Note: This is one of my longest reviews. I can't seem to edit it down. I've spent so much time in my Highlander that I have a lot to say about it. If you're interested in something brief, sorry. Try skimming the headers to find what interests you.

Even though I've lived in the suburbs of large cities all my life, I have miraculously always been able to fashion a commute of 20 minutes or less to work. My new job requires a 40 minute commute and I was concerned about the toll that my daily commute would take on my mood. So after a week of driving the commute in almost ten year old RAV4, I told my husband that I thought we should accelerate the purchase of a new automobile. He completely agreed, saying he was surprised I had not mentioned it earlier. We had decided about a year ago that my next car would be a top of the line 2005 Toyota Highlander. I was hoping to hold out for the hybrid, and was actually on the waiting list for over a year, but after the release was delayed time and again, I just couldn't wait any longer, so we went ahead and purchased the regular Highlander, with an eye toward buying a hybrid a few more years down the line when the technology's had a couple more years to develop.

About the 2005 Toyota Highlander
The Highlander is one of Toyota's most popular models and it gets surprisingly decent gas mileage, outperforming nearly every vehicle in its class. Toyota has several SUV models, the smallest being the RAV4. The Highlander isn't small, but it's certainly not a behemoth SUV either.

The styling of the Highlander is sporty. It looks more rugged and enjoyable than many other SUVs on the market. I was drawn to the Highlander for three reasons: I liked the way it looked, I loved the way it drove and having owned Toyotas for several years I was impressed by their reliability.

Purchasing Our New Car
We wanted our new SUV to be luxurious, but also sensible enough that we could drive long distances with our Golden Retriever and not worry about destroying something like fine leather. We briefly considered Toyota's high-end cousin, the Lexus RX series SUVs, but I didn't like the look of the body and for several thousand dollars less I could get much more with my Highlander.

I wanted a Highlander Limited, outfitted with a navigation system. I love nav systems, even the imperfect ones. I am obsessed with maps, my husband likes to say, and it's true. There were no models with navigation systems at the dealership so we had to order our new car from the inventory coming in. Using the Internet we'd already contacted a dealership, so we got great pricing plus dealer incentives on the car. We put down a deposit on a Limited in Sonora Gold Pearl, due within three weeks. I could hardly wait.

Two days before my car was to arrive the dealership GM called me to tell me it had been damaged in transit. Oh the horror! Instead he offered up an Oasis Green Pearl colored model at the same price, with everything my choice had plus "ToyoGuard", Toyota's vehicle protection package, at no additional charge. I jumped at it.

At first I was disappointed that my first choice had been damaged in shipping. My heart was set on the Sonora Gold color, but when I saw my new Oasis Green Pearl Highlander I fell in love. We dubbed her "Martha" for a number of reasons; we got her on the day Martha Stewart got out of prison, the sage green color of the car looks like the Martha Stewart green at K-Mart, and the flat, emotionless, female voice of the navigation system could easily be hers. Besides, it's fun to yell, "Shut up Martha!" when she gives us incorrect directions. Martha came home with us in early March.

Interior Features
Martha came with 4WD but the standard trimline is available in 2WD and 4WD versions. The Limited comes with leather seats, a moonroof, a 6 CD changer JBL audio system with AM/FM and cassette, and the optional navigation system.The base price for a Limited without navigation is $30,180 (MRSP, never pay that). The base price for the standard model is $24,280.

Navigation
The first thing I noticed about the navigation system was its touch screen. My husband's Infiniti has a terrible mini-joystick interface and I instantly fell in love with the touch screen. It's so much easier to plug addresses into the Highlander. Mr. J was jealous. The system can be configured to pop up icons, some of them actual logos, for restaurants and gas stations, so while you're driving on a road trip you can see if a McDonald's or Chinese restaurant or BP is ahead. You can touch the screen to move ahead of your path as far as you want (my husband actually used this method to set a destination 400 miles down the freeway once) so you can see for miles how many gas stations you're likely to run into.

I also love the voice guidance on this system. One annoying thing about my husband's nav system is that when you press the button to turn voice guidance off the annoyingly loud voice says, "VOICE GUIDANCE OFF". Now really, think about how useless and stupid that is. Many times when you want to turn voice guidance off it's because say, you're on a cell phone and don't want your call interrupted by the nav system screaming at you. Martha is intelligent enough to know that when I press Menu/Volume and turn voice guidance off, I don't want to be TOLD out loud that the voice guidance is off. She just goes silent, and that's as it should be.

It's little sensibilities like this that make me love the navigation system on my Highlander more than any other navigation system I've used yet. There is one drawback however: It appears to be a standard these days that even a passenger can't program in a destination while the car is in motion. There's no ability to override the system so we can change a destination while in transit, meaning if you're doing 70 on a freeway and you need to change your destination, you have to pull over to the side, or off the freeway to stop, in order to do it.

Instrumentation and Drive Comfort
The instrument panel is intelligently laid out. All of the buttons that should be hard-coded buttons are, such as "Audio", "Climate", "Menu" and "Map". Other buttons are soft buttons on the touch screen panel. The steering wheel tilts up and down and has volume and input controls on the left side. The right side of the steering wheel features the stick that I was used to on my old Toyota RAV4 for cruise control. I love how Toyota has fashioned cruise control on their cars. It's so intuitive and easy to use that I spent more than 75% of my commute time in the car on cruise control exclusively.

Audio, air conditioning and navigation are all controlled primarily via the touch screen panel. To switch to a radio band you simply press the hard-coded FM button by the tape deck and the touch screen brings up your station choices. You then pick your station off the touch screen, or you can scroll through the stations using the wheel. Climate control works the same way.

An "Info" button alongside the touch screen will allow you to check many of your cars vitals, including your mileage since last refill and average speed and distance since you turned on the car for your drive. Two things are missing: I'd like to be able to store the gas mileage records after fillups. The Highlander automatically detects when you've refilled the car and resets the mileage indicator accordingly, without archiving the previous mileage readouts. I also wish you could specify when the trip indicator information resets. It resets every time the car is turned off and then back on, but when I'm on long trips I like to track that information for the whole trip, not just until I get to the gas station and turn my car off.

The leather seats are quite comfortable and I love the arm rest feature of the "Captains Chair" seat design. You can raise the arm rests if you want, but it only makes the ride less comfortable. The seat heaters heat up quickly and cycle on and off throughout the ride to keep from overheating. Front passenger headrests are not only vertically adjustable, but you can also tilt the bottom of the headrest forward slightly which I love. Finally a headrest that I can really rest my head against!

Compartments
I spend a lot of time in this car and I have a lot of things in it to make that time more enjoyable. Where to keep them all? The most intriguing storage area is below the center console and shifter. Toyota has hollowed out that section and put a long rectangular tray like area to hold things below the console, along with a power outlet. On my test ride the idiotic salesman babbled on endlessly about this space, proclaiming brightly, "Women always love the Highlander because there's somewhere to put their purse, see?" as he pointed to the space. Resisting the urge to backhand him for such an inane comment, I just nodded and continued driving. Truth is, very few of my purses fit in this area upright and I certainly wouldn't consider the ability to shove a purse under there a prime selling point. Rather, this area is where I stash my umbrella and one of my soft packages of Costco Baby Wipes. (You never know when you might need one.) I also use the power outlet there to power the aftermarket satellite radio system in my car. It's unobtrusive which made it easier to hide the wires.

There's a small pull out cubby to the left of the steering wheel which is perfect for holding my work badge and a tube of lip balm, nothing more. The center console contains an ashtray (for me, a change drawer), a covered bay with two cup holders that can hold everything from a can of Coke to a Big Gulp, and a large storage bay. The storage bay is spacious, but it's just a big hole so everything that gets tossed in there gets disorganized quickly. Behind the console and accessible from the driver's seat without looking back, is another small pull out cubby facing the rear passengers. The biggest item I was able to fit in there was a full-size computer mouse with cord, causing my husband to give me strange looks when he opened it.

Storage is adequate, but could be improved in the Highlander. I supplemented these storage areas with a visor organizer as well, and I have almost enough room for all of the little things I like to keep in the car, but not quite.

The Rest of the Interior
The rear seats are comfortable. Everyone who rides in the back of my car has commented on the comfort of the back and the exceptional amounts of leg and head room available. There's a third row of rear seats that can be pulled up out of the floor to accommodate a few very small people, but I haven't had to use those seats yet, although they're easy enough to pull up. Cup holders are molded into the rear doors.

The very back of the car is one of my favorite spaces. Originally I had hoped to find an SUV with a rear door that swings to the side, but I've decided I love that the door raises up. It protects me from rain when I'm trying to pull things out of the car in a downpour and it's also more comfortable to sit in the back than it was with my RAV4 and its side door. The rear window doesn't open, which is a shame. Sometimes when you're hauling really long items it's nice to be able to open a rear window to let them hang through the back. You can't do that with this car.

There's a built in cargo cover that stashes away easily under the floorboard when you want to raise the third row seats. Speaking of the third row seats, there are seatbelts that stash away on the side of the car when not in use. This is the worst feature of this car. The seatbelts cannot be secured easily in their holster when the third row isn't in use. I read the manual which had vague instructions for securing the buckles so they didn't hang out and flop around. The manual was useless. Both my husband and I tried to secure the buckles relying on the manual and we both gave up. I opted instead to use binder clips to secure the buckles in place. It works, but Toyota really screwed up on their design of those restraints.

Finally, the rear also contains another power outlet, which I use for a mini air cleaner that I've got in the car (pollen season here is very ugly), and it contains at least four metal, flip out holders for hooks, in case you want to install a cargo net or something similar.

Some Accessories
I've been living out of this Highlander practically, commuting 1h20m a day in it and taking it on six road trips since I got the car. I've put 7,000 miles on it in two months. So I have accessorized it well. I bought an "Xtreme Cargo" mat for the back, which is a black rubber form fitting mat to keep the dog hair and any messes from getting on the carpet in the back area. I have also bought the cargo net Toyota sells for the Highlander which is unbelievably useful for securing groceries and other items so they don't slide around in the car.

Ride and Handling
Every time my husband gets behind the wheel of the car he remarks on how smooth the ride is. "Like floating on air", he says. It's not quite like that, but the ride in the Highlander is very smooth. The steering wheel is responsive and the V6 engine springs to life whenever its called upon to do so, with an astonishing amount of pickup for a vehicle of its size. I've never felt like that car wasn't fast enough when I needed it to be and at all other times I'm so comfortable with the ride of the vehicle that I don't end up getting cramped or fidgety like I do in other cars. When I first bought the Highlander I felt nervous taking curves in it due to the car's height, but my comfort level has increased with time. It's still not a car you want to take around a curve at 60MPH.

Gas Mileage
These days with gas prices out of control and nothing to reign them in, gas mileage is very important. As I mentioned earlier, I had been holding out for the Highlander hybrid for well over a year but because of all of Toyota's delays I finally gave up. (The hybrid is supposed to come out in just a month or two now, we'll see.) Toyota's not given specs on their Highlander Hybrid but they say it should get around 27 MPG in ideal conditions.

My Highlander often gets 24 miles to the gallon on a tank of gas. Once I discovered the secret of cruise control it was easy to start conserving more gas. Before I used cruise control I was getting around 20MPG. The max I've gotten on one tank of gas was 25MPG during a long road trip which found me using cruise control at least 95% of the drive. Not bad for an SUV, and at only 2 or 3 MPG below what Toyota claims their hybrid will do, I'm actually not losing much by going with the full gas engine.

According to the specs the tank has a 19 gallon capacity and I usually get anywhere between 320 and 365 miles in between fillups. The gas light comes on when it drops below 20 miles left on the car's computer and I always fill up at that point, usually only getting between 15 and 16 gallons in the tank, so there seems to be a 2 or 3 gallon "hidden" tank reserve there.

Reliability
It's only been two months, but I've put over 7,000 miles on my car. There is a AAA Automark car service location at my office complete with a service guy who drives you right to your building and picks you up in the afternoon so getting my car serviced isn't an inconvenience at all. Because of this I've babied my car. I had the oil changed at 1,500 miles before a long road trip, just to get fresh oil in after the break in period, and I had my oil changed again at 5,000 miles, also before another road trip, according to the manual's instructions. It's still early but the car has given me no problems at all reliability-wise and given that all of my other Toyota vehicles have held up without incident for many, many years before being traded in, I think the Highlander should be good to go as well.

Summary
The sad thing is that there are dozens of other things I could write about my Highlander, but I think I should wrap up the review at this point. In case you can't tell, I love this car, even with its few shortcomings. Toyota knows they have a real winner on their hands with the Highlander and I think that's why they've elected to make it the next hybrid in their line. It's an ideal choice for someone who wants the height and utility of an SUV with the handling and comfort of a nice car. I plan on keeping Martha for several years, but when I go to buy a new car many years down the road, I'm already anticipating that it will also be a Highlander, only newer and hopefully an even more gas-efficient hybrid. Thumbs up to Toyota for realizing the hybrid market and working to deliver it across their entire line of vehicles.
Amount Paid (US$): 31000
Condition: New
Model Year: 2005
Model and Options: 4WD Limited Edition with Navigation