I drove a 14 litre NA Cummins for years, agreed turbocharging it turned it into one of the best lorry engines ever fitted IMO, but for general use and given a good driver the NA 250 was quite adequate without thrashing, certainly we never experienced a Cummins engine failure despite starship mileages but my companies service regime was the best i have ever known, and extremely cost effective as a result.

Personally i like the Japanese way of if it aint broke don't fix it including their refusal to join the trend to long life service intervals, in hostile parts of the world where lives often depend on a reliable simple vehicle you find almost exclusively Toyota and Japanese Nissan off road designs, designs only ever changed after years of exhaustive testing, you only ever see Freedom Fighters and other similar groups in Hilux's, and thats not cos Toyota do a cheap deal for the publicity..:-)

Japan's (Honda and Toyota) series production is the best in world. As is their after sales care. No question. Their engineering conservatism does help with long term durability.

But their design ideosyncracies are going to harm them. If you look at the choice of engines in the new Auris tourer they are falling woefully short of the competition.

Yes i'd agree with that, Toyota are putting all their eggs in the small Diesel and Hybrid baskets in their common cars, if i was going to buy an Auris estate then i personally would plump for the 1.8 VVTi NA petrol as fitted to Avensis transmitted through that really lovely smooth CVT gearbox...but its not an option and i hate small Diesels with a vengeance...horrible horrible things.

Basically its then a slightly smaller Avensis without the idiot electric parking brake thats switched backwards, lovely car that would be if it had a decent sized NA petrol.

The thing with Toyota is they stand by their product long after the warranty has expired, where other companies make it very clear (should you have problem) that they are not really interested once warranty expires, Toyota will should an engine turn out to be a pup still be fixing or replacing them 7 or 8 years and up to 100k miles later, if other makers stood by their products like this i'm not so sure they'd be churning out designs half tested for the buyers to complete their R&D for them.

I think Toyotas version of Hybrid will prove itself over time, it already is and has, but its persuading the average buyer that the hefty extra initial investment is worth the money.

Most people who privately buy new cars seem to be on a 3 year cycle, with regular facelifts from manufacturers to encourage them to upgrade to the latest model, maybe Toyotas route will pay off as more fleet bought Hybrids are sold on at 3 years old still with 2 years proper warranty remaining and used buyers of such realise just how durable and real driving world economical long term the choice can be.

Trouble is many car buyers seem to want shiny new and current fad/fashion so long as it has the right badge, (same with household white goods hence buy cheap shiny tat and throw it away 2 years later), doesn't matter if it falls apart at 5 years its someone elses problem.

Will be very interesting to see how this pans out over the next 5 to 10 years, with Mazdas 2 litre unstressed option too...whether Mazda will sort out their customer service dept in order for buyers to have better faith in goodwill should anything go wrong with any of their cars is another question and that has a big impact on my own car makes choice long before i get into engine specs.

Edited by gordonbennet on 14/07/2013 at 12:37