2026 Toyota RAV4 GR Sport – POV First Driving Impressions
Today we’re driving the 2026 Toyota RAV 4 and we are in the GR Sport. This is a plug-in hybrid. It makes 324 net combined horsepower. We have a 2.5 L inline four-cylinder and 48 mi of electric only driving range. Total range on this should be 550 600 miles between fillups and between that the battery. There’s a lot going on. We have lithium-ion battery. Uh a lot of handling and performance enhancements with this GR Sport Rav 4. Lowered suspension, lighter wheels, aerodynamics. Uh there’s a lot of interesting stuff going on here. Even if you want to get super nerdy and technical, there’s an anti-static system built into this headliner and the seats. Apparently, the static electricity of your body disrupts the air flow around the vehicle, and this makes it more aerodynamic. And some really interesting stuff with this new GR Sport Rav 4. We have a standard dash cam, a new infotainment system that is quick, responsive, very easy to use. You’ve got things like brightness adjustments, quick access controls, uh lots of connected services, a built-in dash cam, which works really well, wireless CarPlay. It’s super fast, quick, easy to use. I have actually gotten very comfortable using it initially so far this week. Uh here’s your drive recorder system. You’ve got saved recordings in here. You can see different uh incidents, stuff like that. They’ve just cleared all the clips in here recently, but uh you can see kind of what the dash cam looks like here in terms of quality. It uses the 360 cameras all around the vehicle to record every different angle, which is pretty cool. You can see all these different angles. Look at that. You can see the license plate, different views. Look at that. Very neat. All right, let’s hop outside. We’ll tell you about this GR Sport a little bit more. Dunlop SP Sport Max tires. They’re sticky. We have bright red brake calipers. This went through extensive track testing out in Japan to dial on the suspension, to dial on the handling. This is my first time driving this Rav 4 GR Sport, so we’ll give you guys some first driving impressions today on uh on the road. I don’t know what type of roads we’re going to be able to find, but we’ll see if we can get some spirited driving in here. We have a rear spoiler that looks more aggressive than the GR Corolla. This is all part of Akio Toyota’s ethos of making no more boring cars. And while it’s a adding a little bit of fun and flare and excitement and performance to the RAV 4 lineup, I like it. Let’s look in the back seat here. Some suede Alcantara like fabric. Nice looking seats. Nice looking interior. Lots of USBC ports. I’m 5′ 10. This is my driving position. Lots of space back here. Very comfortable. So far, we’ve driven the Limited, the Woodland trim, and then this GR Sport. Like the seat piping. We have lowered suspension, a wider track here with wider offset wheels, 10 mm wider on each side. It’s got a pretty nice aggressive stance. And this only has 7 1/2 in of ground clearance compared to 8.1 and 8.5 in with all the other RAV 4s and the Woodland. Good to see this GR Sport isn’t just a bunch of badges and some red stitching. There’s actually some stuff going on here. Plug-in hybrid also gets a compact spare. Great to see. A little bit higher of a load floor to accommodate that battery pack, but you can drive 48 mi on electric only in this. I believe it averages around 37 to 39 MPG combined once your battery runs out, which is still pretty good. For the plug-in hybrid RAV 4s, AC charging is the default. That’s on the right passenger side. So, this is going to be your J1772 port. Painted in supersonic red. This RAV 4 looks fantastic. We’ve got a 15 mm lower ride height here. Different grill design. It’s probably even a little bit of brake cooling going on here. H. Nope. Those aren’t open. And maybe underneath. H. Not quite. There’s some added chassis rigidity here. A lot of little tweaks that make this GR Sport drive and handle better than the standard RAV 4. The biggest difference that I’m noticing so far this week with the new Rav 4 is just how much more solid and nice of a place to spend time in it is. It’s the materials are great. The infotainment is quick and modern, but seems very functional. I like what Toyota’s done here with this new raff. And we get a nice big chunky shifter here in this GR Sport. Look at that. It even matches the color of the vehicle that we’re in. Slightly different steering rack tuning here with this GR Sport. We’ve got a little bit more direct feel, a bit more engagement, involvement factor there. Here’s CarPlay. It’s wireless. There’s no word on pricing yet with this new RAV 4, especially this GR Sport. So, if I find out, I will put some information in the description for you guys. We’ve got a pretty good feature set here, though. We’ve got nice drive modes, uh, auto, EV, HV modes for our hybrid powertrain. There we go. We can switch there and you can see down here what’s going on. Heated steering wheel, heated seats, one of two settings there. You get this whole climate menu. There’s a whole charge menu where you can see your state of charge, your charge limit. You can change that to whatever you want. um set charge times, scheduling, all that stuff. You can create a schedule very easily. Very nice. And uh overall, I found this infotainment system to be easy to use, super responsive. It feels very modern. It seems to be well organized. I like the use of quick access icons here for screen brightness, changing between daytime, nighttime modes. You can quickly record something on the dash cam. You can save a 20-minute clip right there. Um, and that’s always pretty accessible within this infotainment screen. Cameras look good. See forward facing views. Couple other options there. Look at that. We have quick access buttons. Lots of physical controls in the interior of this RAV 4. This new center console opens up from both directions. We’re going to take this key fob out. Put it under us so it doesn’t rattle around while we’re driving. Nice big cup holders. Lot of storage spaces. two wireless chargers for your phone. And I like the design of the steering wheel. It just looks nice. Fully digital gauge cluster there. Native uh Google Maps navigation integration, too. Got a bunch of different gauge cluster designs that you can kind of scroll through here. Eco charge meters, double gauge cluster. I kind of like this nav view. This looks pretty good to me. Let’s set off and see how this GR Sport drives on the road. No sunroof. Part of that anti-static aluminum up in the roof helps with that. Already just in the parking lot, this already feels a little bit more button down, a little bit tighter and sportier than the RAV 4 Woodland and Limited trims that I was driving. And I actually want to see how this performs, how it accelerates in EV mode. So, let’s lock it into EV mode here. The previous gen RAV 4 Prime was quick, but it had a little bit to be desired in terms of suspension tuning. We’ve got about 34% of charge in our battery. Pretty good acceleration honestly from this in full EV mode. If we go to auto EV, that’ll kind of adjust according to our different drive settings. All right, let’s do an acceleration test here onto the highway. 65 miles an hour. It’s properly quick. Look at that. We have a new cruise control button configuration here. Massive cancel button on the steering wheel. Lots of following distance settings, lane centering. Acceleration feels fantastic. Suspension is not too stiff. It feels tight, responsive. It’s a sport mode. That’ll increase throttle response a little bit. So far, this feels like the nicest RAV 4 to drive. definitely dynamically, but overall it just kind of has a nice tight feel to it. It’s not as soft and cushy, but it’s still comfortable. I have great visibility, especially over this hood line. We don’t get a digital rearview mirror in the GR Sport. Missing a few of the features we saw in the Limited trim, like ventilated seats, digital rearview mirror, panoramic sunroof, stuff like that. This is supposed to be the the RAV 4 for someone who doesn’t really want to sacrifice sportiness for their crossover. They still want something that’s fun to drive and they wanted it to be worthy of that GR name. I don’t think you’re going to be able to do long track days in this, but maybe you might. There was a lot of track testing that went into the development of this RAV 4 GR Sport. We’ll see how it handles once we get off this highway. Also, I’m not seeing a JBL sound system here either. See what the Sock standard sound system is like. I think the standard system lacks a bit of the clarity of the JBL. Everything’s balanced out there. See if we can find some better driving roads here. We’ll throw this into a couple corners. Brakes feel healthy. And it looks like this is a private road, so we’re not going to do that. All-wheel drive system puts its power down really well. No wheel spin. Part of that is probably just due to having a sticky tire. That’s good to see. This is actually pretty quick. I remember the previous generation Rav 4 Prime was really fast, but putting that thing into a corner was kind of sketchy. It had a lot of body roll, not a lot of good body control. And it’s nice that to see that Toyota’s actually seem to button this chassis down a little bit more with this new generation of RAV 4. Even the Limited trim that I drove earlier felt pretty good. The ride quality with the Woodland was fantastic, especially off-road. It’s good to see really nice trim differentiation with whatever you want to do with your RAV 4. For a crossover, all of your inputs here feel really good. But steering has a really nice on center stiffness and firmness and feel. Throttle is really responsive. And we’re just in normal mode. We’re not even in sport or anything. Seats are comfortable, well bolstered. I get nice and low in the cabin with driving position. Also, maybe I just haven’t spent enough time with the car yet. I’m not familiar enough with it, but I’m not seeing a mode to charge the battery on the fly. All right, we’ll toss this into a couple corners here and see what happens. Yeah, grip is very impressive here. This is quite good dynamically. I’m actually pretty shocked at what this does on turnin. It’s flat for a RAV 4, for a crossover. This I doesn’t really have many competitors really. Yeah, this feels really good from behind the wheel. I’m impressed with just how tight and solid feeling this is driving down the road. I like the steering responsiveness that there’s just enough waiting here. Really solid acceleration. A lot of confidence from the tire, from the brake pedal. There’s not a ton of body motion like you would expect in a crossover in this class. Power distribution seems to be really well calibrated, too. It seems to know where to send all that torque coming out of a corner. I’ve got to say all the little changes that they’ve made with this Rav Sport GR Sport add up to a very different driving vehicle compared to the other RAV 4s that we’ve been in. This is not just some GR trim level. The performance is here and I’m very glad to say that cuz so much of the time, so many of the cases something like this would just be a little bit of red stitching, few badges here and there. They’ve gone through this RAV 4 and made it sporty, which is crazy. It drives way better than I expected it to. Let’s take it into another corner here. It just feels very solid. Little bit bumpier section of road here. Tires are super quiet. Not a lot of NVH, not a lot of noise over the rougher pavement. I would totally daily one of these. You get great fuel economy, tons of plug-in hybrid range, it’s fast, it’s fun to drive. This might kind of be the ticket if I’m being honest. It handles bumpier sections of road really well, but there’s just so much composure and solidity from this chassis. All right, so just a quick drive on the 2026 GR Sport Rav 4. Way more impressive behind the wheel. Way better driving experience than I was really expecting with this, to be honest. The dynamics are amazing for a vehicle in this class. There’s a ton of grip, ton of traction, ton of confidence behind the wheel of this. It feels a little bit like the GR Corolla. Just lift it up a bit. Is that sacrilege to say? The electric plug-in hybrid powertrain makes awesome power. The delivery is super smooth, super linear. I think it looks good, too. This might be the ticket. Those are some first impressions on the 2026 RAV 4 GR Sport. Pretty high marks for this. I’m impressed with what Toyota’s done. Hopefully, we can spend some more time in one of these back home in Michigan. Take it through our regular test route. But this is uh this is pretty sweet. We’ll see what pricing shakes out to be. And this might be a pretty decent buy if I’m being honest. I’m hoping that some of the lower feature content in this RAV 4 GR Sport brings the price down some, though a lot of that will probably be canceled out by the fact that it’s a plug-in hybrid. Hopefully availability on these isn’t too scant because this is just a really nice package. Awesome fuel range, awesome performance. EV mode even at 4% battery has pretty good acceleration. Better than what I’m remembering from the RAV 4 Prime
Engine: 2.5-liter inline-4 hybrid system
Combined Output: 324 horsepower
Drivetrain: Electronic On-Demand All-Wheel Drive (AWD)
Transmission: Electronically controlled e-CVT
Battery: 18.1 kWh lithium-ion
Electric Range: Up to 48 miles (EV-only)
0–60 mph: Approximately 5.7 seconds
Drive Modes: Normal, Eco, Sport, Trail, EV, and GR Sport-specific tuning
Suspension: GR-tuned shocks, springs, and anti-roll bars
Brakes: GR-tuned system with red calipers
Fuel Economy & Efficiency
Estimated Hybrid Efficiency: ~37 MPG combined (hybrid mode)
MPGe (EV mode): Around 94 MPGe
Charging Time:
Level 1 (120 V): ~12 hours
Level 2 (240 V): ~2.5 hours
Exterior Features
Unique GR Sport front and rear bumpers
Gloss-black grille and mirror caps
GR-specific 20-inch alloy wheels with performance tires
Lower ride height and wider track than standard RAV4
Black roof, GR badging, and exclusive Supersonic Red, Heavy Metal, and Midnight Black color options
Interior & Technology
GR Sport sport seats with suede and synthetic leather, red stitching
Aluminum sport pedals and GR start button
12.3-inch digital gauge cluster
12.9-inch Toyota Audio Multimedia touchscreen
Wireless Apple CarPlay & Android Auto
Head-Up Display (available)
Panoramic View Monitor, heated steering wheel, and ventilated front seats
Dimensions & Utility
Wheelbase: 105.9 in
Overall Length: 181.5 in
Width: 73.0 in
Height: 67.0 in
Ground Clearance: 7.0 in (slightly lower than standard RAV4)
Cargo Volume: 33.5 cu ft (behind 2nd row) / 63.1 cu ft (max)
Towing Capacity: 2,500 lb
Pricing (Estimated)
Starting Price: Around $49,000 – $52,000 USD
Position: Above RAV4 Prime XSE; top trim in the RAV4 lineup
Summary
The 2026 Toyota RAV4 GR Sport is the most dynamic and performance-focused version of the RAV4 yet. It pairs plug-in hybrid efficiency with over 320 hp, a 48-mile EV range, and a GR-tuned suspension for sharper handling. Distinct styling inside and out and upgraded tech make it a well-rounded sporty compact SUV that still prioritizes practicality and daily usability.
#toyota #grsport #rav4
Vehicle and hospitality were provided by Toyota.
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