This is my wife's Rav4 - the "soccer" mom's baby  transportation. The most off-road we've done is going over the gutters. We've added nudge bar to push off the annoying Canberra kangaroos and nudge other cars in the car parks. It has lots of rooms and great handling for a 4WD.

Handled well, doesn't look too bad, nice drive in car, back seats recline and slide, easy to carry different things in.

Right size vehicle for mid-long trips. Very smooth, soundproof, easy to drive, visibility is good.

I have been driving my family's Rav-4 for over 3 years.  They had an earlier model and then renewed their lease with an updated version.

The Rav-4 is an excellent combination of a roomy SUV with a more versatile driving ability.  I'm able to drive my friends and our snowboarding gear up to the mountains, yet I'm still able to parallel park the car with ease.

I like the new sleek look of the 2006 model, but I think that it is much bigger and therefore pushes the Rav-4 squarely into the SUV camp, reducing its appeal among the people who want a smaller but roomy car, and also causing it to compete with larger SUV's who have been in that particular market for longer.  Now instead of being compared to the Honda CR-V (over which it clearly wins in my opinion), it competes with the SUV's of Lexus, Nissan, and others.

However, the RAV-4 has been a consistently comfortable and competent car that I continue to enjoy driving.