Car: Toyota Avensis range
Prices: £16,485-£27,515 - on the road INSURANCE GROUPS: 6-10
Performance: [1.8] 0-60mph 9.0s / Max Speed 127mph
Fuel Consumption: [1.8 saloon] (urban) 33.2mpg/ (extra urban) 52.3mpg / (combined) 43.5mpg
Safety: seven airbags, active head rests, ABS, EBD, VSC+, ISOFIX child seat fixings
Dimensions: (length/width/height mm) 4695/1810/1480 [saloon]
TOY WONDER
Our Rating: 7.3 / 10
Toyota’s Avensis looks as dependable as ever in its latest guise. Jonathan Crouch reports
Faced with tough competition in the medium range Mondeo market, Toyota have made huge efforts to offer more than just practical virtues with their third generation Avensis. We’ve never had a large Toyota in this class we could really fall in love with. Could this be the first?
Once upon a time, medium range Mondeo-class family cars could get away with being pretty dull. No longer. Today, with this sector both shrinking and haemorrhaging sales to compact 4x4s and small MPVs, sensible no longer really cuts it. Hence the need for a crop of exciting new arrivals over the last few years as the impressive fourth generation Ford Mondeo has been joined by stylish competitors like Vauxhall’s Insignia, the third generation Renault Laguna and second generation versions of the Mazda6 and the Citroen C5. That left Toyota’s MK2 Avensis, a car for whom the word ‘sensible’ might have been invented, as a salutary reminder of what buyers in this sector used to settle for. Hence the need for this third generation version.
Its predecessor was reliable, beautifully built and very cheap to run. Or to put it another way, very Japanese. Unlike any of its predecessors, this car had also to be more European in its outlook - in other words more strikingly styled and more engaging to drive. The previous Avensis, like this model created in the South of France and manufactured in the UK at Toyota’s Burnaston plant, promised us that but failed to deliver it. With this car, there can be no excuses.
To get close to the outstanding driving dynamics offered by rivals in this sector, Toyota had to start from a clean sheet of paper with this car, hence its all-new platform. Both front and rear tracks are wider and the front axle has been moved further forward to improve balance. As a result, this Avensis is a world removed from the old model, eager to change direction, with little body roll, sharp steering and plenty of grip – not a class leader but good enough to now satisfy demanding drivers. On secondary roads, the ride quality can’t quite match these achievements but on the kind of major routes where cars like this will spend most of their time, it all comes together beautifully.
It also helps that there’s such a willing band of engines on offer. Take the volume 2.2 D-4D 150 diesel unit. It has this huge surge of grunt between 2,000 and 2,800rpm, making overtaking simple and enabling you to leave the 6-speed gearbox pretty much alone as you waft around on this huge surge of torque. If it feels faster than comparable rivals, that’s because it is: this car is an astonishing nine seconds quicker from rest to 100mph than a comparable Ford Mondeo 2.0 TDCi. It’s the same story with the comparable 145bhp 1.8-litre petrol V-matic Avensis, a full second and a half quicker to sixty than, say, its 1.8-litre Vauxhall Insignia counterpart.
Today’s Avensis saloon and Tourer estate models are instantly more engaging things to look at than their predecessors. At the front, diamond-shaped headlamps smear dramatically back into the front wings and the chrome-ringed grille sits above a large central air intake. This model is 50mm longer than the previous version and is wider by the same amount, with a lengthy wheelbase of 2,700mm.
This all adds up to a generously proportioned cabin ahead of either 509 or 543-litres of bootspace with all the seats in use. The Tourer estate of course offers the higher figure, extendable to 1609-litres if you activate the neat one-touch folding mechanism and flatten the split-folding rear seats. Take a seat inside and it’s not the most eye-catching cabin in the class but we’d wager it’ll prove to be one of the most durable. In three years’ time, when the interiors of rival cars are beginning to look a little tatty, this one will still look showroom fresh.
Prices, which lie mainly in the usual £16,000 to £25,000 bracket for this class of car, are of course directly comparable to those of obvious rivals like Ford’s Mondeo, Vauxhall’s Insignia and Renault’s Laguna. There’s a premium of around £1,000 if you want the Tourer estate over the saloon.
And under the bonnet? Well Toyota has really flexed its muscles here, wheeling out
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