Just done a 30 mile round trip in our hire car taking the place of the Sirion while its being fixed, so have some initial impressions. The car was an 07 with 8000 miles.
The car itself is a nice one id say, nice quality, feel solid, rides nicely enough and fairly quiet...
There is a strange issue with road noise though or rather water on the road noise.
When you go through even a small puddle, a noise not dissimilar to running a tap on an empty ice cream tub resonates through the floor and its really very loud - I assume its water hitting the wheelarch linings but I have NEVER come across a car that makes such a racket - my mum said it was louder in the back and to such an extent that she asked me if there was something wrong with the car.
Seats are terrible, very hard and with a strange shape that didnt support my shoulders at all, apparently even worse in the back.
Controls very nicely laid out and easy to find and use, plus attractive to look at.
Boot is a decent size although looking at it, much space is lost to interior coverings as is often the case these days and with a bit of a redesign, it could make a more practical space for a small families belongings. Rear visability isnt great though with a tiny rear window and thick pillars.
The engine is rather nice, gutsy bit not too vocal and gives the car a good turn of speed.
The only real downside is the gearbox - everything negative ive read about these MMTs is so true. It seems to have all the disadvantages of the manual and few of those you get with an auto.
It isnt all that smooth, certainly no better than the box in a Smart, infact its a bit harsher than that as while in the Smart you could adapt to make it drive smoothly, the MMT clonks down the gears and even on the lightest throttle, you still feel the upchange, something that the Smart does better, especially when going down the gears coming to a standstill.
It is also a tad dangerous as takeoff is far from instant, so you need a couple more seconds to jump into a gap in traffic as it just doesnt respond well at all from standstill.
Its fine in normal leisurely driving, but in the cut and thrust of town, it leaves you wishing for a proper auto.
It also has that alarming habit of changing gear just at the times you want it to skirt across a gap and for some reason, on the manual mode, changing up a gear is pull back and change down is push forwards - it didnt feel intuitive at all, seemed the wrong way round to me.
Its only been a brief drive, but my misses has already said its not a patch on her Sirion with its proper autobox and she said why Toyota have given what isnt a bad car, a very inferior solution all in the name of a few mpg is beyond common sense. A CVT would have been far nicer.
If they changed the seats and stuck a decent autobox in it, would make a nice proposition.
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Misses has just returned from a 250 mile round trip and the economy seems to get alot better - she got 60 odd on that run, so it would appear town work isnt its thing but motorway is, economywise.
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