Road Test: Toyota Avensis 2.0 D4D Luna

Price as tested: €30,595

+ Quality, space, comfort, reliability
– Mushy steering, plain cabin
= Better than most motoring writers will admit




The Toyota Avensis gets a bit of a kicking in the popular press, with the word beige, dull and bland generally being hung around its neck like a bunch of grey garlands. And yet, hundreds, thousands of you go out every year and buy one, making it one of the best selling cars in class and country. Where’s the disconnect? Are motoring journalists just priggish snobs who refuse to like a car unless it can be teased into a tyre smoking drift (probably) or are Irish car buyers just blindfolded sheep who decide they like something and won’t be swerved no matter the evidence presented before them (possibly)?

Actually, the answer is a bit of both plus a major dose of an easy temptation to label cars with simplistic tags. Thus, the Ford Mondeo is the handling champ, the VW Passat is the classy one, the Opel Insigina the pretty one and the Peugeot 508 the French one. Which leaves the Avensis very little other to be than the dull one.

But just as Bill Gates rose from being a maths nerd to Richest Nerd Of Them All, so the Avensis has more than a few talents, which are not exactly hidden but certainly obscured a bit.

So, to hammer home the point, Toyota has just updated the Avensis, with new or at least revised styling inside and out, and for the first time a diesel engine that’s in Band A for tax.

The styling job is actually pretty good. The Avensis was always one of the better and more distinctive looking cars in the class (yes, I just said that) and the facelift makes it look similar to before, but just a touch sharper.

Inside, the work has been less successful. One of the very valid criticisms of the Avensis in its current incarnation has been its interior, which has always looked and felt at least a generation behind the opposition. Old-fashioned dials, coal-black colour schemes and a feeling that, while the actual quality of construction was very good, the touchy-feely stuff had been left out. Things are a little better now. The surfaces are more soft touch and our highly specced test car came with gorgeous and very comfortable biscuit leather-and-suede seats, which lifted the interior ambience no end. The full screen colour sat nav (a snip at €655 as an option) didn’t do any harm either, but seeing as few if any actual bought-and-paid for Avensis’ are going to be specced like this, we’ll reserve judgement on the cabin update until we’ve had a chance to sample one with a more basic spec. The basics of comfort and space are and always have been spot on though.

Behind the beaky new nose likes an updated 2.0-litre 125bhp D4D diesel four cylinder engine which, at last, now qualifies for Band A tax thanks to Co2 emissions of 120g/km. Its claimed consumption of 4.6-litres per 100km should keep you away from the pumps too, but sadly, we could only get it to do low-sixes in fuel economy terms, giving a touring range of just under the magic 1,000km on a full tank.

It’s a reasonably refined engine too, once it’s warmed up and pulls strongly in each of the gears in the sweet-shifting six-speed manual gearbox.

Dynamically, the Avensis has always been a mixed bag and sadly, that hasn’t changed. You get the sensation that there is a really good, sharp chassis in there, trying to get out, but mushy, oddly-weighted steering just leaves you groping in the dark for messages about what’s happening at the contact patch. We know that Toyota can do near-perfect steering; the old Celica and the new GT86 are proof, but the Avensis needs to go to the same finishing school as its coupe sisters.

That should mean that it’s biased towards comfort and by and large, that’s true. But our car (and this may have been down to the specific wheel and tyre combination) exhibited an odd trick of bouncing and bucking when confronted with a bump that affected one side of the car. The rest of the time, the ride felt nicely firm and well damped, but this odd little sensation kept re-occurring. Not sure why. There’s also the issue of arriving at a corner and not being able to accurately judge the correct entry speed and line because the steering is so mushy. That sounds like the complaint of an uber-enthusiast, and it is, but the fact is that the Avensis’ competitors do it better and it’s a shame that the essentially sure-footed chassis has lost its main line of communication to the driver.

Still, there is excellent quality to be had here. For a basic €24,495, you get aircon, remote stereo controls, an electronic parking brake, lots of safety gizmos including active anti-whiplash headrests and a drivers’ knee bag (the Avensis has one of the highest-ever safety ratings from EuroNCAP), daytime running lights, iPod connectivity and more. And at last, Toyota has ditched the cheap-looking old fixed ignition key and given us a proper modern folding one. In fact, our test Luna spec car actually had a nice keyless entry and ignition system.

So, while things aren’t perfect, there is still much to admire about the updated Avensis. It’s still spacious, comfortable and quiet, still looks good (especially the very handsome estate version) and of course still has that benchmark Toyota quality and reliability. If only they’d let the chassis guys who did the GT86 get their hands on it for a day or two, we might have an out and out class champ. Until then, it’s better than most of us car critics allow it to be, but just not as good as we know it could be.

Facts & Figures

Toyota Avensis 2.0 D4D 125 Luna Saloon
Price: €30,595
Range price: €24,995 to €38,165
Capacity: 1,998cc
Power: 124bhp
Torque: 310Nm
Top speed: n/a
0-100kmh: 9.7sec
Economy: 4.6l-100km (61.4mpg)
CO2 emissions: 120g/km
Tax Band: A. €160 road tax
Euro NCAP rating: 5-star: 90% adult, 86% child, 53% pedestrian, 86% safety assist

Road Test: Toyota Yaris 1.0 VVTI Luna

Price as tested: €15,895

+ Sharper looks, incredibly spacious, sweet engine, quality
– Cabin still a touch grey, silly specs: why no standard aircon or Bluetooth?
= Yaris rediscovers its old mojo

I still remember that morning. It was cool, but not cold, and a little overcast but still dry. It was early, traffic was pretty much non-existent and I had the twisting, rising and falling roads of the Dublin and Wicklow mountains to myself. And I was in a 1.0-litre Toyota Yaris.

Now, that might sound like the prelude to a let-down, but actually, I had fantastic fun. That first generation Yaris was just so beautifully balanced in its chassis, had terrific steering and a willing, rev-happy engine that I had one of the most enjoyable drives of my life. There’s a lot to be said for a car whose chassis is ten steps ahead of its power output; it means you can wring the best from the engine without actually breaking any laws or putting yourself in needless peril.

Fast forward one generation of Yaris and here came the let-down. The quality, space and terrific engine were all still there, but so was a cabin full of harsh, scratchy plastics and a chassis, steering and drivetrain combo that felt soulless compared to its brilliant predecessor. I hated it.

So this, the third generation Yaris, has rather a lot to prove. It has to, for me, expunge the memory of a lacklustre predecessor while evoking the brilliance of an older antecedent. Not easy that.

We’ll get to whether it can or not in a minute, but let’s start with the new Yaris’ party piece. Get in and set the drivers’ seat at a comfortable position for a six-foot-tall occupant. And then get out and sit in the back, behind that seat.

In most compact cars, that’s a recipe for knees in your ears and a hairdo in the rooflining, but not here. There is space; comfortable space. Space enough that I, both tall and broad would happily sit back there for some time. And it’s no trick. Get out again and open the boot and you are greeted with a big, flat expanse of some 285-litres. This is one spacious small car.

Up front, there’s an all new cabin design. Gone (thankfully) are the annoying small digital projector instruments and in come a set of handsome, clear analogue dials. In the centre of the dash, as long as you don’t go for the basic Terra specification, is the new 6-inch Toyota Touch multi-function screen, which controls and displays the radio, CD player, iPod connection, trip computer and, if you plump for the extra €550, the sat-nav. It looks neat, it looks classy and even the Yaris’ traditionally older buyer should be able to figure it out pretty quickly.

There are some interestingly textured surfaces and the chunky, almost flat-bottom steering wheel feels good to hold, but it must be said that the cabin is still a touch plain and grey (even more so on basic versions) and we cannot fathom why Toyota persists with such a big, clunky ignition key.

Under that stubby, squared-off bonnet (did we mention how crisply handsome this third generation Yaris looks?) lies, for most customers, a 1.0-litre three-cylinder petrol engine with 69bhp and 93Nm of torque. Thanks to Toyota’s Optimal Drive tech (low friction components, intelligent alternators etc etc) this little engine emits a similarly little 111g/km of Co2 and consumes a claimed average of 4.8-litres per 100km.


And it’s a sweetheart. Like all three-pots, it revs with a rumbly off-beat growl, zings happily around to its redline and, while you’d never describe it as quick (0-100kmh in 15.3secs) it is certainly willing. Keep the slick-shifting five-speed gearbox moving and you’ll do OK.

Now, here’s the big question, for me at any rate. Can the new Yaris blow away the memories of that dullard MkII and take me back to that mountainside blast? Yes it can. The steering is city-firendly light and free of anything you’d call feedback, but there’s a lovely accuracy and a friction-free feeling to the way to slides through your palms. There’s also been some common sense in terms of the suspension settings; it’s soft enough to absorb the worst bumps neatly, but with good damping that stops it feeling floppy and lumbering in the corners. In other words it feels exactly as a good small car should; agile, zippy and enjoyable. Not quite, I feel, as fluid as that exceptional original Yaris, but close and good enough to hold its head up against the likes of the Fiesta and Suzuki Swift.

And it’ll be safe too. Toyota is equipping all Yaris models as standard with VSC stability control, and you’ll get seven airbags (including a drivers’ knee airbag) whatever model you choose.

Generally, other equipment levels are quite good, but air conditioning is an expensive (€1,100) option on all but the expensive (€18,210) Sol top-spec model. Toyota says that’s down to customer feedback and poor sales for a previous standard aircon Yaris model, but it does seem a bit off-kilter to us. Mind you, there are good levels of equipment in other areas. Our mid-ranking Luna test car came with the Toyota Touch screen (which also incorporates a rear-view camera), all the safety kit, leather steering wheel, some nice chrome bits and Bluetooth phone connection, and all for slightly less than the equivalent old model Yaris Luna. Nice.

And while we’re on the subject of nice, the nicest thing about the Yaris is that it feels like all the car you’d ever, really, need. It’s spacious, beautifully made, enjoyable to drive, economical, good looking and, as long as you avoid that basic Terra spec, with sufficient toys to keep you entertained in the morning traffic jam. For me, it easily erases the disappointment of the last Yaris and yup, takes me back to that Mk1 sprint over the mountains. If it doesn’t sell by the bushel, I’ll be amazed.

Facts & Figures

Toyota Yaris 1.0 VVTi Luna 5-door
Price as tested: €15,895
Price range: €14,760 to €19,350
Capacity: 998cc
Power: 69bhp
Torque: 93Nm
Top speed: 155kmh
0-100kmh: 15.3sec
Economy: 4.8l-100km (61.5mpg)
CO2 emissions: 111g/km
Road Tax Band: A €104
Euro NCAP rating: Not yet tested