I reckon there was more room in a Mk3 Escort.
What's so bad about the RAV? How long have you got?
What I like about the RAV:
Upright seating position.
Good headlamps.
Excellent handbrake.
Ground clearance means I don't have to worry too much about the snow.
Hooks in the back for the shopping.
Features it has that I'm indifferent about:
4x4. In the winter the Bridgestone Blizzaks really didn't give me any confidence, it was sliding about all over the shop. I know this is more down to the tyres and I'd have been better off with proper chunky M+S tyres but it really proved that there not much a 4x4 can do with mediocre tyres that a fwd with chains on can't.
Adjustable cup holders that I've got no plans to put cups in.
Rear seats that fold up behind the fronts. Leaving as much room as the 406 estate has with the rear seats in place. They also remove but reveal so little extra space they may as well not have bothered.
Variable speed intermittent wipers. That either seem to be not slow enough or not fast enough.
A trip computer. That I still didn't figure out how to use.
The sunglasses case in the roof console. I haven't seen a pair of sunglasses shaped like that in years. Nothing else fits in there.
Things I don't like about the RAV but are possibly down to it having done over 120,000 (possibly mostly abused) miles:
Terrible throttle response - it's so laggy that the car is almost impossible to drive smoothly.
Baulky, crunchy gearbox.
The driver's seat might recline, go back and forth and up and down but it feels like something out of a Morris Minor. The passenger seat is much the same.
All the plastic trim on the car seems to be loose, making it sound like it's falling to bits on anything other than a smooth road.
The SqUeEeEeEeAk.
Things I don't like for real:
Cheap looking interior that looks like something you'd expect in a Dacia. Go to the cheapest, tackiest carpet shop you could find, then find their cheapest carpet, you know, the one that looks like fuzzy cardboard - that's what's on the floor of this RAV. The rest of it is similar.
Switchgear that's all over the place, looking like an afterthought.
Laughably small boot.
Those fold up rear seats almost always fail to clip back into place. They'd not seen much use before and one of them was seized so I had to take it indoors to work on it - they weigh an absolute tonne! Also you carry them by the adjustment bar which is about the diameter of a pencil so it very soon starts cutting into your hands. Putting them back in is hard work too.
The plastic on the rear side doors also form part of the rear wheel arches, so when you open one there's a strip of mud both sides of you.
It is impossible to fully clean the back door and window without removing the spare tyre and carrier.
Side and rear steps/running boards - what is the point of them? It's not like you can stand on them with a Tommy gun. The side ones are, however, perfectly positioned to pick up all the crap from the front tyres going, including massive amounts of ice and snow in the winter. They're very close to the sills so quite hard to clean. I realise they were an optional extra but the only reason I didn't take them off & bin them yet is because they might stop damage happening to the actual car. I should probably bin them anyway to save weight.
Door pockets that are designed for things to fall out of.
Weird and expensive light bulbs that are really hard to get to.
The parcel shelf - it has both low and high positions but only seems to fit into the low. If I try and clip it in the high it just falls into the boot but I can't see any damage or anything to account for it. I asked about it on the forum but didn't get any replies.
The driver's seat headrest was giving me neck ache, it doesn't tilt at all, only goes up and down. I tried to push it up high enough to clear my head but it came off in my hands so I turned it backwards. Then I sat in the passenger seat and soon turned that one backwards too.
I can probably think of more to complain about but I think the thing that really, really, pi$$es me off is... it's worth twice as much as my 406 but, in my opinion, isn't even half the car.