Our 2006 Avensis Estate - One Year On.

December 17, 2007

I've just finished doing my input into the annual Which Car survey, which has triggered me to post the following observations on this forum in case they are of interest.

In general our Avensis Estate (Model T3-X Diesel Estate D4D 2 litre) purchased almost exactly a year ago has been a delight. It's very reliable, quiet, drives well, and is great for load carrying (and did we carry a lot when involved with a major building project this year). We've had not a single problem (except one puncture - no doubt a nail dropped by the builders!)

But there are just a few things that meant the car wasn't quite as good or as pleasureable as it should have been. Here's the list:

Optional extras are very limited, and can’t be ordered in sensible ways:

Engine options: We couldn’t order the 2L D4D engine which only omits 149g/km of CO2 with the model with the trim and seats we wanted. Only larger engines could be ordered with the top of the range model. This meant my wife could not have the leather seats she wanted.

Sun roof: You can’t order a sun roof in UK. (You can in other countries). This nearly stopped us buying the car, and we really miss a sun roof.

Trip Computer poor

- Can’t reset with a single button - end up pushing lots of buttons - not safe! / Range over 100 miles pessimistic..

- Average speed indicator resets when I switch off engine. What if I want my average speed for a trip?

Other niggles

- Clock is inaccurate and time consuming to set. No automatic summer time adjustment. Why can't it be linked to the radio like our last car?

- CD/Radio: CD Player plays MP3s, which is very useful. But the LCD display characters are oversized which means you can’t see much information - eg “What’s playing” for MP3s or DAB etc. You have to press and hold a button to see a few more characters – quite dangerous if driving.

- DAB Radio: Again, the huge characters mean you have to keep pushing buttons to get any significant information out. Also, the DAB radio doesn’t show the line of text all other DAB radios show about “what’s playing”.

- No MP3 player input on the radio/CD player. I'm sure that will change soon if it hasn't already.

- The load compartment cover is very heavy and difficult to remove (although it does stow under the floor).

- No light in load space. Very difficult to see when you load in the dark.

Now here's some good features:

- The automatic wipers. The rain sensor is great.

- The rear parking sensor – this was an extra, and very useful indeed.

- The DAB radio is hiss and interference free, so sounds better (although UK DAB quality is generally poor as it uses low bit rates and an out of date compression system - let's not get into that!) There are some service gaps, of course.

- The MP3 CD player is great – it completely removes the need for a CD changer, and we can just burn our music onto CDs as high quality MP3s and leave them in the car.

I hope this helps someone - and maybe someone in Toyota might even read it. I've made comments to the sales guy but I suspect this isn't a good route back to Toyota.

Thanks for all the useful information on this forum - that's another real plus for having a Toyota - Brendan.