Toyota Verso 2.2 DCAT (£22,265) (From The Northern Echo)

Toyota Verso 2.2 DCAT (£22,265)

2:05pm Tuesday 29th December 2009

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IT must be a sign of impending middle age that my motoring tastes have changed so much over the last few years.

When I started this testing lark 17 years ago I was a young buck in my 20s who looked forward to every sports car and hot hatchback with eager anticipation.

Nowadays they just don't do it for me. Oh sure, I can still appreciate their great qualities and I'll never grow weary of the pleasure to be had driving a well set up quick car on a quiet country road.

But for the day-to-day traffic lights grand prix I'd rather take something a little more practical, thanks.

Something with four doors, a hatchback and a nice comfy interior. Decent climate control capable of keeping the cabin toasty would be a boon at this time of the year, too.

And I need a versatile interior capable of swallowing all the spaceships, Thunderbirds toys, plastic dinosaurs and model cars my four year old son Jack brings on his car journeys. Even when we're just going to the shops.

Seven seats would be handy for when Jack brings his friends Jim and Evie along for the ride, too.

That little lot rather narrows the field. It makes the idea of a high performance sports car, a 2+2 coupe or even a hot hatchback a non-starter.

No, what I need these days is a people carrier. Not a great big thing like a Grand Espace, I need a multi-purpose vehicle (MPV) that's easy to manoeuvre, a cinch to park and cheap to run, as well as the last word in versatility.

So, no difficulties there, then. I'll take a Toyota Verso thanks.

It might not be the ultimate in driving enjoyment - the 'Toyota Optimum Drive' sticker in the rear window presumably refers to the engine's efficiency rather than the Verso's ability to conquer a challenging piece of blacktop - but it has the MPV deal down to a fine art.

The seating arrangements are top notch: there are three rows and seven seats. When you don't need them the third row simply tumble and fold into the boot floor. When you do, a simply pull is all that's required to make them pop up. Toyota calls this Easy Flat-7 and there are 32 different interior permutations.

Access into the boot is good, thanks to second row seats that slide forward and seat backs that fold forward.

While the third row chairs are best left for kids the same could be said of any medium-sized MPV.

The instrumentation - a mixture of traditional clocks and ye olde computer-style LCD 'graphics' - is straightforward and easy to see at a glance. A deep cowl keeps the sun off the clock faces and a "mode" button on the chunky steering wheel summons up a variety of interesting facts via the fuel computer display. A larger clock would have been handy, though.

The Japanese love their daft names. Why else would Toyota coin the term "dynamic lounge" for the Verso's interior and "smart wave dynamism" for the instruments? Yes, it's versatile but some parts are a bit of a let down. If you peer into a Citroen Grand Picasso you'll find nice little tactile touches, like cool-looking 'piano black' plastics, which are missing on a Verso.

There are some unexpected features, like the way the puddle lights hidden in the wing mirrors light up as you approach and the reversing CCTV, but Toyota has concentrated its efforts on making sure it gets the basics right.

And everyone knows that Toyotas go on forever. You can forgive the interior its sins because it will go on giving reliable service when other cars have long since gone to that great scrapyard in the sky.

It's cheap to run, too. The 2.2-litre diesel has been re-tuned for optimum fuel economy and low exhaust emissions. Its relaxed gait suited the test car's six-speed automatic transmission. Progress fell into the "steady but sure" category and refinement was good, with nothing but a slight hum from the engine at cruising speed.

Jack loved all the cubby holes, the picnic tables on the seat-backs, and the way the chairs folded up. I was also wowed by the mini TV monitor embedded in the rear view mirror that comes on when you select reverse.

Toyota pioneered the MPV sector 25 years ago when it unleashed the Space Cruiser on a fairly unimpressed world. The original Verso was an off-shoot of the Corolla platform, but the new model is all-new. It owes nothing to a more conventional donor.

Toyota's engineers have been free to make it longer and wider than the model it replaces to the benefit of passenger room and luggage carrying capacity.

The result is an MPV that's perfectly adapted to family life. It may lack the driving appeal of a Ford S-Max but one suspects a Verso will still be hacking around long after the bigger S-Max has creaked its last.

SPEC CHECK: Engine: 2.2-litre turbo-diesel Max power: 148 vhp @ 6,400 rpm Max torque: 340Nm @ 2,000 rpm Max speed: 121 mph 0-62 mph: 10.1 seconds Fuel consumption: 41.5 mpg combined (official figures) CO2: 178 g/km Road tax: £175 p.a Equipment: Power steering, electric windows, CD player, electronic fuel computer, Eco driving indicator, paddle shifters on steering wheel, smart entry and start, automatic headlights and wipers, cruise control, CCTV reversing camera with feed to rear view mirror, 17-inch alloys, front foglights, Bluetooth and aux input for MP3 players.

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