Gadgetory

if you love crossover spank Toyota if you hate crossovers blame Toyota they invented them with the rav4 and here's the latest the 4th generation the 2013 let's drive this limited-edition front-wheel drive and check the tech now as you can see toda did not dramatically reap rapport shim the rav4 they did dramatically he stylet them it's about an inch shorter about an inch wider what you do see is a much more dramatic pointy nose and those kind of shoulders or the taillights leave those really set off the new model more than anything from the outside now the first thing you're gonna notice in the new rav4 is the interior is much nicer it's not so utilitarian in fact it's actually kind of ritzy now the main star of the show of course is the head unit we have two major head unit choices on this limited first of all you can get display audio which is LCD with entertainment Bluetooth and all that on there and some vehicle settings and your sources will be am/fm CD aux USB with iPod support and you'll also have bluetooth streaming all in the base display unit if you upgrade to the navigation rig you also get satellite radio HD radio with iTunes tagging and of course Entune apps the end to nab stroll in I Heart Radio and Pandora so roll in more media choices as well when you get navigation it's really the smart way to go as you'll see when we check the prices later there's lots of pros and cons to this full-on head unit first of all the navigation voice is really good you press this button you blurt out the whole address and it finds it damn Nets avenue San Francisco it was even good with a fuzzy search I did I said take me to Twin Peaks in San Francisco which is kind of an undefined sort of a search term and it figured it out a downside though is that the voice command doesn't work for the Entune apps so you can use voice command to do all kinds of things for communication navigation and such but you cannot use it to do a Bing search for example or to tell it to do something with I Heart Radio or Pandora so it's a mixed bag here now in terms of what you're listening to and how it gets out to the speaker's you can also option up JBL audio which takes you from six speakers and kind of nondescript amplification to ten speakers and a powered sub with J the audio amps behind it let's talk about some driving tech now the BSM button down here blind spot monitor not on every rav4 but a lot of the packages have that like our nav package and that gives you little indicators in the mirror but no correction if you're drifting into someone also has a cross traffic alert it'll keep me from backing into someone who's going to hit you sideways the main story here is that we've got a transmission that is a six-speed but it's a fo 6 it's actually a CVT with variable pulleys but that's better than the 4-speed cogs transmission that we had in the outgoing model that was positively antiquated the Soviets were loaning them to Toyota or something no paddles on the wheel but you could drop it back here into a gate for sport mode and then shift within there up and down now of course crossover vehicles descend from sport utility vehicles so the utility matters in these guys let's check it out on the rear end of the rav4 first of all power lift gate on this Mollica it's high trim I got to say it's one of the slower ones to start and it's pretty slow to go up I only bring it up because you get impatient day in and day out with slow power tailgates this one kind of got on my nerves after a while fold-flat second drone it's very easy one lever at the side of the seat and whacking goes down no screwing around with multiple sort of levers and pulls you'll also notice they no longer offer a third row option the engines a new story as well the engines not really new but now you no longer have the choice of a six-cylinder it's an inline 4 or you're not getting a rav4 at all that's your choice the number 176 horse 172 foot-pounds of torque it's this 3,500 pound vehicle to 60 in about nine seconds that's very average for its class the mpg is not bad though 24:31 is nothing to complain about now we have a front-wheel drive car here it's also an all-wheel drive variant and limited slip differential is included on this front-wheel drive as well now tell your first thing you notice about driving this car is there's not much to notice the power comes on just fine you don't miss the v6 not being here really what you do notice though is there a little bit of that yo-yo effect it is sort of a CVT and a 4-cylinder that's kind of struggling a little bit that does lead to some sort of strange kind of loopy spooling acceleration but there's plenty of power here it's just not real responsive I'm not crazy about the degree and note of the engine noise you hear it's not the kind of engine noise that you listen to them sounds good it's the kind that goes in engine eco and sport don't seem to make much of a difference in the drive field and the shiftable gate over here this is not a responsive transmission in terms of its fo six gears I would never use it in kind of a sport way it doesn't really pay off leave it and drive in you're fine okay let's price this 2013 limited front-wheel drive out 29 grand delivered member this is top of the stack 1400 more gets you all wheel drive as a driving experience it remains a relatively high-tech good value civilized driving machine but it's not gonna blow you away in any one direction