Toyota Aurion Sportivo ZR6 2009 Review

Price Guide (recommended price before statutory and delivery charges):

Overall rating: 2.5/5.0
Engine/Drivetrain/Chassis: 2.5/5.0
Price, Packaging and Practicality: 2.5/5.0
Safety: 2.5/5.0
Behind the wheel: 3.0/5.0
X-factor: 3.0/5.0

Medical authorities warn that the following content could be injurious to your health. If you suffer from allergies, cardio-vascular or respiratory illnesses, you are strongly advised not to read any further. Also, please put down that sharp implement and make sure you've swallowed that mouthful of fish, cereal or coffee before reading from this point.

Here it comes: Toyota's Aurion Sportivo ZR6 is an appealing car.

To start with, it's more attractive than the Camry donor car with which it shares platform and body-in-white. Powered by a 3.5-litre V6 that is extremely quiet and free-revving, the Aurion is both tractable and dynamic. Performance in a straight line will catch out drivers of cars much better known for their sporting reputation -- and the Aurion does so using less than 11.0L/100km.

Cornering is surprisingly good from a car that rides as well as this and NVH is correspondingly low for a vehicle with the Aurion's performance potential. The driving position is comfortable and easy to adjust, with excellent seats that will hold and support the occupant properly without being too aggressive and niggling on a longer journey.

Who would have thought that a great big Aussie-built front-driver with a V6 could be so competent on so many fronts? Ummm... Magna fans, perhaps?

This reviewer was rather dismissive of Toyota's TRD version of the Aurion, but the Sportivo ZR6 has few of the flaws of the supercharged car. Straight away, we can say that the ride/handling compromise is better and drivers will be able to use the majority of the naturally-aspirated Aurion's power and torque up to the legal limit without a whole lot of carry-on from the front end -- in the dry at least.

By employing just a little finesse, it's possible to launch the big Toyota reasonably well. Even with the driver applying a moderately heavy foot to the right pedal, the Aurion will spin a drive wheel without incurring axle tramp -- a sign that Toyota engineers have tuned the MacPherson strut front-end pretty well.

The naturally-aspirated V6 is effectively inaudible below 3000rpm and will rev quickly and without fuss to 6000rpm, pulling in a linear way right through to the redline. Fuel consumption for the Aurion averaged 10.1L/100km average over suburban roads (commuting) and freeways, but that dropped back to 10.9L/100km once the performance testing was under way.

At open-road speeds, the Michelin 215/55 R17 tyres are the only significant source of noise -- and they're only 'significant' because everything else is so quiet. On country roads they emit a rumble, but -- especially taking into account the way they complement the suspension -- that rumble is tolerable.

In tighter corners the front tyres load up, but at higher speeds and in wider-radius turns, the Aurion walks a line approaching neutral, although the handling can be a little messy at times. The car is quite throttle-sensitive and body control is lacking something with the power off into a corner. You'll feel the rear of the car heaving up and across as it tries to oversteer. That's arguably a pay-off for the car's ride.

Overall though -- and credit here to the Michelins, we believe -- the Aurion is a safe car in so far as it provides plenty of warning that the driver is asking too much of it. Plus, the limits of adhesion are high enough for most drivers.

Standard stability control keeps tabs on the Aurion's progress, but it allows too much latitude at times. Likewise, the ABS could be slow to relieve the brakes of hydraulic pressure when called upon to do so. Understeer into a slower corner and a minor brake lock-up in a straight line were late being corrected by the respective safety systems. It was less of a problem in the dry, but might pose more of a risk in the wet.

Depending on one's point of view, the six-speed automatic transmission is not completely in keeping with the rest of the car. It's very much a 'luxury' box and, while slurring the changes in a creamy sort of way, is slow to change and it allows kick-down to take a lot of precedence over the sequential-shift facility. Sadly, in being so very smooth and genteel, it detracts from the Aurion's fairly potent performance capability. It was slow to select lower gears when required by the driver using the sequential-shift, for example. Toyota could make this transmission -- and the whole car -- more impressive by offering a sports mode which is a true sports mode...

From a packaging standpoint, the Aurion's instruments were easily read through the rim of the (rather large diameter) steering wheel. Our one gripe about the interior relates to the champagne-coloured plastic of the centre fascia. At night, fortunately, the colour is not visible and HVAC and Audio readouts are bathed in blue back-lighting, which is restful on the eyes.

The boot of the Aurion is cavernous, but, for the car's price it probably should include such things as luggage nets or anchorage points.

So now it's time to address some of the unpalatable truths. The Aurion in this specification rides better than the Citroen C5 driven a couple of months ago. [Ed: go on, you know you want to write in bitching that this reviewer doesn't understand the 'Citroen experience'.] Indeed, unless you're an old hot-rodder, you're probably going to prefer the comfort and refinement of the Aurion over a VE Berlina -- and that's another harsh truth.

But the harsh truths aren't all one-sided. In this specification, the Aurion is barely $1000 less than Ford's Mondeo XR5 Turbo and the Ford is slightly better equipped to offset that price differential. This writer would pick the Ford over the Aurion -- and also, there are other 'mid-size' cars that compare with the 'large-car' Aurion for packaging and can compete with the Toyota for point-to-point driving dynamics.

The funny thing about the Aurion is this: it's actually so appealing because it does most things well, without being exceptional in any one area. It's not the sort of device to excel in steering or interior design or any of a hundred other criteria -- and nothing about it really sucks either. The Aurion is literally a jack-of-all-trades.

Does this make the Aurion any the less worthy of consideration as a purchase? We don't think so.

Read the latest Carsales Network news and reviews on your mobile, iPhone or PDA at www.carsales.mobi