Off-road themed makeover and model year updates make hybrid SUV mainstay rather expensive
Toyota has a knack for keeping types of cars alive that other manufacturers have given up on. Not in a behind-the-times kind of way – they just manage to make things work that others can’t. Affordable sports cars, rally-refugee hot hatchbacks and city cars are no longer viable because of emissions and rising costs. The Toyota GR86, Toyota GR Yaris and Toyota Aygo X all beg to differ.The Allroad-Cross-Country-Alltrack-type look went from big to forgotten in the last two decades, but here we have the RAV4 Adventure, with black plastic trim, beefier skidplates, redesigned bumpers and standard four-wheel drive.Granted, Toyota keeping the manual rear-wheel drive sports car alive is more exciting, but it’s still worth taking a look at this new version of Toyota’s range staple, partly to see if it still makes sense next to the more recent plug-in hybrid Toyota RAV4.Along with the Adventure grade, the 2022 RAV4 gains redesigned LED projector headlights, electric adjustment for the passenger seat on some trims and… drum roll… four USB-C ports in the interior. All good things, but just a tad half-hearted.The current RAV4 has been around since 2018, so we would have liked to see a more full-featured facelift bringing proper matrix LED headlights and an update for the badly dated, slow infotainment system. The latter now has (wired) Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, but Toyota has a more modern interface in the latest Corolla and some US-market models, so now would have been a great time to introduce it to the RAV4 as well.
Source: Autocar
