Why 4x2s are a slippery slope

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Thursday, April 29, 2010

Lest it be said that I am kicking a beaten dog when it is on the deck, let me stress from the outset here that that is most certainly not the case. And, what’s more I am not going to get any further embroiled into Toyota’s current worldwide difficulties — resulting , it has to be said, from the company’s own inability to admit that it could possibly have done anything wrong.

I make these early assertions because people, being what they are, often jump to unbelievable conclusions, but I want to tell you now that so any of the opinions I am about to express have nothing to do with Toyota’s ongoing problems.

In fact, Regular readers will know that I am far from being a fan of faux 4x4 vehicles — i.e. cars that pretend to be all-wheel drive machines, but which are not. And, I have to say that I find that People’s willingness to fool themselves in this regard leaves me quite baffled.

I know of many people — women mainly, although there are those men who delude themselves, too — who would do anything to get into such cars, caring little about any dynamic deficiencies of the cars themselves might have.
Motorists’ desire to look good, at whatever cost, overcomes any commonsense they may have, in my view.

Now, the RAV 4 — Toyota’s contender in the 4x4-lite segment — is intrinsically a good machine, and especially so in 4x4 mode. However, it is the two-wheel drive version of the car which is the big seller here in Ireland, and I have to say I have a problem with that.

I do not like them and don’t think I ever will.

I recently berated the BMW X1 for the same reason, and I am about to do the same here with regard to the two-wheel drive version of the RAV 4.

It might tick the right boxes for many people, in terms of its looks and its practicality, but the reality is that I believe this to be a very dynamically challenged machine.

The newly face-lifted version of the RAV is, indeed, a looker and few would argue that it would look good in their driveway. But get this thing out on a slippery surface and it turns into something inherently different.

Powered, as it is, by an excellent, two-litre petrol engine that outputs 116 kW (158 bhp) and an impressive 198 Nm of torque, and which in turn translates into a reasonable 10.2-second, 0-100 kph time and a top speed of 1284 kph, this machine does not appear to have many flaws.

But flawed it is and it is only really when you get it out onto the road that these problems emerge. Channelling all that power through the front wheels means that in circumstances where grip levels are less than optimal, means that wheelspin is going to become an intrinsic part of you life. So, too, understeer.

The combination of these two things does tend to make life with this RAV 4 very tiresome, indeed, and, I have to say, I was thoroughly sick of it by the end of my time with the car.

Throw in a six-speed manual gearbox, which I found to be clunky and more than a little recalcitrant when it came to doing what I wanted it to do — particularly when it came to finding second gear during a downshift sequence (although whether this problem is one specific to the test car only or a more general one, I do not know) — and I have to say I found the package to be tiresome in the extreme.

The pity of this was the fact that — in essence and as I have already said — the RAV 4 is intrinsically a decent car.

The handling is generally good — understeer aside — and the ride was a lot better than in many contemporaries, but the whole thing is, to my way of thinking, completely flawed.
Although it has a sensible, spacious and well-made cabin, is very well specified and will undoubtedly have strong residual values, the RAV does not do it for me in any shape or form.

There were minor, other irritants such as the heavy, side-hinged rear door, but these things you can live with in the long run.

What I could not live with was the constant chirruping of the front tyres, under acceleration, from any standing start and the dire wheelspin this turns into when the roads get any way wet. And quite how this would work out in the wintry conditions from which we have just emerged leaves me only to perish the thought.

I know I am hobby-horsing here, but I can’t help it.

And I have to say that Toyota are not the only guilty parties here, because most of this car’s rivals also come with two-wheel drive versions, and by and large these are no better than this RAV 4.

So, that’s it; lecture over — apart, of course, to counsel people that if they really want to delude themselves that they are driving something worthwhile when they purchases a 4x2 rather than the real thing, then they really are only fooling themselves.