Toyota Avensis Review
Published: 21st April 2009
Toyota Avensis
Inside the Toyota Avensis, the Euro-edge continues with a very businesslike interior in dark colours and fabric-effect soft-touch materials. Everything is nicely laid out and intuitive, except for the push-on, pull-off electronic handbrake button. I am not a fan of these anyway, as there is no room for finesse; it is either on or off. It does release automatically, when the car moves off but there is a slight delay and perhaps a missed opportunity in busy traffic.
The Toyota Avensis test car was the £20,230, Toyota Optimal Drive, 2.0-litre petrol, in T4 trim. It's not quite the top of the range but close enough to have a long list of goodies. Unfortunately, sat-nav isn't one of them and adds a further £1,470 to the bill for the T4. There are cheaper options on offer at £980; a full map system for the TR and a Premium navigation system with a 10 GB hard-drive for music and a rear parking camera for the T-Spirit. The test car had much the same system but audio was bundled in with the package. The large touch-screen makes inputting destinations very easy and cleverly opens to allow the insertion of CDs in to the slot behind. It is both impressive and very easy to use.
The Toyota Avensis T2 and TR come with cloth upholstery while the T4 and T-Spirit have leather covers to go with the steering wheel and gear knob. The top two trims also benefit from electrically adjustable and heated front seats with memory settings and lumbar support but despite this and the fully adjustable steering column, I had trouble finding a comfortable driving position. That said, on a lengthy journey, the comfort levels were good and not tiresome in the slightest.
The rear seats come with ISOFIX child seat mountings and top-tether anchor points and have a simple one-touch fold function, when not in use. With them upright the boot can only be described as cavernous with 509-litres of usable space, which can be increased to a maximum of 1,685-litres, should the need arise. Furthermore, the glovebox is a sensible size and capable of holding a lot more than just the handbook.
Rear passengers have plenty of legroom in the Toyota Avensis, but one of mine mentioned that it felt a little enclosed, behind the tall, dark front headrests and seat-backs.
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