It might be said that assessing the best people mover in this year’s Australia’s Best Cars awards was somewhat of a cinch, given that there had been virtually no activity in this segment since last year.
True enough, but the nine national Best Car judges nonetheless applied the usual testing rigour to the three final contestants in the class, which unsurprisingly were 2002 rivals Toyota’s Avensis, the Holden Zafira and Honda’s four-cylinder Odyssey.
We climbed in them, around them, stacked them full of burly bodies, slid or folded the seats, drove them on all sorts of terrain and generally re-checked the vehicles and our scores.
But even with revised criteria for innovation, the results came up unchanged from 2002 – another successive Best People Mover award to Toyota’s quaintly named Avensis Verso GLX, ahead of Zafira and Odyssey.
Like the winners in most categories, it was consistency that did the trick for the Avensis.
It was easily shaded by the Zafira in a couple of value-for-money criteria (depreciation and running and repair costs), but outpointed the Holden in the critically weighted design and function areas of comfort, practicality, ergonomics and build quality.
A few of the Toyota’s people-mover competitors managed better overall scores from a driver’s perspective (performance, ride, handling, braking and smoothness), but the Toyota never dropped below average and, importantly, outscored Zafira.
It had also done enough in other areas of assessment to give it some breathing space and emerge again, a relatively comfortable winner.
Final Scores (Out of 5): Avensis 3.77, Zafira 3.52, Odyssey 3.47.
Full Details: www.australiasbestcars.com.au.
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