Yahoo Autos Junkyard Gem: 1996 Toyota RAV4
The Toyota RAV4 first hit Japanese streets in the spring of 1994, but its debut in the United States had to wait until early 1996. Since that time, the RAV4 has been climbing the best-seller charts, and has spent most of the last decade as the most popular new vehicle (that isn't a Detroit pickup) here. That's well over 7 million units sold to American car buyers over 28 years, and today's Junkyard Gem is one of the very first RAV4s to hit our shores.
Back in 2020, I found one of the first-ever Toyota Camrys sold in the United States (build date of February 1983, a couple of months before the initial batch of Camrys arrived here), so I'm proud to have found another Toyota milestone during my explorations of car graveyard history. I've also documented one of the first Mitsubishi-badged pickups sold here plus one of the first few hundred Honda Civic del Sols ever built, all in Colorado boneyards.
By the second half of the 1990s, the spectacular sales success of such machines as the Jeep Grand Cherokee and Ford Explorer had made it clear that the future of the American road would be all about trucks, and any manufacturer who failed to provide commuter SUVs that looked tough yet rode comfortably would be doomed here. Toyota was raking in tall stacks of yen with the 4Runner, but a small unibody SUV would lure even more American buyers with a nicer ride and car-like fuel economy.
The original RAV4 was developed on a chassis that borrowed from the Corolla and the Carina (which was only sold here for a couple of years in the early 1970s; the Celica was the closest Carina relative in the United States during the middle 1990s). It was available with two or four doors and with front-wheel-drive or all wheel-drive.
Following the Japanese car industry's tradition of applying tortured acronyms to vehicle designations (e.g., Nissan PLASMA, Subaru BRAT), RAV4 stood for Recreational Active Vehicle with 4-wheel-drive. This one has front-wheel-drive and its four doors made it more about driving to work than to recreation, but you get the idea.
It was built in Aichi Prefecture in May 1996 as a "49-state" car, not legal for new sale in California.
