TOYOTA AVENSIS

Jack Grover

Production Editor

Contact: Kelsey Media Instagram DM: @classicsworlduk joe.miller@kelsey.co.uk classicsworld.co.uk

Toyota Avensis 2.0 CDX

On the face of it, this might be one of the blandest and least appealing cars we’ve ever put under our Sales Spotlight. It’s a five-door, mid-size, Japanese family car of an age that awkwardly straddles the line between ‘old’ and ‘modern classic’ , without enough distinguishing features to readily shove it into the latter. It’s got an automatic gearbox. It’s not even interesting enough to be one readily identifiable colour –it’s a limp green/grey.

But with a bit of digging, any car can yield positive qualities. For instance, the Toyota

ONE TO BUY: Year: 1997 Price: £1000 MoT: March 2023

Avensis is unusual in being a Toyota specifically designed to be built and sold outside Japan. In fact, it was specifically developed to be built solely in Toyota’s Burnaston factory, replacing the Carina E with a model tailored to European tastes, arguably making it more of a British car than any contemporary Ford or Vauxhall. And this Avensis is not only from the ‘peak car’ era – that period from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s when cars reached high levels of reliability, refinement, safety and performance without growing into overweight, electronicsladen pillboxes – but arguably from the time of ‘peak Toyota’ , when the company led the world when it came to turning out consistently reliable, long-lived cars.

It certainly lives up to its maker’s ideals. We bought the Avensis last year as one of a pair of project 1990s repmobiles (the other was a Rover 600), and it was ‘gifted’ to Classic Car Mart editor Jeff Ruggles, with a hint of it being a booby prize. But we were all pleasantly surprised. Under its scuffed bumpers and badly-repainted wheels, the Avensis was entirely solid. After 25 years, the interior – leather seats, wood trim, Sony double-DIN stereo system and all – was still immaculate. The air-conditioning still blew cold, every electrical item still worked and there wasn’t a squeak or rattle anywhere – none of which applied to the Honda-based Rover of similar age and mileage. Speaking of which, 122,000 miles had also had no effect on the smoothness and soundness of the Toyota’s engine, nor its four-speed automatic transmission.

Once the tracking had been brought into spec and the perished Jinyu tyres on the front were replaced by rubber from the other side of the Sea of Japan, the Avensis still drove sweetly and had an amazingly supple yet well-controlled ride of the sort that seems non-existent in cars from the 2020s. Zero mechanical maladies were reported and Jeff set to work restoring the cracked and faded bumpers and replacing the chipped and foggy headlamps, which didn’t render the Avensis anything like perfect but smartened it up for very little effort. Jeff used the Toyota’s capacious boot to move the contents of a garage in one go, we took it on a full lap of the M25, and we then lent it to the Association of Heritage Engineers who put it in the hands of three apprentices for the Parallel Pomeroy driving test day. None of this fazed the Avensis in the slightest.

There was a time when an Austin Cambridge or Ford Cortina would be dismissed as dull, modern fare with nothing of interest – or just an old crock to be run into the ground on a shoestring. And the Avensis is objectively a much better, more usable car than the likes of those. In the not-so-distant future, we’ll be saying “Oh, you don’t see many of those now, do you?” at shows, while pointing at things like this Avensis. Until that day arrives, for £1000 you get a practical and utterly dependable runabout that will reward some basic care and upkeep.

OR MAYBE..?

TECH SPEC

ENGINE: POWER: TOP SPEED: 0-60MPH: ECONOMY: GEARBOX: 1998cc, 4-cyl 126bhp 124mph 10.6 secs 34.3mpg 4-spd, auto

ROVER 600

We thought the 600 was an obvious counterpart to the Avensis, with both being Anglo-Japanese creations. While the Avensis was tailor-made for British production, the 600 was effectively a reskinned Honda Accord. That’s no bad thing, and the Rover styling and Honda engines certainly make it less anonymous both from the outside and behind the wheel.

FORD MONDEO

This is the one the Avensis had to beat in the company car parks. After a decade of minimal-effort fare, Ford became the standard bearer for the 1990s with the Mondeo, which offered zingy engines, a brilliant combination of ride and handling and a wide range of trim and body options. The Avensis was specifically developed to meet the challenge of the Mondeo.

NISSAN PRIMERA

Something of an unsung hero and now a rare sight, the second-generation ‘P11’ Primera was also built in Britain and tailored to the European market. With build quality and reliability almost on a par with the Toyota, the Primera’s star card was actually its handling. Thanks to a full multi-link rear suspension set-up, it was deemed a class leader in this department.