loaded up the Scion xB, my first thought was “Wow! This holds a ton!” When I loaded the RAV4, I thought, “Huh. That’s it? Interesting.” It’s probably because the RAV4 is so big on the outside that I expected a ton of space inside.
The RAV4 is also not as easy to load things into as the Mercury Mariner Hybrid (despite the RAV4’s large cargo opening), so it loses a spot to that one, as well. I think the RAV4 deserves some consideration as an athlete’s car — it’s a lot more fun to drive than the PT Cruiser and it’s not as dressy as the RDX, but consider how much space the door takes and test the seat mechanism before you buy.
