Toyota Avensis - opinions?

I drove around in one for two weeks while my car was being repaired. It was noisy, unrefined, gutless, cheap and brittle. The interior was an ergonomic disaster. It was a well loaded model but the gadgets were littered about all over the place and not logical or intuitive to use. The driving dynamics were awful and seat comfort was very poor. I can’t think of one good thing to say about it. If I was fishing for something cheap and nasty to run into the ground the Avensis wouldn’t even be on the list – it was that bad.

you may be surprised at just how cheap BMW 5-series are to buy these days. i have just bought an immaculate silver 02' 5 series for less than 5k. really classy car, and will go for 200k miles without breaking a sweat. lots of toys like cruise control too!
James

I've enjoyed this car talk and getting on to the Honest John website. I"m in Los Angeles and you have so many cars we don't. I've been in Fords ever since I was a kid in 58 or so. Then after the army dad was hired by Philco a subsidiary of Ford so we had a new lease car every year.

I bought our Mystique in 95 and unfortunate name for your Mondeo. I'd had trucks for 28 years and it was a nice car. Solid, not exciting but I could take 4 people to an event. I knew it was based on European designers which I liked. Then I really liked the Focus and bought one in end of year 2003. That was the best handling car I have ever driven. Very firm, sporty and stylish. The next year they changed the interior to a more boring style.

Now I'm driving my father's lease Fusion with 3.5 V6, it seems really aggressive but I"m really surprised with it's sporty handling. Tho average MPG is 22, My Focus was 26 or so. The problem is the size, I'm so used to smaller cars that driving into the back of my apartment building and into the carport is like docking a ship I take it really slow. The driveway narrows toward the back and I end up with about 4 inches on each side between building and wood fence. My right mirror has some nice scrapes from 2 encounters with the fence when I was exiting. I also have to give up parking spots because it's too tight and the turning radius isn't as great.

I do all the driving now for my 87 yo parents and I get the car I want so I ordered a Focus for '09. The looks have been "Americanized" but I'm really looking forward to a smaller car and better milage.

I'm also really bored with car colors over here, 90% of cars are black, white and 2 shades of gray. They only offer a sapphire blue and red metalic, but on the website I had the option of an Amber Metallic. Wow, I'm really gonna shake things up with that option. I like the copper brown and greens some cars have. But Ford is very limited now in colors and seems to only offer one exciting color on each different model but you can't get that color everywhere or even from year to year.

Boy if I were in that design studio I'd shake things up. When I was a kid cars were so colorful and I remember the color charts dad would bring home for the selection of the new car. Must have had a dozen or more. B,W & gray are soooo boorrrring.