Rav4 is NIIIICE!

[ragingfish]

So yes, this is the official thread, in which I crumble and break my 100% ANTI-SUV stance.I have to admit, I fell in love with the Rav4 the other day!A coworker asked me to bring her car (a rav4 obvouisly) around for her. I think hers was an 01 or 02 model, and I have to say, that was one of the NICEST interiors I'd ever seen! It drove nicely too...Definitely something I will be considering for my next car, whenever THAT is...Just thought you'd all wanna witness this historic event...

[DoughBoy]

I agree...those are incredibly nice, even moreso when you look at what else is available in the price range.It's okay if you no longer hate SUV's...there are more than enough of us to take up the slack!

[ragingfish]

I havne't completely abandoned you...I hate ALL SUV'S except the Rav4...but no fear, I'm not running out and getting one...

[AKLGT]

well, technically, the rav4 isn't a true suv. it's still car-based and not truck based. i for one, did look at the rav4, but couldn't get one with the features i wanted for the price i wanted.... go figure. but that would've been a next choice if only i could get a better engine.... like a v6 or a supercharger. afterall, i am a toyota fanatic....

[fuel4soul]

That interior screams Vibe...I'm impressed

[MrRich]

I better like the 4Runner.And it is a real truck.(I guess )

[AKLGT]

yes, i too love the 4runners and landcruisers. but, the car based suv's are great on gas and still reliable. the interior to my tundra was somewhat similar to the vibe. the guages and controls are almost the same... toyota

[Stang2Vibe]

The 4Runner is great, I agree, but I don't feel that it is worth twice what a Rav 4 goes for. I love the Rav 4 as well and I was encouraging my g/f to get one when she was recently looking to get a new car. I might have bought a Rav 4 if they offered a more powerful engine and the price was lower. The base price is reasonable, but it is really stripped down and no dealers really have stripped down models of the Rav 4 sitting around. I also don't like the ugly plastic trim on the base models, so I would have to have looked at the Rav 4 Limited, which soared out of my current price range. But they are a great looking car. Maybe I'll suggest them to my mom if she goes car shopping anytime soon. I don't know if my stepdad would let her buy a Japanese car, though.

[kaybeejay]

The RAV4 is not an SUV. Its nothing more than a "tall-Corolla". It's a mall crawler (anything that has "hooks" to you can hang grocery bags is definetly a soccer mom vehicle - my sister's Sienna has a hook for her purse:) )I also looked at it too before I bought my Xterra. Lack of a v6 really turned me off. My friend has a CRV with a 4-banger and we sometimes load it up with 3 or 4 people and stuff and it REALLY lags. Anything with that much interior space just begs to be filled with stuff. But once you fill it, it becomes grously underpowered.At least the Tribute and Escape have v6 options.One really spiffy feature of the RAV4 is that the back seats recline a couple of degrees.Another reason I would never get one.... Man, its a total chick car!!! One of my friends has one, and he is totally disgraced to drive that thing around. He thought it was cool when he first bought it. Then he started noticing that all these 16 yr old girls, moms, and college chicks are sporting them too. Now he is stuck with it, cause he can't afford to switch.Besides, you probably can't do this in a RAV4:http://community.webshots.com/...zVeedh ... NpBTFMaybe someday, Nissan will bring over the X-trail to compete in the RAV4, CRV market... its currently being sold in the Canada market and the Mexico Market and its tough enough for the Dakar Race!The X-trail:

[kaybeejay]

Quote, originally posted by ragingfish »I havne't completely abandoned you...I hate ALL SUV'S except the Rav4...but no fear, I'm not running out and getting one... You will probably enjoy this site then...http://poseur.4x4.org/It's true that the vast majority of SUV owners DO NOT NEED AN SUV. I'd say about 90% of those owners are better off with a minivan or a station wagon. If they want to be able to drive in the snow - AWD is much better than 4WD anyday! (Yes, there is a difference between AWD and 4WD!!!!! - don't let Toyota fool you)For off-roading 4wd is better. For driving in the snow, AWD is better.Don't go hating the small %age of us who own SUV's and actually use them as SUV's. It's everyone else who owns them and uses them as minivans that you should be "against".

[kaybeejay]

I stand corrected... The Xtrail is COMING in May 2004.http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/...19538

[Stang2Vibe]

Quote, originally posted by kaybeejay »Maybe someday, Nissan will bring over the X-trail to compete in the RAV4, CRV market... its currently being sold in the Canada market and the Mexico Market and its tough enough for the Dakar Race!Yeah, too bad Nissan is anti-American business. Too bad they had to screw around with Uzi Nissan like that and tick off a lot of Americans like myself.They do make some nice cars.

[kaybeejay]

not hijack the thread, but I personally think that both sides are wrong in the http://www.nissan.com dispute.I think Nissan Motors is wrong for going after the little guy and playing hardball. (kinda like microsoft vs http://www.mikeRowe-soft.com)And I also think Uzi Nissan was wrong, not for taking a stand, but for saying bad things about Nissan Motors in his website. That just gave the laywers a "Defamation" clause to go after. If he just kept his site about his business and not a personal forum to say bad things about Nissan Motors - then he might have stood a chance of winning.The whole thing is a mess, and its taken what... 10+ years to sort out?I am not sure how that is "anti-american business" though? It's just one case of poor judgement. If you can show me a pattern of this sort of habitual behavior, then I might agree with you.

[ragingfish]

Quote, originally posted by kaybeejay »And I also think Uzi Nissan was wrong, not for taking a stand, but for saying bad things about Nissan Motors in his website. That just gave the laywers a "Defamation" clause to go after. If he just kept his site about his business and not a personal forum to say bad things about Nissan Motors - then he might have stood a chance of winning.I never saw the site before it was brought down...But I doubt he ever stood a chance. Remember the original mcdonalds.com? It wasn't for the fast food chain. It was a small farm market if I recall correctly. Completely made no bad notes towards the fast food conglomerate -- but the little guy was forced to relinquish the name to them.I can see both sides of the issue...but I have to side with the little guy...for I AM the little guy!The whole thing is a mess, and its taken what... 10+ years to sort out?I am not sure how that is "anti-american business" though? It's just one case of poor judgement. If you can show me a pattern of this sort of habitual behavior, then I might agree with you.[/QUOTE]

[Stang2Vibe]

Quote, originally posted by kaybeejay »The whole thing is a mess, and its taken what... 10+ years to sort out?I am not sure how that is "anti-american business" though? It's just one case of poor judgement. If you can show me a pattern of this sort of habitual behavior, then I might agree with you.They have habitually gone after this man who said not one bad thing about Nissan Motors until they had some corporate thug just call him up one day and threaten legal action against him if he didn't just give them his website. That is BS and is against American business. Going public and screaming bloody murder on his website is the ONLY reason why he even still owns the website today. It is obvious that Nissan Motors is trying to bankrupt the man to get him to give up by abusing the legal system. That is just wrong and I'll be damned if I'll buy a product from a company that has to try and get its' way buy being a bully. I remember what was on his website before the court made its heinous ruling that he had to take everything off of it. He made no defamatory comments toward Nissan Motors that I ever saw. He did give the facts of his legal case and provide a forum for visitors to the site to sound off their discontent. Stating the facts of the case cannot be defamatory, especially when those facts are available in the public domain anyway, by definition.And what about Nissan Motors abusing Emminent Domain to steal land from midwestern farmers to build a new factory? Will you look more carefully now at what Nissan Motors is doing to America? After finding out about these things, I consider Nissan Motors to be corporate terrorists and I, for one, will not provide them with any funding to carry out their destructive ways. They make some great cars, no doubt, but how long can we turn the other way while they use underhanded tactics to do business?

[AKLGT]

umm.... how is this related to the rav4 again? i think i missed something.....

[kaybeejay]

Quote, originally posted by trdvibe »umm.... how is this related to the rav4 again? i think i missed something..... Uh... let's see....RAV4 competes with the X-trail. The X-trail is made by Nissan which is an anti-american corporation.Did I get that right?If I really wanted to screw this thread up, I would mention that Nissan is a Japanese company, "owned" by a French company. Oh no, did I say French?

[AKLGT]

Quote, originally posted by kaybeejay »Uh... let's see....RAV4 competes with the X-trail. The X-trail is made by Nissan which is an anti-american corporation.Did I get that right?If I really wanted to screw this thread up, I would mention that Nissan is a Japanese company, "owned" by a French company. Oh no, did I say French? lol. let's not get started down that trail!

[kaybeejay]

Last post on this topic... I promise!Like I said, I think both sides were in the wrong.Uzi could have posted a link to nissandriven.com to direct misguided Nissan shoppers to the correct URL. Instead of waiting for the court to send out an order to do so. Its been a few years, but I remember visiting his site once (oddly, I was looking for the Nissan site and mistakenly stubbled onto his) and read some comments that he made toward Nissan Motors. I do not remember exactly what he wrote - but it definetly was not postitive toward Nissan Motors and contained alot of his own opinions, not fact ("they should leave me alone, blah blah blah.... this is just another example of the big company stepping on the little guy....blah blah blah...")- which probably did not help him in his court case.Nissan could have been happy with nissandriven.com (and now nissanusa.com) and left Uzi alone. They could have negotiated with Uzi to put a disclaimer on his site, since that would have been in the best interest of both companies.I am not siding with either side here - its my opinion that both handled the situation poorly.

[jake75]

'The RAV4 is not an SUV. Its nothing more than a "tall-Corolla"'BUT I THOUGHT THE VIBE/MATRIX WAS THE TALL COROLLA!

[Stang2Vibe]

Yes, you make some good points. (This will be my last post on this in this thread as well). I did the same as you and stumbled upon Uzi's site the same way. At that time, he DID have a link prominently posted on his site to direct people looking for the Nissan site to the right place. Whether that was done by court order or not, I don't know. At the bottom of that page he posted a link that took you to the dispute story, it was not all over the homepage. If the man was being stepped on by Nissan Motors, he has the right as an American to express his feelings along with the facts of the matter if he so wishes in his website, in newspapers, on t.v., etc. The only way that I could see a legitimate defamation claim would be if he opened the nissan.com site with the original intent to defame the car company. That was clearly not the case, as the court records have shown. Also, he did not speak one single negative word on his website about the car company until they tried to blackmail him into giving up the domain name. It is my belief that the court of appeals only made the currently standing ruling as an attempt to shut up both parties and keep them from repeated appeals. They have unfortunately rendered the site useless. So now Uzi must pay the annual fee to keep a domain name that he can't use. The really twisted part is that if he just gave it up by choosing not to renew it, Nissan Motors could then register it and use it for what they originally intended, effectively stealing it. That is not fair. He should be allowed to use the site for what he was originally using it for as long as he no longer put anything on there that was negative toward Nissan Motors. That would be a sensible way to settle this whole thing. But the point remains that Nissan Motors started this all with their attempted forcible takeover of the site and by trying to use the courts to bankrupt a man and his decades old business by ruthless means. Nissan Motors continued this type of behavior by taking land by legal force that they had no legitimate claim to from midwestern farmers who did nothing against them whatsoever. They have begun a pattern of disgraceful behavior that, as an American, I will not support no matter how nice their cars are. Until they behave like a responsible company with respect for my country and its' law abiding citizens and issue an apology for their incredibly poor and destructive behavior, I will not consider buying any Nissan product. I will0not condemn others who do buy Nissan products despite knowing what the company has done, but I will think of them as having sold their soul and patriotism to a heartless and shameless company. That being said and given the situations that show how little they respect this country and what it stands for and seem to only want to use and abuse the citizens of this nation, I am not surprised to be informed that they are ultimately a French company. Is that really true? I have never heard that before. What is the name of that parent company?

[Stang2Vibe]

Renault, it that it? That sorry company isn't out of business yet? I remember some of the crappy cars that they sold here in the 80's. Man, they were sad.

[kaybeejay]

Quote, originally posted by jake75 »'The RAV4 is not an SUV. Its nothing more than a "tall-Corolla"'BUT I THOUGHT THE VIBE/MATRIX WAS THE TALL COROLLA!You are correct. Let me rephrase...'The RAV4 is not an SUV. Its nothing more than a "tall-Corolla with ground extra ground clearance' Nowadays the term "SUV" is so diluted that nobody really knows what it means anymore. It used to mean a rugged vehicle that was capable of driving off-road and the vehicle itself was the "sport" (ATV's, dune buggies, Jeeps, etc).Sorry, but the RAV4 (and others) are not SUV's. There is nothing rugged about them, and they were built for the smooth road - nothing else.

[AKLGT]

i don't consider the rav4 an suv either. i think of an suv as a truck based vehicle made for both on and off road performance. now the 4runner is most definitely an suv by definition. i love them, but more than i'd want to spend. maybe a used one.... altho you can get them in that nice v8. then again the v6 is pretty darn impressive now... like 240 hp? can't remember... but they kick (removed)!