My new Auris Hybrid Touring Sports

My new Auris Hybrid Touring Sports

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Jonny_

Original Poster:

4,108 posts

206 months

Wednesday 14th January 2015
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Arrived on Monday - brand spanking Auris hybrid, top of the range Excel trim with a panoramic roof and lovely shiny metallic red paint!

Not taken any pictures - thanks to the grotty, wet roads it's gone from gleaming to filthy already - but it looks exactly like the car pictured here: http://www.autocar.co.uk/car-review/toyota/auris-t...
It's no Maserati but I do think it's a fairly decent-looking car. Particularly like the front end, it's a huge improvement on recent Toyota designs. The back end isn't quite as distinctive but it's tidy and the shape of the car seems to me to work better as an estate than a hatchback. Just a shame there wasn't the option to have the rather snazzy 16" wheels from the cheaper Icon Plus model, as the 17" jobs on the Excel are a bit plain and I generally prefer the additional refinement from higher tyre profiles.

I'm very pleased with it so far; it's such a quiet and smooth thing to drive compared with the turbodiesel Passat it replaces. Low speed and stop/start driving is no longer a chore, instead it just glides along on battery power. For this kind of driving I will not miss a manual car one bit. The HSD transmission (which isn't really a CVT, nor is it an automatic gearbox as technically there are no gearchanges) is the smoothest transmission I've ever used. Accelerating onto motorways can get a bit noisy if I push it more than a few degrees into the "power" sector of the eco gauge, however that's short-lived and once up to cruising speed (usually 60 to 70mph) it goes back to a faint hum, which is less intrusive than the TDi was at those speeds.

Comfort is also a vast improvement. Softer, comfier seats with a less steeply angled base than the VW's "sports" items make a big difference, as does the softer suspension. It's not as roomy inside, being a smaller class of car, so one downside is that me being comfy in the drivers' seat means not much legroom behind me. Not much of an issue, fortunately, as the only person who will regularly travel in the back is our daughter who's still a few months off 3 years old! The payoff is that the boot is huge.

The interior's a mixed bag, some parts (such as the stitched leather dash inlays and the instrument cluster) are very smart, others (dash vents, seatbelt warning panel, and the mandatory 80's digital clock) look cheap and/or out of place. It's all very solid, though, and while it doesn't look as consistently premium as the Passat's did, it feels like it'll last much longer. I can't imagine it'll rattle and creak like the soft-touch-and-aluminium-detailing dash of the VW did at 3 years old.

I'm glad I specced the panoramic roof. It's brilliant, it makes the interior feel so much bigger even on gloomy days. Little daughter loves that she can look up and see the sky, clouds, streetlights, etc etc.

Electric gubbins, well there's a lot of it! The climate control is the best I've ever used, it's really intuitive and very very quiet yet effective. Heated seats have "high" and "low" settings, which would be better described as "high" and "bbq". Awesome on a freezing morning! The stereo sounds very good but compared to the VW system it's not as nice to use despite the software being slightly updated compared with the Auris demo car I tried. It's a bit sluggish to respond, and there's no way of navigating the folder structure of a USB drive, which makes it a faff to find particular music sometimes. The satnav seems pretty good, though and the updated software has made the DAB tuner much easier to use. And I've never known electric windows as fast as these ones!

Despite the cold weather and a new, tight engine, it's averaging 57mpg according to the readout. Even allowing a 10% BS factor that's very impressive for a petrol estate car loaded with tools and gear. I do drive pretty gently, but the Passat was driven the same way and returned slightly lower figures, and that was with the advantage of a fully-run-in diesel engine.

Note that I've left performance and handling until last. That's because on this car they're less important than comfort, refinement, practicality. As it's not run in yet I haven't given it anything close to full power, but with the demo car I found it was as good as a decent 1600 or an average 1800 petrol engine in a car of that size. Marginally faster than the majority of 1600 diesels, slower than any decent 2-litre diesel. There's as much grip as you'd ever need or expect of an ordinary family car, it doesn't roll much through corners, it's got about as much chance of oversteering as an oil tanker, the steering responds well enough but it's a bit overassisted and short on feel. Basically, just what one would expect from a modern car with no sporting pretensions.

Oh, and as a company car it saves me well over £200 a month compared with the Passat. Music to a Yorkshireman's ears! smile

greathorwood

99 posts

204 months

Monday 19th January 2015
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Thanks for the informative write up - very encouraging as I've just ordered exactly the same spec, albeit in white! Looking forward to getting my buns toasted on a frosty morning...

Budweiser

1,068 posts

183 months

Monday 19th January 2015
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I looked at these, very nice car but went for the Mitsibushi PHEV in the end but that was mainly because of the higher driving position.

Enjoy.....

Jonny_

Original Poster:

4,108 posts

206 months

Saturday 24th January 2015
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Yeah, I liked the PHEV, the electric-only mode is really impressive. Just didn't work out anything like as cost-effective as the Toyota.

Popped some photos of the Auris up, as it's clean at last: http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&a...

Few more things I've noticed about it...

The headlights are quite dim, and most of the light is focused straight ahead of the car. Using the foglights helps a lot but of course is no good if there's other vehicles ahead or oncoming. Might try some different bulbs, although they're a weird fitment (HIR2) and so far I've failed to find any uprated ones.

The fuel economy is very sensitive to the ambient temperature. On the freezing days we've had of late, it's struggled to get to 55mpg on an 80+ mile round trip. On a milder day last week (car showed 4 to 5C on the dash), it managed to average 61mpg on the same trip. There's a chap at work who also runs an Auris hybrid and who previously had a Prius; he tells me that both of those cars were notably more efficient in warmer weather.

Turning off the "eco" mode and leaving it in "normal" seems to have no detrimental effect on the economy (if anything it seemed to improve, although that could be down to all sorts of other influences) and for driving at any kind of speed the sharper throttle response is useful.

Now that it's got a few miles under its wheels (~900 miles on the odometer) I've used full power a couple of times to overtake. Contrary to what many folk seem to think, it really isn't slow - accelerating from 40mph to 60mph to overtake a lorry seemed very close to what I'd expect from the usual 130-140bhp diesels, the slightly lesser outright thrust of the hybrid being offset by having no pauses in power for gearchanges.

One added bonus over my previous diesel car is that the Auris' engine warms up pretty quickly on a cold morning. I know some Priuses have an electric heating element in the heater, I'm not sure if this is fitted to the Auris or not, but in any case it doesn't take long before there's enough heat to defrost/demist the windscreen.

Stinkfoot

2,243 posts

191 months

Thursday 5th March 2015
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I have just gone over 10k miles in my Auris Hybrid Touring and I absolutely love it. The touring makes it so much more practical too.
Being an Icon plus, it has DAB and sat nav as well as full audio connectivity which sounds superb.
I simply cannot fault it other than I wish the mpg on a motorway was higher.

Jonny_

Original Poster:

4,108 posts

206 months

Friday 6th March 2015
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Stinkfoot said:
I have just gone over 10k miles in my Auris Hybrid Touring and I absolutely love it. The touring makes it so much more practical too.
Being an Icon plus, it has DAB and sat nav as well as full audio connectivity which sounds superb.
I simply cannot fault it other than I wish the mpg on a motorway was higher.
Dropping below 70 makes a big difference, I've found.

Incidentally, mine is getting on for 4000 miles now and with the milder weather my mpg figures have improved markedly. Rare to see my trip average ("eco drive level" as the car calls it) under 60mpg at the end of a run, and have had it as high as 68 over a 20-mile run in quiet traffic conditions. Last time I filled the tank it worked out at a true 57mpg.

It also feels quicker on the rare occasion I use full power, probably a result of the engine loosening up.