Archive for the ‘RAV4’ Category

Last year the Toyota RAV4 got a little bit of a facelift, with a refreshed front and rear appearance, a stronger and more refined base 2.5-liter four-cylinder engine, and an upgraded feature set.

But it was a little surprising—as it had been when the RAV4 was last fully redesigned for 2006—that Toyota didn't address the RAV4's most controversial feature: It kept the spare tire hanging off the side-hinged tailgate.

In Europe and some Asian markets, the RAV4 has for several years already been offered with no spare mounted in back, so it was a little mysterious as to why Toyota stuck with this arrangement here—a rugged cue that hints at...

Just when you think the auto world is ending in an onslaught of grim grey Korean econoboxes ... life gets better. And sometimes you just can't make this [stuff] up.

Take last Friday's little news item from WardsAuto, for example. A Russian company that was supposed to assemble copies of a Japanese Toyota from Chinese kits has instead been building and selling the little Tiggos itself. Oh, the horror.

We can do no better than to excerpt the salient points of a few sentences that lay out the dastardly deed:

"It has come to our attention that...entities in Russia have been assembling and/or distributing Tiggo vehicles without our...

Toyota has set itself the nifty goal of bringing ten new hybrid models to market by 2012, and producing hybrid versions of all its vehicles by the year 2020.  Next in line for a green makeover? The popular Toyota RAV4.

We don't yet know exactly when a hybrid RAV4 will hit the lots, but we do know for sure that it's in the works. That's been confirmed by Koei Saga, the managing officer of hybrid system development at Toyota. Saga also said that the company wants to launch the RAV4 hybrid in China "as soon as possible", which sounds pretty soon to us. Is their morning coffee stronger than ours?

[source: egmCarTech]