Just over seven years ago, when tossing up between a Freelander and RAV4 D-4D, I took your advice and bought the RAV4. It was excellent until it reached the 70,000 mile mark, when things began to go seriously wrong and cost serious money. I lost faith in its reliability and traded it in for a one-year-old new look diesel RAV4. It is very comfortable, very economical (around 50mpg), has lots of knobs and whistles and I love the high ride position, but the 6-speed gearbox is very imprecise, like stirring porridge. My wife, who liked the first RAV4, now only drives this one reluctantly. Ideally we would like a recently owned automatic diesel RAV4 - few and far between and expensive - or something similar. I drive around 15,000 a year so does that mean I'd be better off with an auto petrol despite the much higher fuel costs?