TOYOTA ALTIS - PAUL TAN COMMENTS

The Toyota Corolla Altis has had its mid-life facelift, and the C-segment stalwart is coming soon to Malaysia, as those who read our post last week would have known. UMW Toyota is already accepting bookings, and we now know that the Altis will be officially launched on the 23rd of September, which is about three weeks from now.

Toyota Motor Asia Pacific had a regional test drive event at Sepang International Circuit yesterday, and we were there to sample the Altis that has more than just skin deep improvements. Malaysia will get what our neighbours get – the ZR series of engines with Dual VVT-i paired to a CVT gearbox that has seven virtual ratios.

Continue reading the report after the jump.

Three drivetrains will be available for our market – a 1.6-litre (120 PS/154 Nm) 4-speed auto, a 1.8-litre (140 PS/173 Nm) with a Super CVT-i gearbox and a 2.0-litre (147 PS/187 Nm) paired to the CVT. All three engines belong to the ZR series and have four cylinders, 16 valves, twin overhead cams and Dual VVT-i, the latter on both intake and exhaust. The 1.8 and 2.0 have Acoustic Control Induction System (ACIS), which is essentially a variable intake manifold system that works to optimise power/torque at low/high rpms.

Thailand, which produces the Altis for our region, has a low spec model (popular as Bangkok taxis) pairing the 1ZR-FE 1.6-litre engine to a six-speed manual gearbox, but we’re not getting the stick shift model here as expected. A UMW Toyota personnel explained that a manual version of this particular model, in this segment, would be very poorly received. He should be correct, but this BKK cab spec does sound quite interesting nonetheless.

Only Sepang’s North track was open to us, and we were to drive behind a pace car, but it was nice that we got to sample the outgoing model as well. That was the car I started with, and two laps in the 1.8G made me realise that the much maligned Altis is sometimes unfairly criticised. It may be poor on paper, but it’s not so dynamically inept as some self proclaimed enthusiasts say it is.

more info from:
http://paultan.org/2010/