Toyota RAV4 overtakes the Ford F-150 as the best selling in the US.

If by “stick time,” you mean stick shift/manual transmission, then, yes, I really miss those. Our Ford was stick shift; it was so much fun to drive despte being a sedan, but. . . .

Our Ford developed electrical issues, some due to battery acid leaking on wiring and wire looms cracking due to age, exposing wires to heat and friction. Furthermore, in the 10-days since failing, the Ford has been sitting on the side of our driveway, and a rat or a mouse has already moved into the engine bay.

 

gen 4 over the last 10 years has been pretty reliable, def better than gen 3

 

I've owned sportbikes, sedans, hatches, and vans -- defo prefer hatches as my cage, as do most families who don't have giant parking spaces nor tolerance for crap mpg. Hot hatches were not a game-changer in their time for nothing (still are in EU and Asia, at least for younger buyers).

Since crossies are so much more profitable (whilst making you spend more for higher weight and consumables costs like fuel, tires and shocks / struts due to it), hatches have been disappearing from larger mfr swimlanes a while now -- Ford stopped making all its car lines for entirely profit-related reasons, save the Mustang (yep, technically a hatch too, if not exactly utilitarian). So was happy the 5G was a true hatch -- even if the concept were heavily compromised vs. 4G.

Lived with a little Paseo rollerskate (not a hatch, btw) over 15y -- and got thru life just fine, g/fs occasionally inhabiting the right seat. Buying my first new car (turbo Honda Civic), had to be a hatch -- one thing that Honda were actually good at, was being a warm hatch (tho lots of past hot Civics were much better at space utilisation than 10th-gen).

Funny thing about 'liftback' -- that's what Corolla hatches were called in the '70s -- so really, they've brought the term back Does sort of make me laugh the concept of 5D being rebranded as a new thing If Toyota would wise up and offer the HyCam as a hatch or better yet, sell their wagon / estate models here as the only variant... no need for the lukewarmly-received-and-defo-overpriced Crown, maybe?

Tbh, unless you have a garden allotment somewhere, or are trying to build a new wall around your property every year... a HyCam can easily do a 4-person family's clean hauling like moving, then pivot to a U-Haul for the big / dirty stuff. Moved houses 3x like this during the Paseo years... works fine for me, and don't have to be penalised for 16 mpg every other day I'm not hauling something big or filthy, in a truck bed.

Low ride height's never bothered me, after riding a motorcycle 21 yrs -- some of it thru storms hundreds of miles wide. I gauge my youth on the ability to climb into a car w/o b*tching about it, by doing it I guess. But may not feel that way, when up in years where some of us here are

 

Fourth gen Prius interior was a bit tighter than third gen as well. This is the sense I get, from hazy recollection, mostly comment here. Posing a neutral question to Google AI yields corroboration:

https://share.google/aimode/eubjIVOG48r1X0EZb

Too, components of storage “disappeared”: the second glove box*, and under hatch floor storage.

* we had our 2010 a few years before I even realized there was second glove box…

(Geeze, early morning here in the Pacific Northwest, and the crows are just losing their minds, over something. Rivalries, bird of prey, god knows…)

 

I don't have a problem with hatchbacks at all. I've owned several of them.
Our GMC Terrain is a small, front wheel drive hatchback - actually classified by people who keep track of such things as a "Compact Crossover SUV."
I agree with that designation completely - except the "SUV" part.

IN FACT.....it's a lot like my old 2010 Prius except:
It's 30MHP faster, 9 inches longer, 4 inches wider, and about 8 inches taller.
The Terrain has a longer wheelbase by half a foot and it's 750 pounds heavier.
It's interior is vastly larger than my old Prius - which somehow got labeled, AGAIN by people who track these sorts of things as a......"midsized car."

-can't make that up.
FWIW....
I never felt unsafe in a G3 and it made good use of its interior volume, but it's not the sort of car that you'd want to use to haul trash, building material, limbs, refrigerators, motorcycles, etc....etc.

Key word: Clean.

You do not 'pivot' to a U-Haul, and they're not cheap.
THAT is why I bought a trailer capable of hauling a 3000# load - and I used to tell myself, AND others...in this forum even that I could 'get by' without a truck, and that my 09 Sierra would be my last truck.

Maybe when I start slowing down in my 80s I will get one of the trucklets that they're making like FOMOCOs Maverick.