USED Toyota Avensis Saloon (03 - 09)

My car

Had this car from new, drive is fine for long distances, though rather twitchy on minor.

Two problems though:

1) been a new clutch after only 10,000 miles (grapevine says it is becoming a reoccuring problem with avensis).

2) Major gripe is the level of aftersales service. Having a main Toyota dealer in a large UK city, take 8 days to replace a clutch due to parts not in stock and delivery is ridiculous. Cost me over £280 in hire car charges due to this!!.

I was also informed by my hire car company that I would not have my car back for x amount of days rather than toyota themselves!! Customer service very poor 1/5.

My car

I've had some problems in the 25,500km I've done, as follows:

Sup. arms for the rear axel (redesigned now) Front right light unit changed because of condensation inside Battery went completely dead at minus 15 degrees Steering collumn has to be changed(redesigned)

What do you say about all of this? I expect a comment from your authorised specialists if they know of this.

Still a Toyota fan.

My car

I seem to have bought a totally different car than the one tested by What Car! My Toyota is very comfortable to drive even over very long distances.

I've chosen the bronze colour and the beige leather trim and I can tell you heads turn when I drive by.

The car offers everything you need and... for a very reasonable price. I was offered a surprising 11% discount by a Toyota dealer, so I bought this Toyota Avensis 2.4 with GPS and sunroof for only €31.000! I've compared the Avensis 2.4 with BMW and Mercedes. I did lots of test drives and eventually chose the Toyota Avensis 2.4. A make that ranks first in reliability and low costs will not take any risk I suppose.

My car

It's a bit harsh on side roads, but I expect it will loosen up one day - mine has done 12,000 miles and I've had it from new.

The dealer was very friendly, but Toyota did take about 6 months to resolve a noise through the steering column.

We had two replacement columns - the noise was apparently caused by a design fault in the electric power steering.

The boot appears large but is not very deep.

We've had no breakdowns, and the fuel consumption has been around 37-41mpg overall, mostly around town.