Clearing A High Bar: The 2020 Toyota Highlander Hybrid Platinum AWD

2020 Toyota Highlander Hybrid Platinum AWD.

All-new cars are exciting and also fraught with peril.  If the old one was beloved, there's the risk the new one will somehow screw it up.

The stakes were especially high here at TireKicker World Headquarters for the all-new 2020 Toyota Highlander Hybrid Platinum AWD---the replacement for the exact 2019 model that Mrs. TireKicker and I took on our epic nine-day, 3,000-mile road trip last September and loved.

Ten Years After: The 2020 Toyota 4Runner 4X4 TRD PRO

2020 Toyota 4Runner 4X4 TRD PRO.

Ten years.  A decade.  A tenth of a century.  That's how long ago I wrote my first review of this generation of the Toyota 4Runner. We were in a recession then.  People, short on money, houses being repossessed at record rates, seemed unlikely to buy a bigger, beefier version of what started out as an SUV based on a compact pickup.

By 2014, it was clear that I had called it wrong, underestimating the American driving public's love for bigger, better and beefier.  And looking over my notes, I see that I also reviewed the 4Runner in 2015 and 2016---by which point, I was saying things like "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Taking In The Desert Air: The 2020 Toyota Tacoma TRD PRO 4X4 Double Cab

The 2020 Toyota Tacoma TRD PRO.

Okay, let's address the elephant in the room.  Or the elephant trunk on the pickup truck in the driveway.

That is the Toyota TRD PRO Desert Air Intake.

The idea is to get cooler, cleaner air into the engine when you're off-roading.

Sweet Spot: The 2020 Toyota 86 Hakone Edition

The 2020 Toyota 86 Hakone Edition.

There is a road in Japan called the Hakone Turnpike, a marvelous winding road with magnificent 360-degree views in some places and surrounded in the greens of nature.  A road just made for a car like the 2020 Toyota 86.

Post-Peak: The 2020 Toyota Prius Limited

The 2020 Toyota Prius Limited.

Eight years ago, the Toyota Prius was on a roll.  Upwards of 200,000 copies sold in 2012.  Last year?  Just under 70,000.  And that figure is for the "Prius family", which includes the Prius Prime and the now-discontinued Prius C.  Oh, yeah---and that just under 70,000 figure is off 20% from 2018.

Time Machine: The 2020 Toyota Sienna SE Premium

The 2020 Toyota Sienna SE Premium.

Let's just get this out of the way right now---a minivan is not an aspirational object. It is a purely rational, practical purchase, arrived at usually by a process of elimination of vehicles that don't suit the family's needs.

Big Green Truck: The 2020 Toyota Tundra TRD Pro CrewMax

The 2020 Toyota Tundra TRD Pro CrewMax.

If you're among the millions of people scratching their heads over the Tesla Cybertruck unveiled last November, here's the antidote. They don't come any more traditional or rugged than the 2020 Toyota Tundra TRD Pro CrewMax.

"Good Heavens, Miss Sakomoto! You're Beautiful!": The 2020 Toyota Corolla XSE

The 2020 Toyota Corolla XSE.

About that headline. If you don't get the reference, it's from Thomas Dolby's 1983 hit "She Blinded Me With Science".   And yeah, it's a cliche', but the 2020 Toyota Corolla is kind of like the woman who takes the glasses off, lets the hair down and you're stunned. 

For 54 years, the Toyota Corolla has been the car that was everywhere and went unnoticed.

Oh, they sold plenty of them---in fact, the Toyota Corolla is, adding up all the examples moved since 1966, the best-selling car in the world.

But it has always looked---kinda anonymous. Like the response the stylists were trying to elicit was "small four-door economy sedan".

Time, Miles and Love: The 2019 Toyota Highlander Hybrid Limited Platinum AWD

The 2019 Toyota Highlander Hybrid Limited Platinum AWD.

I've said it before, I'll say it again. You don't really know if you love a car until you've lived with a car for a bit. Hours and miles are the best way to know just how good the machine to which you trust your life and your family's lives really is. Five minutes in a test drive around the block with a salesman at your side doesn't cut it. And even the typical car reviewer week around town isn't the same as getting out on the open road for an extended period of time.

Mrs. TireKicker and I take our annual big camping trip in late September every year. This time it was nine days, with the ultimate destination being Telluride, Colorado---and the folks at Toyota Motors North America and their prep and delivery partners at DriveShop were terrific enough to provide a two-week loan of the 2019 Toyota Highlander Hybrid Limited Platinum All Wheel Drive.

All Grown Up: The 2019 Toyota RAV4 Adventure AWD

The 2019 Toyota RAV4 Adventure AWD.

When Toyota's first RAV4 hit the market, it (and subsequent small SUVs such as the Honda CR-V) were called "Cute Utes".  Well, 23 years of changing markets, tastes and priorities have rendered that nickname pretty well useless.  And the all-new 2019 Toyota RAV4 arrives with a much more truckish look.

Went Big. Went To Lake Tahoe: The 2019 Toyota Land Cruiser

The 2019 Toyota Land Cruiser.

If you want to gain an appreciation for a full-size, four-wheel drive SUV, drive one in a snowstorm.

That's how I came to know, appreciate and eventually own a 1993 GMC Suburban---after driving the one owned by the television station I worked for in Phoenix, Arizona in the early 1990s in a severe winter storm in Flagstaff.

Flash-forward nearly 30 years.  My wife and I are going to Lake Tahoe for a four-day weekend to celebrate my birthday and---as it has been most of this winter, it seems---it's snowing.  I've requested, weeks in advance, "anything with all-wheel drive".   I'm originally scheduled in a Mazda CX-5.  A lovely vehicle, one I like a lot.  A couple of days before the trip, it gets pulled and replaced with a Hyundai Santa Fe.  Again, more than fine.  An excellent machine and it meets the main requirement---all-wheel drive.

Then comes the text.  My contact at DriveShop,  which contracts with manufacturers to prepare and deliver vehicles to automotive reviewers, was looking at the wrong week on the calendar.  One more switch---this time to the 2019 Toyota Land Cruiser.

This is not a consolation prize.  This is hitting the jackpot.

Revising The Mission Statement: The 2019 Toyota Avalon Touring

The 2019 Toyota Avalon Touring.

When the first Toyota Avalon arrived 24 years ago, it was summed up by a lot of observers as the Japanese having built a better Buick.  It was, after all, the closest thing Toyota had built to a luxobarge, the late 70s through early 90s Cressida, a stodgily-styled sedan that could be had, in some years, with a velour interior, but which also had the same engine as the sporty Supra under its hood.

You may have noticed that Toyota is working very hard to shake off its bland image of late.  And for 2019, the Avalon, a new fifth-generation model, has gotten essentially the same styling treatment the smaller Camry got last year.

Leading With Your Rear: The 2019 Toyota Corolla Hatchback

The 2019 Toyota Corolla Hatchback.

About that headline.  It's the type of thing that, in my earliest days of committing journalism, on the staff of the Bishop Union High School Bronco Roundup (1970-73),  I would have been called by our no-nonsense Advisor, Mrs. Martinson to explain ("and it better be a really good one, Hagerty").

What I'm saying is that, with the 2019 Toyota Corolla, Japan's biggest automaker is taking the unusual approach of introducing the hatchback ahead of the rest of the lineup, which won't come along until the 2020 model year.

Calling it a "hatchback" is also an unusual move, given that most automakers avoid that term like the plague and Toyota itself, in the 70s and 80s, called them "liftbacks".

Walk on the Wild(ish) Side: The 2018 Toyota Camry XSE V6

The 2018 Toyota Camry XSE.

For 35 years, Toyota's Camry has been the car that everybody bought.  What's new in 2018 is that it has become the car that everyone notices.  Like the lab assistant who takes off her glasses and lets down her hair ("Good heavens, Miss Sakamoto! You're beautiful!"),  the Camry has stopped blending in and is now considered....kinda hot, even in hybrid form.

Truckin': The 2018 Toyota Tacoma TRD Offroad 4X4 Double Cab

The 2018 Toyota Tacoma TRD Offroad 4X4 Double Cab.

Gotta hand it to Toyota.  In the decade or so where the Americans got out of the midsize truck business entirely and Nissan allowed the Frontier to roll on unchanged, Toyota kept improving and refining the Tacoma.  Now, with Ford and Chevy rushing back into the segment, and Ford promising a Raptor version of the Ranger, Toyota's reminding the world that the gold standard for off-roading midsize pickups is none other than the Toyota Tacoma TRD Offroad 4X4 Double Cab.

One More Time: The 2018 Toyota RAV4 Hybrid SE AWD

The 2018 Toyota RAV4 Hybrid SE AWD.

We are, as of this writing, about three or four months away from an all-new generation of Toyota's popular small SUV, the RAV4.  So our last experience with the current-gen is likely to be the week we just completed in the 2018 Toyota RAV4 Hybrid SE AWD.

Mini-Lexus: The 2018 Toyota RAV4 Platinum

The 2018 Toyota RAV4 Platinum.

Twenty-three years ago, Toyota began the small crossover SUV revolution in earnest with the original RAV4. It was inexpensive, utilitarian and rugged.

Today?  Pretty much the same formula.  Except....if you're willing to go all the way and check all the boxes...you can also get one that could very nearly pass for a model from Toyota's luxury division, Lexus.

A Step In The Right Direction: The 2018 Toyota Highlander Hybrid Limited Platinum AWD

The 2018 Toyota Highlander Hybrid.

Let's give credit where credit's due.  Toyota has done a great job with its mid-cycle refresh of the Highlander.  What had been a heavy, unflattering nose has been smoothed out, the interior is a nicer place to do the business of driving, and...in the case of the Hybrid, fuel economy has improved and the base price has been lowered.

Green With Less Beige In It: The 2018 Toyota Camry Hybrid SE

The 2018 Toyota Camry Hybrid SE.

There are very few things that haven't happened to me in 20 years of professionally reviewing cars (there was 11 years of doing just that on local radio and television in Arizona before we launched TireKicker globally in the fall of 2008 and expanded five years later with a move of TireKicker World Headquarters to Folsom, California while maintaining a bureau in Phoenix). 

$75,000 Jaguar bent...not bashed, but the frame bent....by an 80-something lady in a (then) 18-year-old, four-cylinder Mustang with handicapped plates backing out of a space at the supermarket and cutting the wheel too soon, then pressing harder and harder on her accelerator when her car stopped backing up (because it was pressed up against the rear quarter-panel of the Jag)?  Check. 

Flat tire in a pre-production Chevy Tahoe during a press event with no spare on board and the two-way radio out of range somewhere in the Superstition Mountains?  Check. 

Brand new Mercedes-Benz (the unloved C230 coupe) that decided, while parked in a mall parking lot, to put reverse where third gear should be and every other gear in someplace other than where the good Lord intended?  Been there, done that, got the sheepish apology from M-B who thought I must have abused their ride until they found out that someone at the factory forgot to tighten a bolt.

But never...never...has anyone stopped to compliment me on a Toyota Camry.  And with the new 2018 Toyota Camry Hybrid SE it happened three times.

American Classic: The 2017 Toyota Tundra Limited Crewmax 4X4

The 2017 Toyota Tundra Limited Crewmax 4X4.

It was just a shade more than four years ago that I wrote the first of several TireKicker reviews (including a few from the Phoenix Bureau) wondering why it was that the then-new Toyota Tundra wasn't posing a major threat to the full-size American trucks from Ford, Chevy, GMC and RAM.

In it, I said "it's as though Toyota City had moved to Texas."  And in the intervening years, it pretty much has.  Toyota's new North American headquarters opened in the Dallas suburb of Plano this month, and the the 2017 Toyota Tundra Limited Crewmax 4X4 that we tested was built in San Antonio.

A lot has changed in four years---things that should help give Toyota the cred it needs to shake up the full-size pickup truck market the way it did passenger cars almost 40 years ago.