Toyota: The World’s Most Exciting Washing Machine
Along with my Guild of Motoring Writers colleagues I was honoured to be a guest of Toyota GB the other week. Coinciding with our AGM they were kind enough to host a hospitality shindig at the National Motor Museum in Beaulieu. A quaint spot in the south of England, tucked away in a verdant corner of the New Forest. The National Motor Museum is named more in pretence than practise – it is not a national museum but a very impressive private collection – and as far as I could tell it has no Toyotas in its displays. Toyota GB made up for that by bringing their own collection of Toyotas past and present for us to try.
Seasoned press officer Richard Seymour conceded that Toyota has something of a reputation for producing the automotive equivalent of domestic appliances. Indeed, when it comes to white goods on wheels, Toyota takes the crown. Amongst hacks and other press fleet jockeys such statements are intended to be a compliment of the severely backhanded variety but I am not so sure. Despite what the average bloke-in-a-pub might claim most people want a car that is more packhorse than racehorse. It needs to take the kids to school, the dog to the park, dad to the shops, mum to the office and everyone on holiday. It needs to do this uncomplainingly, come rain or shine, in comfort and safety. It needs to be utterly dependable and not eat into the budget for school trips, romantic weekends away or the new kitchen. Even your average Toyota can do all of this with ease and as a consequence Toyota customers have raised the company to the summit of the industry.
On top of all its other jobs a car is expected to provide a bit of driving fun as well. Motoring specialists know what this means: the roar of a lion, the speed of a cheetah and the grip of a limpet. However, I have never been terribly convinced by this view. Sure, these qualities make for great times around a race circuit but the concept of fun is much more subtle and personal than just making the engine scream. The joy of motoring is not in the technical achievement of the engineering per se, it is in the way the car sounds, smells and moves. The Mitsubishi GTO/3000GT was known as a technical tour de force yet capable of draining the emotion out of any driver. The Citroen DS, on the other hand, is a sensory pleasuredome. My mission, then, was to find out if Toyotas are domestic devils or automotive goddesses. I had one hour and 20 Toyotas to find out.
I didn’t have to fight off many hacks to secure the keys to the Prius Mk1. My first hybrid experience so I thought I should start with their first. The company had worked hard to ensure that it would behave like a “normal” car, though the styling has a bit of a droopy-drawers bottom heavy look for that essential quirkiness. The interior feels cavernous, an impression reinforced by the instrument cluster located out beyond infinity. The driving experience is reassuringly familiar with a rather pleasingly smart take-off. The brakes though…oh dear. Clearly wiring them up to the generator as well as the discs has meant losing a lot – no, all – of the feel. It is like stepping on a rubber brick. They work, but it is no pleasure. Mind you, what are brakes meant to feel like? Still, I found that I could remember that pedal long after I had forgotten the rest of the drive so I suppose it counts as character which, after all, is what I am seeking.
To round off my education in hybrids I thought I would give the Lexus LS600h L a little run. Here, of course, we are back to technical supremacy, this time in the shape of a £99,995 luxury car (keep the change). In some ways this is the most un-Toyota car they make. It is reliable, naturally, and it is a hybrid. But then it also has a stonking V8 engine. If you mix 5 litres of petrol with electricity you get a heck of a bang and, supposedly, all with a clean conscience.
Don’t mistake me, I loved the drive but only in a sort of real world defying kind of way. The brakes were super-sensitive, the steering light and all errant noises banished. They claim it is the quietest car in the world but is sound really so bad? It is probably also the least smelly car in the world, or the least colourful, perhaps it even tastes of slightly sugared water but I am not looking for a non-experience in a £100k car. Give me something that swings around on the road over clinical precision any day. Fortunately, they couldn’t hide the Land Cruiser from me.
Land Cruiser Ahoy!
They did try but a leviathan like that will never be a wallflower. It was Richard Seymour’s company truck and thus filled to the rafters of the kind of detritus that press officers have to lug around. This was no motor show dilettante but a working vehicle. A pretty realistic test drive, then. The diesel V8 rumbled menacingly into life, growling at the timid new rider behind the wheel. Perhaps the brute was testing me but once rolling it proved to be a gentle giant, like riding in a maharaja’s howdah on a bull elephant. Professional road testers would criticise its loping gait, its body swinging from side to side in sluggish response to the steering but I loved it. This, I think, is where motoring journalists miss the point. All that movement is natural, animalistic even, and is what we interact with on a human level.
Sure, you can get a Ferrari to move around but only on a racetrack and at insane speeds. A Land Cruiser comes alive from the moment you start the engine. Safe and predictable yet enormous fun without having to rip up the tarmac in the process. Add to that the fact that such a giant can meet any challenge you throw at it, from doing the school in the snow to towing a horse box to Ascot, there is a feeling of utter invincibility that deepens the driving pleasure. From that lofty driving position it is like you are in the wheelhouse of a fabulous yacht, cruising serenely above the lesser road craft.
MR2: Fun in one flavour
None of these guilty delights would have impressed a professional journalist, of course, who would have much preferred the MR2. I am no fan of sports cars; they may offer an uncompromised drive, but the ownership experience is thoroughly compromised. The lack of rear seats, barely enough luggage space for a dirty weekend for one, for me it all adds up to less. Yes, I know they dart around on the road like a spanked weasel and they claw the ground like a school boy on Monday morning, but honestly, why should any of that be desirable in itself? Surely it is much better to be able to see over the traffic in front of you rather than staring into its exhaust pipe. The damning fault for me was the rear-view mirror, stuck right in the middle of the windscreen. Old style sports cars had the mirror on the top of dashboard, obscuring nothing but the bonnet louvres. In the MR2 the mirror blocks the view of half the road. I did put the roof down to try and cheer myself up but it had the same effect as riding a luxury skateboard. It is a nice car, but I really couldn’t live with one.
Corona: a real car in Whirlpool White
For the real treat I had to wait until the end. The most, if not only, special car in Toyota GB’s collection is the 1968 Toyota Corona. In a creamy white it epitomised the automotive domestic appliance image that has dogged Toyota for so long. I have to concede there is little that is remarkable about it: front four-cylinder engine, four doors and rear wheel drive. The droop-snoot front end was a little racy but the rest of the styling stuck rigidly to three-box tradition. Just my kind of car, then.
It is these older cars that show us how far the industry has advanced in a fundamental way. And that is, not very far. Getting in I was told to give the door a good slam to close it. That would be a normal door, in my opinion. The Lexus 600 will close the last inch of the door’s travel; thanks, but I have already done all the hard work, I think I can manage the last little bit.
Of course, you do feel that you have been transported back in time but it is not from another planet. Everything is just that little bit different that it puts all the sensory receptors on overload. It is beautifully light and airy so you feel as outside as you do in the MR2. Instead of rows of flush fitted buttons there are switches standing proud and alone. I can’t say they feel better but in feeling different they are a delight. Then there is the smell. Modern cars don’t smell, not even dead cow despite the swathes of leather. Old cars smell of vinyl, resin and glue. Utter heaven.
All of that the passenger can enjoy as well but the driver gets to find out what it is like on the road. Charming and quaint are two words that come to mind before setting off, heavy, cumbersome and just a tiny bit dangerous are three that rush to mind on the move. The clutch was biting somewhere up by my armpit, the delicate steering wheel was stirring cold molasses and the brakes…well… where the heck were they? I eventually found them squeezed right to the bottom of the pedal’s travel. It is not often that I come out in a sweat below 25mph. Perhaps this car was the inspiration for the brakes on the Prius.
Then there were a couple of things that would be a distinct advance over modern cars. The mirrors were genuine wing mirrors and set way down the end of the bonnet. This means they work almost as an historic head up display, the rear view being just a glance away from the front view. Then there was the combined horn-ring indicator. Horn rings are always lovely items, a delicate circle of chrome orbiting the inner part of the steering wheel. A lovely piece of styling and always easy to find. On the Corona it has had additional job: flicking up or down with the thumb gives the directional indicator. A neat solution, though you do need to keep your thumbs under control.
Note the horn-ring indicator
This is really the point about old cars. They are no different, fundamentally, from moderns but they make you work harder for your pleasure and reward you with a full sensory experience. A 1968 Toyota Corona challenges your driving skill like a Porsche 911 and delivers all the fun of a mushroom induced return to your childhood. It is the nearest you can get to feeling like your dad.
On the way home, settled into the easy comfort of my Saab 9-5 Aero, I slightly regretted not having my own classic to play with. Sure, my car has a “proper” Saab engine but it does sound like it has come out of a British sports saloon from the 1970s. I love its style, a talent for which Saab has been tragically underrated, but underneath it all it is still a kind of Vauxhall/Opel Vectra. I am sure my more professional colleagues would give it a proper dressing down for its compromises but then we real drivers live compromised lives. The Saab is not just there for driving pleasure it also needs to get the wife to her tennis, me to the DIY store to load up with building materials and it needs to get both of us to our holiday camping destinations. In trying to be all things the Saab does extraordinarily well.
My only regret from the day is that I could not sample every single car that Toyota had prepared for us. Sadly, I had to get home to sit my GCSE. Yes, alright, you’ve found me out: I am a 16 year old boy living in his mother’s basement writing blogs. A perfectly healthy pastime.
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