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| Toyota Highlanders |
Redesigned last year, the Highlander is a functional, family-friendly crossover. The Toyota Highlanders was named a Recommended pick and Best Family Vehicle in 2008. The Highlander comes in three trims -- base, Sport and Limited -- in either front- or all-wheel drive. This review focuses on the gasoline-powered Highlander, but a Toyota Highlander Hybrid is also available.
Looking every bit like a miniature Land Cruiser, Toyota’s Highlander couldn’t be any different than its wrapper would suggest. Where the Land Cruiser is a rugged brute wrapped in softly bulging sheet metal, the Highlander is a Camry wagon on stilts with all the off road capability of a riding mower. That lack of rock-crawling prowess has hardly deterred suburban dwellers from snapping up Highlanders left and right since its 2001 release.
Based vaguely on the same platform that underpins everything from the Toyota Camry to the Lexus RX to the Toyota Sienna minivan, the Toyota Highlanders points its sights right at the heart of the midsize SUV and crossover market. For 2009, the base model 4x2-only Highlander receives Toyota’s 2.7-liter four-cylinder that also sees duty in the rather similar, albeit more car like, Venza. Those figures are top-notch for seven-seat SUVs, though for those with fewer to haul, the upcoming, marginally smaller Equinox is rated at an impressive 32 mpg on the highway.
As we said before, the Land Cruiser styling themes are unmistakable. The Toyota Highlanders boxy, tall proportions are nothing like many of its swoopy, low-slung rivals. Swathed in any scheme other than our tester’s Wave line Pearl (think baby blue), the Highlander actually cuts a fairly butch profile for a car-based ‘Ute.
Given Toyota’s choice to offer the new four-cylinder on only front-wheel-drive base model variants, we went in with fairly low expectations. The old Toyota convention holds true here, too.
Compared to Korean and American rivals, the Toyota Highlander feature content was downright stingy. Don’t look for a compass, outside temperature display, trip computer, radio data display, satellite radio, power seats or automatic headlamps. Though soothing and quiet, no passenger mistook the Highlander’s interior for a premium design. Certainly not a speed demon, the Highlander only felt underpowered on the highway, when its six-speed automatic had to be called upon to produce a couple of downshifts.
In urban areas, the fairly high idle combined with a snappy go-pedal to produced decent oomph that belies its modest power rating. Riding on 17-inch alloy wheels wrapped in Bridgestone mud-and-snow tires, the Highlander’s ride was generally plush and well composed over most surfaces, though really rough pavement induced a couple of uncharacteristic (for Toyota) interior rattles. Among the quieter options in its class, the Toyota Highlanders made a great long-distance cruiser thanks to its decent fuel economy – the EPA ratings were pretty much spot-on in our testing – and its comfortable cabin.