Toyota Reviews

That’s getting up there for any car, even though modern engines are capable of much greater distances than their older relatives. But that sort of mileage does raise some questions.

Those start with how complete is the service history. If there are any gaps, this would be a car to avoid, as any vehicle with that sort of distance covered will only be as good as its servicing and maintenance allow. The other question is what sort of life the car has led. Three hundred thousand kilometres sounds like a lot, but if you break it down to kilometres per year, it works out at less than 18,000km per annum, which is well within the bounds of normality.

However, the bottom line is this with all high-mileage vehicles: You might get lucky and get another 150,000 trouble-free kilometres out of the thing, or it might go bang tomorrow. That’s the punt you take and that’s why high-milers are cheap to buy. Which is another way of saying that even with a full service record, a RAV4 with that sort of mileage would still need to be cheap.

The driver’s window of the average car does a lot more work than any of the other power windows on board. What can happen over time is that the tracks the window glass runs in become clogged with dust and debris or simply go dry, meaning there’s excess friction when the glass is trying to change position. Thanks to gravity, this is usually most often seen when trying to raise the glass.

You can try a dry lubricant spray which typically contains graphite to grease the tracks slightly, but don’t overdo it. And try to avoid liquid lubricants as these will smear the glass. If that doesn’t work, you may have to take the door and glass apart to find the problem. It could also be that the electric motor that does the work of moving the glass is worn and not providing the necessary power.

In the meantime, you can help the motor by grabbing the top of the glass and using a little elbow grease to help it make the journey. Just make sure you don’t get your fingers in the way as the window shuts.

This model Coaster bus was fitted with a 90-litre fuel tank. While that sounds like quite a bit, these vehicles are quite heavy (upwards of 2.5 tonnes) and are fitted with relatively thirsty diesel engines. As a result, you won’t be going more than about 500km between fill-ups, and that’s on the highway.

Add a trailer, roof rack or even drive into a headwind and fuel consumption can spike. But these vehicles have a great reputation for reliability and make great mobile-home conversion platforms.