^old Toyotas FTW... new ones are questionable at best.

The EA888 Gen 3 and onwards have been very reliable, the 2+ were fine post-ring recall. EA839 has a bunch of issues... that is to be resolved lol.

The DSG and ZF trans aren't the issues - they're stout and can handle a lot of HP.

Both Audi and Subie have their issues but at least Audi interior quality and exterior quality is miles ahead of the Subie lol. Far more comfortable car to cry in at the side of the road waiting for BCAA.

CVT.. check
Turbo... check
FA20DIT.... check

Hopefully we're an outlier :pokerface:

FeelsGoodMan you know whats crazy? the only cars ive seen in tow trucks in richmond are mercedes or bmw... never seen an audi, never seen a range rover

Well, that's confidence inspiring. I just put a deposit down on an stupid BMW M3 you suggested!

(In my dreams)

I can attest to the reliability of the EA888 Gen 3, at least in my GTI. It's been tuned most of it's life, now with a larger turbo making around 400hp for over 5 years without a single issue (knock on wood). I'm pretty surprised to be honest but I'll take it.

like yeah the turbo actuator, and PCV/rear mail seal might go bad on ea888
but it won't blow up like a FA20.

On a RS member's IG story, I watched a range rover's engine blow up while driving down the road lol

Hobz never sees dead Rangies cuz he never ventures outside Richmond or Vancouver, aka first owner territory.

Go to Surrey or Langley where the poors masquerading as riches buy them 2nd or 3rd hand at 70% discount and you can play “spot the flatbed” for shots.

I mentioned here on the forums there was an engineer I work with whose Range Rover's turbo blew up on him.

He is on his 12th Range Rover.

His 12th Range Rover?!

Who the heck is this guy? Is he a masochist, or does he just enjoy self-inflicted injuries?

^Yray's brother YGAY

I can't make this up but he claims to be a genius.

Having worked with a lot of them, quite a few of the stereotypes about Engineers exist for good reason lol.

People who think they're smart are usually the biggest morons lol

I forgot to mention that when I originally posted about this guy's Range Rover blowing up, he was on his 7th Range Rover.

Range Rover buyers are loyal, I can see why the build quality and "presence" is a step above the german competitors.

However when I was in Denver, enterprise gave me a brand new range rover with 9000miles, maybe it's for the Aspen crowd. The car had electrical gremlins already, the blind spot assist failed and how it failed is that the light in the mirror stays on permanently... which is aggravating at night. But the most unforgivable one is that there is a fundamental design error with the side mirror, when you go above 80km/h it starts howling in the cabin like the window is open. Apparently it's fixed in the 2025+ models but how the fuck did it pass QA?

Tata needs to sell JLR back to BMW so they can fix things up.

it seems i've been summoned

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/i...s7luGr1zywpQ&s

its usually timing chain that fucks up on the later models, and no range rover owner is going to pay 10k to get the chains redone at a mechanic :lol


and RRS, velar or evoque is not a range rover :troll:

Just got back from Los Angeles and rented a 2025 Toyota Grand Highlander for five days.

The original draw to rent from Avis was taking a chance whether they had a Toyota Crown or not. Turns out they do not at LAX. Instead, the rental agent gave us a choice between a Challenger or a Grand Highlander. We had the Challenger before so we decided to get the Grand Highlander. For additional context, the car already had 8350 miles when picking it up from the rental facility.

Exterior - Google photos of it or go to Toyota's website. It's just a stock car in white.

Interior/fit/finish - I generally don't care about these things compared to the rest of you guys. My expectations is that nothing falls apart and I am happy with the exception of Hyundai/Kia because they just aren't good no matter how you package it. For the Grand Highlander, nothing rattled whatsoever. Centre console was neat. USB ports are USB-C, so that was a surprise to us. This is a 7-seater with plenty of space. The front seats were pretty comfortable and no complaints or fatigue experienced by myself or my wife, or any passengers we had. Made in Japan or Canada/US - I'm not sure and I didn't really care. You guys can do your due diligence. It felt like a Japanese-built car.

Sound / Noise - Driving on a combination of local roads and a variety of local and interstate freeways (i.e. 5, 405, 60, 57, 91, 605, 101, and 110 etc.) certain freeways can be really noisy, but you can just drown it out by turning up the volume. Most of you guys have super sensitive ASMR-type hearing so I'm afraid this will annoy you all.

Engine - I think this was the base 2.4L turbo engine with an 8-speed transmission. I didn't really have any complaints with it. I can relate to how some of you folks complained the engine sounds like trash, but only when eco mode is turned on. Once you get going, it's pretty quiet. It has a good amount of torque when you need to enter the freeways from the on-ramps.

My only gripe being that the turbo kicks in and then you have this massive burst of torque and speed, so you need to learn how to modulate the throttle. If you decide to go full retard on the throttle and not watch what's in front of you, I hope you know how to brake as well.

Braking - This thing is massive and it's not something I'm used to driving. I would say that braking is alright given the size of the vehicle. At a full red light, you have to really give some effort into putting your foot down on the pedal. Otherwise, you'll inch up towards the car in front of you. Again, this is a massive car. When coming to sudden stops, you can feel some kind of artificial (?) brake boost to really slow the car down.

Fuel economy - I didn't track fuel economy on this car but we drove a solid high 300 to low 400 miles on a full tank. I had to top up about 4 gallons before returning the vehicle to Avis. I generally don't track or factor in fuel economy when buying or renting a car so your mileage may vary.

Driving nannies - I didn't turn any on like lane assist and all the warning lights so they don't influence my experience. The auto stop/start was pretty good, unlike the Volvo V60 rental we had a few years ago. That was a total POS. The Toyota's auto stop/start was pretty intuitive, so no annoyances there. We connected our phone to the infotainment system and used Apple Carplay which worked flawlessly.

Final remarks - Overall, not a bad car, but having this for the week further emphasizes my decision to not wanting an SUV. I did not particularly enjoy driving it, but having HPDE experience definitely helped manage the nuances of handling, weight shifting, braking, and general driving dynamics etc. I can understand how this vehicle may appeal to people, but for the general RevScene demographic and amount of Toyota hate spewed on this forum, it's par for the course where we can agree it's typical Toyota trash.

Overall - 10/10. Interpret this review with a grain of salt and however you will. BMW still reigns supreme. Highly (not) recommended. :accepted:

I find it interesting that you view the turbo torque kick in as a negative! Cuz normally, I'd mostly view that as a positive lol~ I certainly hate a massive delay between throttle application and the on-coming of that massive turbo torque surge, and I suspect I wouldn't like it too much either if the turbo torque surge is extreme. But given how this is "just a Toyota 2.4L turbo 4", I can't imagine how the turbo surge would be that big of a surprise.

The CX-5 and Toyota turbo have weird throttle / spool calibrations

The Ford 2.3T in Mustang and Explorer doesn’t - drives like a big NA v6 except stronger.

Toyota's transmission programming is awful, even the 2013 RX350 I recently inherited with the 2GR in it, you're either not accelerating enough or accelerating too much, there's no "right" acceleration amount, it's super annoying. Same with any of the short lived V6 RAV-4 from that era that I drove.

I know they CAN do it right, the 2012 Camry with a 2GR I never had any issues with and my dad's old Highlander with the 3.0L as well as an ES300 I had, there was zero issues it did exactly what you wanted it to all the time.

Just bizarre decisions.

Except for not downshifting on braking, the old 4AT Toyota transmissions were quite good.

My experience is since the 5ATs, Toyota autos have typically been not great. I drove one of the CVT Corollas once and after a rather hard stop, the tranny was stuck in high gear for quite some time before it could transition back to a lower sized pulley and provide some power.

I don't mind the super spongy Toyota brake pedal on commuter cars. The first inch of travel doing almost nothing is great for being smooth when I have passengers.

The Grand Highlander drives like a massive boat, the hybrid helps with the weird throttle response, and the TX has a much better suspension.

I think AstulzerRZD was able to better articulate my experience. The throttle and turbo spool calibration perhaps is a bit...unpredictable? When you want turbo to kick in, it doesn't. :pokerface:

At first, I wasn't sure if this car had a CVT or a traditional transmission. After say about an hour's worth of driving, the transmission was pretty good and adapted to my style of driving (aka slow and boring.) Shifts were precise and smooth.

I think spongy is a good way of describing it. It was pretty smooth overall. When you really needed to come to a hard stop, every passenger can feel the properties of physics.