If all you want from a car is to move you and your family around, then the revised Toyota Avensis should be a prime choice.
It’s not designed to appeal to enthusiasts, quite the contrary, so it’s very popular with people who don’t really value driving pleasure or sporty aesthetics.
The Avensis has a great and nicely screwed together interior, improved with the latest restyling along with the exterior, and a raft of new gadgets. However, we should exercise caution when calling the redesigned model’s outside ‘an improvement.’
Its face is quite simply ghastly, reminding me of facial remodeling surgery gone wrong – those people whose facial muscles no longer work and you never really know what they’re feeling, just that their skin is very tight and immobile; that’s what I think the Avensis looks like from the front.
That’s what you get when you try to adapt a new family face onto an existing car that was designed to be quite square in its appearance. So actually, looks-wise, the pre-restyling model is more attractive (and less fussy), even if that one was far from being a looker to begin with…
The Avensis has been and will continue to be a sold buy in the segment, but exciting, fun or stylish it is most certainly not. You buy it for the Toyota promise of reliability, the new 1.6-liter diesel engine now and the various practical and ergonomic touches that the Japanese automaker does so well.
Check out Carbuyer’s impression of it in the video review.