When your review is so late that the price of the car has increased £1650 since you tested it but you’re just happy that its still in production…
Fond memories…..of the Goodwood Festival of Speed last year…..and of the Toyota Auris that took me there. I’m not going to kid you on. The car didn’t excite me, but that’s not why you buy a 1.2 litre family shooting brake now is it? I have to report that the car was pretty much perfect for the job.
Being the “Design” level of trim, with Avantgarde Bronze paint, two tone seats and a nice set of alloys, it’s quite a good looking thing.
It’s exceptionally comfortable, exceptionally well built (in Derbyshire) and very quiet. There’s room for 5 proper sized people and plenty of luggage.
With the rear seats folded, you don’t get a flat base, so the “exactly how much Ikea flat pack can I fit in here?” exercise has to be a little more carefully planned, but the answer to the question is “an awful lot”.
This is partially helped by the tailgate design which slopes, but like most aspects of the car, doesn’t really do it so much as to be annoying.
Driving the car was actually an enjoyable experience. The ride is comfortable and communicative. The steering is sharp enough and nicely weighted. The maximum torque figure of 185 Nm is delivered all the way from 1500rpm to 4000rpm. It makes for nice and easy progress without having to stir the gearbox all the time. The only thing you have to remember is that you’re getting all its got most of the time, so dropping a gear and going for the big overtake isn’t going to surprise you with extra pace.
I can honestly say I have never driven the big drive down South and arrived so unperplexed, so unfrustrated, so unstressed and raring to go.
I really only have one problem to report. As you can see from the photos, the car has a nice, reasonably stylish interior using quality tactile materials.
The dash features a large colour touch screen.
….and next to no physical controls for you to locate your hand onto when driving.
I understand the attraction of touch screens to manufacturers. There are no longer dozens of knobs, switches and buttons to design, manufacture and maintain. The number of moving parts is drastically reduced. Touch screens are cool and feature rich.
However I drove that car for at least 20 hours and I’m not sure I would have gotten used to having to make my finger land on the right part of the touch screen while driving. Give me a volume control knob at least.
So, in summary, I drove this car last summer and have retained mostly fond memories. I’ve found myself using language like “nice”, “inoffensive” and “reasonably”, but I think Toyota are probably quite comfortable with that, as I was with their car. It was fast enough, comfortable, frugal, good looking and extremely well made. It just needed a volume control knob.
PRICE: £23,490 (as tested with metallic paint and media/satnav option)
ENGINE: 1.2 litre petrol 4-cylinder turbo VVT-i
POWER: 114 bhp
TORQUE: 185 Nm
PERFORMANCE: Top speed 121 mph, 0-62 mph 10.4 secs
CONSUMPTION: 51.4 mpg (offical combined)
CO2: 126 g/km
TT Rating: 
