2020 Mazda CX-30 vs Toyota RAV4

What's the difference?

Mazda, it seems, is embarking on a spot of social climbing.

After years of affordable, well-engineered and highly popular alternatives to Toyota, Japan's smallest big carmaker has set its sights higher, starting with last year's redesigned Mazda3. Costing about 10 per cent more than the Toyota Corolla equivalent, it's moved up to Volkswagen Golf territory, prioritising design, advanced technologies, luxury finishes and a high specification over being number one.

Invariably, the Mazda3-based CX-30 is a manifestation of this mindset. The ‘0' denotes a raised SUV, aimed at singles, couples and small families seeking a practical compact wagon with one eye on adventure.

Perfect, then, for our Urban Review. Here we look at the range-topping G25 Astina AWD.

Fun, Toyota, and hybrid are not words you often see together. Even two out of those three aren't obvious sentence-fellows. The Japanese giant spends a lot of money to convince us its cars are fun (and an equal amount telling us that daggy dads buy them) but as new cars roll on to dealer forecourts, there is more than a flicker of hope.

You see, the old RAV4 was perhaps one of my least favourite cars. Ponderous and boring but hard to ignore because of its obvious quality and longevity. I just couldn't click with it because it felt like it was targeted at the daggy dads in the ads as though they didn't deserve any better. That might be over-thinking it, but that's a glimpse inside my automotive head.

It might not be an overthink, though, because the petrol RAV4 Edge I drove last year was a vast improvement, not just on the RAV4, but on most Toyotas I had driven in the previous decade.

Something's up. Can the base model RAV4 Hybrid make all three of those words believable in the same sentence?