Toyota C-HR
Appreciating details in a traffic jam
WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT
To discover whether this sharply styled crossover is Toyota’s most appealing petrol-electric hybrid yet
It has been a fortnight of many miles and several times I’ve had cause to head to the West Country. It turns out you can learn a lot about a car when you’re stuck in a jam on the A303 at Stonehenge during holiday season and the traffic seems to be moving more slowly than the standing stones.
Firstly, I’d say an electrified vehicle is the least stressful car to have under you in a traffic jam. You can just glide forward gently and silently on battery power, and the rapid response from the electric motor is useful when you have to claim a gap in the traffic as your own. As those around you simmer (you can hear them vividly when the C-HR’S combustion engine isn’t engaged) you start to appreciate other details of the car that perhaps you might have hitherto taken for granted.
For instance, the cupholders are brilliant in this car. Even the road testers thought as much when they ran the ruler over the C-HR back in January, and those chaps can be quick-tempered when their grande mocha frappuccinos can’t be securely stowed. They’re wide and have clever false bottoms beyond which lies extra depth. (The cupholders that is, not the road testers.)
I’m not overly sold on the siting of the USB point, which is partially hidden when I’m looking down from the perspective of the driver’s seat, and I find it particularly difficult to fumble around for at night. Also, my iphone 6 Plus doesn’t quite sit f lat on the shelf provided for such items unless I remove its protective case.
Our Toyota is also now being put to regular use as a pack horse for photographer Luc Lacey, who has cause to exploit rather more of the available stowage space than me and my coffee cup. The C-HR has 377 litres of room for luggage in the back, rising to a maximum of 1160 litres if you fold down both elements of the 40/60 split rear bench, load your gear to the roof and eject your rear passengers, as I’m pretty certain Luc is attempting to do in the photograph above. In seriousness, Luc rarely travels light whether he’s working or adventuring, but the Toyota is proving adequate for his needs, provided he stacks carefully.
During one of my journeys back from the West Country, an object was spat up by the tyre of another vehicle and hit the lower centre of the windscreen, leaving two very small divots. From the outside, they look like hardly anything at all – I tried and failed to photograph them clearly to illustrate this article, so you’ll have to look really hard – but viewed from the driver’s seat, I can distinguish two small cracks radiating out from one of the pits.
I’m a born worrier, so I took the C-HR to the local branch of Halfords, which is just down the road and does windscreen chip repairs.
“They’ve done a nice job on the interior” was the assessment of the Halfords chap when he sat in the driver’s seat to see the windscreen damage from my perspective.
He dismissed the divots as inconsequential. Then, after we’d both been a bit distracted by his wellused Mitsubishi FTO 2.0 V6 in the car park, he said the damage to the C-HR’S screen was so slight that he wouldn’t even be able to pump in any of the resin they use to repair cracks.
In an age where many sales staff are all too quick to try to upsell you a load of gubbins that you didn’t come for and don’t really need, it was a pleasant surprise to find one who was honest and a Japanese car buff, too.