Oscar the Auris

So having been entirely transparent as to why I have this today was the big day...no the baby isn't coming until next year.

But the child seat arrived...so we can test if it fits. Now modern car seats don't appear to be designed to fit in cars...so this is not always guaranteed.

Success... ignore the mud at the bottom, this is normally the lads side..but he'll be moving, it even spins.

Now if we didn't need a seat that spins it would be half the bloody size...but hey it fits and I fit in the seat in front of it.

No one mention that without the extra height and length of the spinning base it would have fitted much easier.

I will say we haven't bought this..like most of the best most expensive baby gear it's only useful for less than 18 months so my wife's work colleague is loaning us it. Our smaller one which works with our travel system is in the loft...and my wife has decided not to use it.

Once we're out of babe in arms stage this will be getting replaced asap...the seat not the car.

We'll preface this update by posting this..

Same car, older, 20k less miles but not a TSS so 2 insurance groups higher. My car cost over 2.5 grand less than this...and is a full history car and is under Toyota warranty.

And now...let's start with why mine was 2.5k less .

First the underside I have electronic records of every year the owner paying Toyota to swap winter tyres off and on and they certainly weren't scared of snow. So the underside looked like this.

The rest of the underside including wheel arches is plastic so really just the suspension that got hammered but yeah not good.

Thankfully the supplier agreed to arrange undersealing as part of the deal so now looks like.

Good... unfortunately that wasn't all the weather had knackered. The lacquer on the roof had lifted in a sheet the size of a piece of A4. While it was being undersealed the roof was re-lacquered the rest of the body is largely ok other than the odd scratch or pin dent.

All 4 brakes were done...again these were replaced by supplying garage. As was a lower wishbone on the passenger side (i.e. the side with the edge of the road and potholes) and a CV boot...and 2 TPS sensors.

Unfortunately the garage didn't have any alignment gear and the first time I took it out on the motorway it was clear something was very wrong. Hence the alignment in the last update. This significantly improved the state of affairs but the C3 was still a much better motorway cruiser.

I discovered they'd literally not balanced one front wheel on getting the last remaining broken TPS sensor fixed this did improve things a lot.

However today..the final puzzle piece as it were.

It now cruises beautifully...also more to the point tyre noise has halved as has cabin vibration and you can talk at 70 without raising your voice.

So we are done except perhaps the nav system. None of this was absolutely necessary (other than brakes and suspension for MOT)...but all of it absolutely was for me to actually enjoy the car it was horrible at 70 when it arrived.

How far am I into fixing it up? About 500 quid including the tyres so still 2k ahead of the Carwow one and it now feels good to go for a long time. Of course the supplying garage are about 1500 quid into it as well but I'd bet they paid 6 for it.

I can totally see why the previous owner binned it, it's a case of at Toyota main dealer getting it back into reasonable order would have been 50% of the likely trade in value. Also without this work done...it drove awful but how bad only became clear as you worked through fixing things.

Now let me tell you tale of drama!

Actually no, doubt this car acknowledges the existence of drama in the universe.

So getting it "right" after the previous owner continues and will continue for some time.

The TPS system is literally broken, won't take a reset can't be shut up so until that's sorted constant warning light on the dash. The correct course of action as a Toyota owner is to ignore it but it will be fixed.

First part of ownership was marred somewhat by massive tyre noise especially at higher speeds and a steering wheel about 10-15 degrees off centre.

On the alignment machine she went.

The front wheels were indeed eyeballing eachother significantly.

Thankfully this was Saturday morning before half term since then I've done 700 miles in lots of different situations and in general it's now sorted.

I suppose I'll review it at this point as it's not a car with hidden depths.

Driving:
The 1.2 petrol is generally up to the job, occasionally pulling away on steep hill, and laden you feel like it is regretting it's life choices but generally it is quiet and powerful enough. You have to chase the power band more than in the C3 through the slightly vague six speed box but it's a competent companion. Being a 4 cylinder it's sounds awful if revved but you only hear it at high rpm in low gears. I do find it hard to believe that this is the "performance" version of the Auris you can not buy a faster one than this all other versions are slower. The main difference in driving this to the C3 is the weight, both acceleration and braking required big definite pedal movements, you drive the lighter C3 with your tip toes.

Steering it, now the tracking is sorted best described as uneventful. It goes where you point it, due to being an older design (Auris basic design is 12 years old) it's narrow and barely wider than the C3. As a result it feels wieldy and easy to thread on the narrow lanes.

Suspension wise this probably needs a special mention. Despite no mention of any "Advanced comfort" it's absolutely better than the C3, less roll, less pitching, more stability. Also takes speed bumps like a champion. Other thing compared to the C3 is that I'm yet to hit a pot hole that slams the suspension into the bump stops and shudders the structure. Apparently the estate was designed and built in the UK and the suspension is very good at what passes for a country road these days.

Only real negative is tyre noise, it's similar to my old Mazda 3 in that there's a constant white noise on certain surfaces. I plan to sort/improve this by getting rid of the mix of old and crap tyres and replacing with a set of low noise touring tyres in due course but it very much is a feature of the car and there's only so much that will do.

Edit from after I changed the tyres...oh god the tyres were bad. It's not a Bentley with new ones but it's a different car.

Interior:
This depends what you're expecting, I went in expecting some plastic that stops me from seeing bare metal and wires. It nails this brief.

Joking aside if you actually care about things such as soft touch and leather there is soft touch plastic on the dash top, the dash centre appears to be some sort of stitched leather (read vinyl) and the front doors are a mixture of cloth and soft touch plastic. Wheel and gearknob are leather, everything is nicely fitted and accurately moulded in robust materials.

Beyond that it's hard textured plastic or piano black, but it seems to wear very well indeed.

The infotainment stuff is nowhere near as bad as feared it takes a while to boot the Bluetooth from pulling away (a good 45 seconds) and the previous owner clearly didn't touch the nav ever as it's got the factory original maps in it. But the actual nav system seems to work in a leisure capacity. This is the next thing I think I'm going to spend money on...120 quid for the map update to 2024 maps seems like an idea as the basic system is sound.

Centre screen seems a little dim though to be fair I've not looked at brightness it might be set low.

The MFD between the dials is bright and high res and can show many useful things from sat nav directions, stereo information to pretty much anything you can think of.

Everything has an understandable logic to it and things that need a button have a button, although I do miss a volume knob. Even the safety systems are not annoying...despite spending last week on roads strewn with blowing leaves the only time I've seen "Brake!" come up from collision avoidance was in an opposition situation where the car assumed I was about to have a head on with another car rather than slot into a gap on my left.

Living with it:
As you'd expect it's a deeply inoffensive car unless you take offence at things that just are what they set out to be. Boot is big, did a tip run other day didn't fold the seats. Economy for the style of car with a petrol engine pretty damn good. Only 2 tanks so far but average of 42.5 on first tank (with my wife involved) and second tank just me 46.5 that's basically what I expect out of the supermini nevermind 1400kg of estate car with a petrol engine. My only note on that is if you go up into the moors it's not efficient. At a cruise on the motorway or on levelish A and B roads it sits at low RPM in 6th on the Atkinson cycle and will do 50mpg+. On hills it's a heavy car and it reverts to the more powerful Otto cycle so trip to Hamsterly forest returned high 30s low 40s but those are acceptable numbers similar to what the less powerful 1.6 Mazda would have done. Tax is 35 quid a year insurance is probably about as low at it gets for something that isn't a 1.0 67bhp city car. Oh and it has a spare wheel and jack! Even the halogen projector headlamps are decent and the auto high beam works reasonably well.

Finally Photo of it doing what it does...i.e. sitting in the car park of a National Trust place (fountains abbey in case you're wondering).

So sort the nav, new tyres and that's it done and my wife can drive it no bother and doesn't mind driving it, winning.

How do you make a boring car more boring?

Surely the literal opposite of a Stancenation sticker. Although note the roof rails which are actual blocks of aluminium shaped.

Oh and very exciting update...rubber mats have arrived in an attempt to keep in the interior vaguely presentable.

They are incredibly expensive compared to carpet....but hopefully this car won't have indeterminate brown stains on the carpet and boot floor similar to the C3.

Otherwise car is currently carring quite well, day out today...it did 49mpg with the AC and climate pack on despite me stealth racing things for my own amusement. It's not as fast as the C3 but it's also not slow deceptively quick with the close ratio six speed up to 70. Not like the Mazda where you regularly beat it to death plenty of torque low down

Yesterday I slung a bike in the boot without taking it to bits hence the marks on the boot mat.

I'm very much in the messing with it phase/getting it how I want it... attempting to resist just smashing some premium tyres on it as it's meant to be a cheap run around with space for crap. But tyre noise on the mixture of slightly aged Davantis and Vitto something or others is not great and the brand new Vitto tyres on the front are not quite balanced..I suspect being cheap they aren't particularly round/balanced.