Toyota Raize
This is the second time that I’ve rented this car and it was a reaffirmation of what I had thought the first time I rented it.
It’s a compact SUV that is really not good at anything. It’s not bad, but it’s not good.
The ride is mediocre, you hear a lot of wind noise. Throttle response is close to nonexistent and everything feels heap and plasticky.
The whole experience is plastic.
I think the Roomy and the Kei car that we drove had a more refined experience. Of course, some of this can be attributed to the fact that we may have gotten base models as rentals.
The seats were so thin that when my younger son kept kicking the seat, it would push my seat forward, which didn’t happen in the other two cars.
It’s not like the interior was spacious because it’s an SUV, it’s not like the back trunk was overly spacious, it just felt like they shaped it in an SUV to be trendy.
I would be more than happy to sacrifice some power with power sliding doors in the rear. Those were great. The car did have some decent trunk space but I would gladly sacrificed some of that for some rear legroom as well.
I’m sure the car, which was a very popular rental all across Okinawa, is very reliable and gets good gas mileage, so I’m very sure it is a very capable car.
However, I can’t help but think how much better of a driving experience, the roomie and the kei car had. Even the Toyota Corolla is more exciting.
Toyota Raize is just that, a common Toyota. And I am sure a lot of people will buy it and drive it and love it just because of that.
