I can’t believe it has no temp gauge, also call me old fashioned but I consider things like ride quality, steering feel, long term engine reliability and how easy it is to work on in a car over what resolution the back up camera is or the colors of the displays
It’s the drivetrain on the RAV4 for me that’s awful. My girlfriend got a 2019 LE after totaling her civic. I honestly thought the interior was alright for a base model, but I’d be fairly disappointed in an upper trim, knowing not much but the seat material changes.
I’m not sure what it is, but if you’re coming to a red stop light (off the gas and on the brake) and it turns green. Coming back on the throttle is the most jarring experience I’ve had in an automatic. It goes into gear so hard, you’d think you were clutch dumping a manual. I hope they’ve fixed this in recent model years, because it’s terrible on hers and apparently others I’ve read online.
totally forgot about that well thought-out feature. It’s so ridiculous where they put the gas lid opener. You have to get out of the car, bend over, stick your head down by the floor mats and then look really hard which one is the hood release button and which one is the gas lid opener button. They didn’t even bother making the icons white against the black plastic like on the light switches above, it’s just stamped into the black plastic and impossible to tell the difference by just glancing. I’ve opened the hood by accident twice on my trip.
It’s also the best selling car (excludes trucks) by a substantial margin. If I could make a vehicle like that and outsell the nearest competitor by almost 40k vehicles I would too. They are delivering value to their shareholders and unremarkable cars to Americans.
My opinion is that Americans are just buying too many of these cars to make Honda or Toyota want to stretch on them. No reason to spend a ton or get innovative (for now) when the main limiting factor for sales numbers is how many you can make.
I didn’t necessary mean it as an insult. Bulletproof reliability. Toyota and Honda do have models that are pretty great to look at and fun to drive. A base model Rav4 or Accord or Camry etc isn’t meant to inspire.