Twenty-nine years ago, somewhere between the death of the station wagon and the rise of the electric pickup, the RAV4 debuted as an anomaly: a three-door SUV riding atop a car platform, with all-wheel drive and a Patagonia wardrobe. At the time, SUVs were little more than body-on-frame pickup trucks in different attire, with refinement to match. They were truly brutal off-road warriors.

Today, most new SUVs take their cues from the RAV4’s trailblazing if well-mannered engineering. That means a unibody car-based platform with some light off-road capability. Once a maverick, the Toyota RAV4 is now mainstream, while such SUV icons as the Jeep Wrangler and Ford Bronco have become the outliers. And for 2026, the Toyota RAV4 has been redesigned as a hybrid or a plug-in hybrid, improbably render

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