![\"Value](\"https:\/\/www.gannett-cdn.com\/presto\/2020\/02\/11\/PDTN\/3f086fed-4098-48bc-893b-abfc424fdb6d-highlander_le.JPG?width=540&height=&fit=bounds&auto=webp\")
<\/p>\n<\/div>Value is the name of the game. For less than $40K the 2020 Toyota Highlander LE comes with a bucket-load of standard features.\u00a0(Photo: Henry Payne, The Detroit News)<\/span><\/p>\n I am flying low in rural San Antonio, the three-row Toyota Highlander hybrid under my saddle begging me to go faster. I push deeper into a downhill right-hander,\u00a0all four hooves scrambling for traction,\u00a0then bury the throttle as electric torque kicks me out of the apex.<\/p>\n Wait, what? A three-row Highlander hybrid SUV?<\/p>\n Hell has frozen over. Up is down. And three-row utes are fun. Once the most somnolent class in ute-dom, mainstream three-rows have come alive in the last year. Credit the handsome\u00a0feature-rich Kia Telluride and Hyundai Palisade which have reset the bar as to what an affordable SUV should be. Applause, too, for the Ford Explorer ST which dared to make a hot-hatch out of a family bus.<\/p>\n Once upon a time, rebel Toyota pioneered the unibody three-row SUV and defied truck-based convention. Now the aging Establishment, Highlander has to get crackin\u2019. Where the Ford Explorer ST and Chevrolet Traverse High Country have decided to concentrate on big profits at the segment\u2019s premium end, Toyota wants to fight in the value trenches.<\/p>\n Behold the crackin\u2019-good\u00a02020 Highlander.<\/p>\n Since that unibody revelation in 2001 the Toyota has been a fixture at the top of the three-row class:\u00a0Reliable. Affordable. Efficient. Zzzzzzzz.<\/p>\n While its Toyota siblings turned hip \u2019n\u2019 funky, Highlander became an old mare. I swear its tired, square jaw was growing whiskers. Then the family insisted it gets its own Extreme Makeover.<\/p>\n The new Highlander is different: It looks like a Toyota Supra sports car rear-ended a Tacoma pickup. Like the remade RAV4, the Highlander gets the\u00a0Tacoma\u2019s macho face, its grille-mouth turned down at the corners with determination. But aft of the A-pillars, the haunches swell with Supra-like blisters over the rear wheel-wells. It\u2019s quite a transformation.<\/p>\n This being a family SUV, the makeup artists added tasteful chrome wings to the front grille (think Buick Enclave) and a proper large greenhouse opening for seven passengers. But make no mistake, this Toyota wants to be noticed. And that’s in line with Chairman Akio Toyoda\u2019s ultimatum to designers to think outside the box.<\/p>\n The Highlander joins other wild projects like the Lexus RX\u00a0and the new Toyota\u00a0 Supra. The architectural style that is more Frank Gehry than Frank Lloyd Wright. My taste is more Wright than Gehry, and I prefer the Kia Telluride\u2019s simple, timeless lines. But I admire Toyota\u2019s ambition to evoke emotion from sheet metal.<\/p>\n The inside is even funkier. Check out the guitar-neck dash design with the body of the guitar holding a 8.5- or 12.3-inch touchscreen display. Where\u00a0the Telluride and Palisade borrow styling cues from Audi, Toyota has a personality all its own.<\/p>\n