The humble Toyota RAV4 is not regularly counted among the world’s great off-road vehicles. Among the best vehicles to use to hit up Taco Bell on a late-night snack run? Definitely. But that’s about as close to an actual Baja blast as a RAV4 is likely to get. Except for the first-gen two-door RAV4 owned by import drag racing legend Stephan Papadakis.
See, Mr. Papadakis’ 1996 RAV4 has a few unique things going for it. First it’s the two-door model, which is both cool and tiny. It has a wheelbase of just 86.6 inches, 3.4 inches shorter than a Toyota Land Cruiser FJ40 for example. This makes it nimble and easy to position. It’s also all-wheel drive with a center differential lock – rather than front-wheel drive like many first-gen RAV4s – and it has a five-speed manual transmission. It’s awesome.
Of course, to turn it into a real off-roader, the RAV4 needs a few things. First are wheels and bigger off-road tires. The wheels are 16x7-inch units from Black Rhino and the tires are Open Country A/T III from Toyo in what looks like a 235/70R16, equalling 29 inches of diameter. The suspension, at least to start, is pretty basic. The front gets new KYB dampers and a pair of springs from Old Man Emu. The rear gets KYBs as well and the rear springs from a four-door RAV4.
Getting the tires to fit at full compression required a bit of modification to the body. The rear needed a bit of fender trimming and then sanding smooth. The front is a bit more involved with a flange under the body getting lopped off and the resulting gap hammered shut and welded. Still, nothing overly dramatic.
The results are impressive. The RAV4 is able to mountain goat its way up plenty of obstacles and while it struggles a bit with whoops at speed, it doesn’t embarrass itself even among a bunch of “real” off-roaders.
Phase two of the build sees Papadakis and crew removing the stock-like suspension and getting a little wilder. They modify the rear body of the car to fit a pair of Bilstein off-road bypass shocks with remote reservoirs while keeping the same springs. Up front, they fabricate a pair of inverted coilovers with adjustable damping to help prevent the car from porpoising over whoops.
Seeing the car hitting bumps at 45-50 mph and maintaining composure is pretty amazing. Toyota’s engineers clearly never intended their little grocery-getter to do things like this and the degree to which the car didn’t need to be cut up or modified is incredible.
So, other than just being a fun exercise in taking a soft-roader out of its comfort zone, what’s the point of all this?
The reason this is cool is because it shows us that you don’t have to lay out a big pile of cash on a loaded Jeep Rubicon or a Land Rover Defender to go off-roading. There are still bargains out there on vehicles that are so common that you’d have to struggle not to find one in your price range. Don’t worry about what you’re driving; just get out and have fun.
