Toyota is always for those conservative people, who only put resale value at the only criteria while shopping for a car. With the new Toyota Vios, it targets the same type of buyer.
| Vios | City | |
|---|---|---|
| Engine Power | 109HP/141Nm | 120HP/145Nm |
| Transmission | 4-speed | 5-speed |
| Airbags | 2 | 2 |
| Traction Control | No | Yes |
The Vios still uses the same 1NZ-FE engine with the Super ECT 4-speeder gearbox, which Toyota is good at in using the cheapest for the dumb buyer. No traction control when compared to Honda City. In the safety department, the only thing the Vios wins this round is by having rear fog lamp mounted at the bottom of the bumper. Duh!
If you look further on where UMW cut cost, look at the NS40 battery, which is NOT the maintenance free type. Even Proton provides maintenance free battery nowadays. The Vios battery tray is sized to take a NS60, but it comes with a smaller unit. Bravo again in saving some cost and charge premium to the consumer.
The interior department, the yellowish beige colour is horrible. The dashboard is line with "fake" leather stitching, which looks real at a distance, but the hard plastic give it all up. Looking down the climate control, Vios keeps its basic setting, where you have 2 airflow positions selection only, to the front or front and bottom, where is the rest if you wanted to have the bottom or top, another cost cutting strategy since the Vios first generation. Even a Perodua Myvi has more selection.
The worst design is the CD player, adopting all cheap cars design, having the USB and AUX jack at the front fascia of the player, so you will have cable dangling to your iPod or a USB drive jutting out. The Honda City has the best design, with both connectors hidden in a centre compartment to keep things organized. You can pay additional RM1,900 to have a touch screen unit with reverse camera or RM2,990 for one that provides navigation function. Save the money, get a third party unit instead. Well, Toyota finally moved their innovation of centrally mounted meter cluster back to the driver side in this Vios, telling us their years of research that keep driver focus better is not picking up steam.
The front of the Vios looks sharp and sporty, goodbye to the dugong face and tail. To keep the Vios look and feel, Toyota has kept the rear lookalike to the previous generation, though with bigger and edgier rear lamp cluster. However, the rear does not match well to the front, it is like a pretty face with a flat bump. Maybe it is me, I just did not like the downward teardrop shape of the light. Maybe having a straighter line of lamp cluster, would match well with the pretty face.
With more than 8000 bookings before it was launched, we knew most people out there are the conservative type, but who to blame? Most of us want a good resale value as down payment for the next new car and having a Toyota guarantees that! We could only blame the it on the high taxes we need to pay, making "affordable" car "not-so-affordable". You and I knew, who and what to blame! With such good response, Toyota does not even offer test drive unit of the new Vios, and I wonder how could one spend > RM80k without trying it, yet complaint a RM3.5 chicken rice for being tasteless.
