Toyota TRD Aurion 3500S 2008 Review

Road Test - Toyota TRD Aurion 3500S

Overall rating: 2.5/5.0
Engine/Drivetrain/Chassis: 2.0/5.0
Price, Packaging and Practicality: 2.5/5.0
Safety: 3.0/5.0
Behind the wheel: 2.5/5.0
X-factor: 2.5/5.0

About our ratings

Toyota's supercharged Aurion is a car without peer -- simply because no other car company in Australia offers such a peaky, high-performance engine in a front-wheel drive chassis. Drought-prone Melbourne turned on the taps during the week the TRD Aurion was in our possession, essentially deciding the outcome of the car's evaluation right from the start.

After handing back a Falcon XR6 Turbo the night before, the Carsales Network found the TRD Aurion to be comparatively uncompromising in three significant areas: suspension, drivetrain response and general refinement. The Falcon was $7500 cheaper than the base-grade TRD Aurion, the 3500S, but set the bar at a level that was unattainable by the Toyota.

Tackling the Aurion's suspension first; the ride is okay at a secondary level, but not at a primary level. It makes freeway expansion joints feel like speed humps. By comparison, the Ford is exceptionally plush-riding for a car that not only offers stronger straightline performance, but ultimately steers and handles better.

The Aurion's steering lacks the quality feedback of the Falcon's, particularly on-centre feel. Where the Falcon is lively in cornering and tracks true at the straight-ahead, the Aurion is out of its depth.

The Aurion is supercharged and the Falcon is turbocharged. Normally, supercharged engines deliver a faster response than turbocharged units, not needing to wait for an exhaust-driven turbine to spool up for boost. For once though, it's the turbocharged Falcon that offers faster immediate response to flexing the right foot than the supercharged Aurion did. It seems like the Aurion's engine and transmission are regulated by a conservatively mapped ECU that will not give you instantaneous acceleration, unless traction control, stability control and the stars are all in alignment.

Once the engine is on song, it's impressively quick and emits a note like rolling thunder, underscored by a light whine from the supercharger, although the forced-induction V6 is at its best in the higher rev range -- in keeping with the engine's oversquare design.

Fuel consumption over the course of a week, including only about 80km of open-road driving, was 11.4L/100km. That doesn't strike us as at all bad, considering there was a substantial amount of around-town commuting and a good amount of half-throttle/supercharger-engaged acceleration thrown in with that.

The six-speed automatic transmission was a bit clunky at times -- certainly so up against the Falcon's ZF box. One thing that had us scratching our heads was the Toyota tranny's fixation with fourth gear in sequential-shift mode.

It didn't seem to matter whether the car was travelling at 60km/h or was at standstill; select sequential-shift mode and the transmission would default to fourth gear. With the car in motion, this might require two downshifts from the driver to get the right gear. And if you want first gear for a standing start, you have to select it manually with three strokes of the lever to get there.

Once in first gear, manually selected, you should then ask yourself "Do I really want this?". Playing around with the transmission left us with the feeling that the Aurion -- especially on lower-friction surfaces -- is more easily controlled (and quicker) making a start in second gear.

There's very apparent torque steer through the wheel and full-throttle is virtually unusable at speeds up to at least 60km/h; even in the dry. Try it and you'll get a huge dose of axle tramp from the front end.

This is another aspect where the TRD Aurion pales in comparison with the XR6 Turbo. While the Falcon can be a handful in the wet, it's possible to open it up fully in the dry and get a pretty quick launch to 60km/h. That's simply not possible with the TRD Aurion. As limited by lower levels of power as it is, (and torque that peaks high in the rev range), the Aurion can't get its power to the ground effectively.

At its Tasmanian launch last August (more here) we were impressed by the point-to-point speed of the hi-po Aurion. In fact, a perhaps over-enthusiastic Editor-in-Chief gave it 4.0 stars! [Ed: must have been Targa fever!]. Fair enough, when it's up, rolling and flowing, the TRD Aurion can still be very quick (especially on dry roads where its mid-corner grip can be capitalised upon), but in the cut and thrust of city and near-city sports driving, you're constantly having to adapt to the car's idiosyncrasies. In contrast an XR6T flatters the driver.

In fit and finish also, the TRD Aurion suffers in comparison with the Turbo Ford. Just from the driver's seat, the knobs for the HVAC controls feel cheap and wobbly... Not at all robust. In the same vein, the hinged lids for storage bins and cupholders in the centre console feel lightweight and unbefitting a car costing well more than 50 big ones.

Seats were comfortable and supportive, probably about on a par with those offered in FPV and HSV models. The heavy side bolstering will not be to everyone's liking, but they definitely do the job. Nor will everyone necessarily care for the colour scheme, with seats trimmed in a sort of ochre-red suede-like fabric and black leather combination.

Instruments were easy enough to read, although the backlit blue concentric inner gauge for the major instruments seemed out of place in a car of this nature. In other words, the major instruments didn't look sporting.

Cruise control was operated from a stubby lever at the 4 O'clock position on the steering wheel -- one of the better examples around. It's readily located and actuated by feel, but is also easily seen and read between the spokes.

Similarly, the ignition lock is well positioned, although we miss the in-dash ignition of earlier Camrys (the Aurion is effectively a Camry with V6 and different external features to distinguish it from the four-cylinder car).

The steering wheel is thinner than all those tried in FPV and HSV models, but it's not too thin. We found the same to be true of the TRD HiLux; so perhaps this is a slice of engineering philosophy exclusive to TRD. The wheel diameter isn't too small to deliver a clear view of the instruments, either.

In general, the driving position is very good. As with many locally-designed cars, the Aurion offers the appropriate range of adjustments, quickly resolved.

There's a foot-operated parking brake left of the main brake pedal and it's easy to use. To the left of the parking brake is a wide footrest, which provides a more than adequate platform, even for big blokes with huge plates of meat.

In respect of the Aurion's packaging, Toyota has settled on a mix that favours interior space over luggage capacity. There's no denying the Aurion's plentiful legroom for rear-seat passengers, but does it come at the expense of boot space? Being a front-wheel drive, the Aurion features a boot that's large and free of the sorts of bumps and protrusions one often finds in rear-wheel drive cars -- but the Aurion's doesn't extend very far forward and seems rather shallow.

As a premium-price sports sedan, the TRD Aurion is something of a disappointment. It's about 25 per cent more expensive than a Subaru WRX -- which has the sort of traction and grip that would have redeemed the Aurion. It's even more expensive than a volume-selling locally-manufactured rear-wheel drive (Falcon), which also offers forced-induction performance motoring, but does so with lower purchase price, greater refinement, easier day-to-day practicality, similar packaging and arguably better looks.

If you're the sort of person who wants to be able to use high levels of torque both in the wet and dry, without the weight penalty of an all-wheel drive system, the answer is rear-wheel drive -- and the Aurion doesn't have it.

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