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.

Without a doubt, the best thing to do now is the have the car electronically scanned. That’s because there are literally hundreds of things that could cause this sort of problem, ranging from (but hardly limited to) a sick fuel pump, a blocked fuel filter, worn injectors, a fuel leak, poor ignition, a low-voltage battery, dirty air-filter, blocked or damaged exhaust, a stray electrical problem and much, much more. Even something simple like a fuel rail that is not holding pressure when the engine is switched off, can lead to symptoms very much like yours.

Hopefully, the on-board computer has logged these random starting problems and will be able to tell a mechanic what’s wrong. Otherwise you’ll simply continue replacing parts that weren’t the problem in the first place. And that costs time and lots of money.

The kerb weight of the RAV4 you mentioned depends on whether it’s the two or four-wheel-drive model. If it’s the former, the kerb weight is 1690kg, if it’s the all-wheel-drive model, the kerb weight is 1775kg. I know you asked for tare weight, but the only difference between kerb and tare weight sis that tare weight is the mass of the empty vehicle with 10 litres of fuel in its tank, while kerb weight is the same empty vehicle but with a full tank of fuel.

Of perhaps more interest to anybody towing is the fact that the two-wheel-drive RAV4 can tow 480kg while the AWD version can cope with 1500kg. The 2WD Rav’s GVM, meanwhile, is 2185kg and the AWD’s is 2230kg. The two-wheel-drive RAV4’s GCM is 2665kg, while the all-wheel-drive’s GCM is 3730kg.

Some of this information is quite difficult to find (even if you have the owner’s manual) yet it’s crucial safety information and should be more readily available. Some car makers seem very coy about publishing GVM and GCM limits, possibly because they don’t always reflect well on the product’s ability to tow and carry a load at the same time.