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SUVs Toyota Venza 2009 Toyota Venza Crossover
1073 messages, Last post on Nov 01, 2009 at 4:58 AM
You are in the Toyota Venza Forum. Your Hosts are steve_ & tidester
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My impressions: First to answer one of the questions, the cargo mat is part of the carpet floor mat/cargo mat option.  This is nothing more than a Camry wagon. Drives like a Camry, seats are identical to the Camry, it's a Camry. Having said that, there is nothing wrong with that. I'm sure Toyota will sell every single one they make. It still amazes me that the sales people working at these dealerships don't take the time to learn their product. How long have you known about this vehicle? sad. The guy that showed me the Venza tonight had no clue on how to open the power tail gate or the hood. There is a "full size" tire in the spare tire wheel well but I did not bother to see if it was the same size as the tires on the vehicle. I did notice it had a steel wheel and not an alloy but it sure wasn't a donut size tire. The dash material is the same as on the Prius and on the Scion tC. They call it "rice paper" texture. I'm not joking. The door panels are the same hard plastic now being used by all manufacturers although it does not look as cheap as on the Corolla and the current Camry. About the only thing that semi-excited me was the dashboard layout. The shifter was placed in an optimum position and had the sequential shifter function. Whoever designed the center console ought to be shot. That is the worst design of a center console I've seen in my life. Just trying to move the console cover forward was an attempt in futility and God forbid if you have a drink in the first cupholder adjacent to it. You will decupitate it (pardon the pun!) and make a mess of things. Once I was able to open the console itself, there is plenty of room for storing cd's, etc. One disappointing aspect was an AUX plug to connect an mp3 player, not an Ipod. They do provide a mini plug male to male connector. Big oversight when you can get the actual Ipod connector and plug on the Scion line and not on a 37k dollar Toyota. The back seat feels roomy, plenty of legroom but three full size adults will be elbowing each other after a one hour trip. This vehicle seems to be designed for couples with no kids or as we used to call them here in California in the 80's Dink's (dual income, no kids) or maybe one but no more than two toddlers. The center armrest is the same as on the Camry. Pulls down and there is a covered cupholder box. Nothing fancy. The vehicle feels heavy on the road. I gunned it and it took a couple of seconds for the transmission to downshift and then take off. I got some tire squeal and the traction control kicked in immediately. One thing I liked was the electric power steering didn't feel like the electric power steering on their other vehicles. Toyota must have responded to customer's complaints about the lack of feel. There was actually some resistance as on a sport tuned vehicle but not as tight as say a Bmw 3 series or Infinity G35. Just enough to let you know you are still driving a Camry wagon. Last but not least I still don't like the melted Ford Edge grill look. The rest of the car looks great but that front end just doesn't do it for me. Which begs the question? Which came first? The Venza or the Edge? Toyota had the FTS-X concept for years and it looked like the Edge before there was an Edge. So did Ford copy Toyota? or did Toyota just sat on their laurels before finally going ahead with production? Hmm. And it makes me wonder. This particular Venza was the FWD V6 black with the gray leather, premium package 2, navigation system, and the carpet floor mats/cargo mat option. MSRP was $36,774.00 Oh, one last thing. The salesman was very pushy. All through the test drive he kept going on and on about how they were going to sell all of them at MSRP and that I should buy this one because they were going to be flying off the lot, blah, blah, blah, blah. I thought to myself: "This guy couldn't open the power liftgate even though the button is on the remote and he had the remote the whole time and expects me to just say "I'll take it! at MSRP." yeah, right. I told him with the current economic climate they would start piling up on the lot if they didn't discount them. I said he should get familiar with the internet and look at his competition. Some dealers here have them discounted on their websites already and the vehicles are not there yet. |
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Replying to: qs933 (Nov 25, 2008 10:36 pm) 
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Replying to: rogeliov (Nov 25, 2008 10:49 pm) I agree that they will not be selling them at MSRP with this economic situation. They are giving zero % finance on most of their vehicles and this will happen with the Venza in due course. I was also interested to hear your comments about the center console, it sounds really good in terms of its sliding nature and large capacity. I wonder if anyone else has had trouble with it. Any other impressions from you would be great to hear. |
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Replying to: rogeliov (Nov 25, 2008 10:49 pm) What does that mean? An Ipod is one brand of MP3 player. Does the Ipod have a unique connection? I guess all us owners of non-Apple MP3 players should be glad they went with the standard instead of the Apple connector? I don't know any non-ginormous vehicle that would seat three adults in a row comfortably for hours. And thank goodness. The vast majority of us never haul that many adults around. There are vehicles designed for that.
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Replying to: rogeliov (Nov 25, 2008 10:49 pm) This concerns me. I find it hard to believe that after all of the transmission problems and complaints with the Camry, Toyota still hasn't gotten this right. I recently rented an '09 Maxima while on vacation and the CVT was amazing. No matter what speed I was going, stepping on the gas more produced instant results and yet, it still has a 6-sp manual mode. BTW, can the traction control be turned off?
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Replying to: tomd (Nov 26, 2008 8:59 am) Yes the Traction Control can be disabled. |
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Replying to: mary99 (Nov 26, 2008 7:26 am) What does that mean? An Ipod is one brand of MP3 player. Does the Ipod have a unique connection? You can connect an ipod to any of these mini-jack plugs and play your ipod fine, but you have to control the player manually, on the player itself. What people want is the ability to control their ipod through the stereo without having to touch the player. This requires a special connector (20 pin I think) that the ipod can hook up to a computer. Lots of cars are starting to come out with this, on a new car it is an expected feature at this point. Ford (yeah, Ford) has had this for a while now. Why this is a problem for Toyota is a mystery to me, or why there is no slot for an SD card so you can load a bunch of songs up and use that instead. I don't get it, this isn't dificult to do, and I don't see why this kind of an easy technology addition isn't seen as a value added item to Toyota.
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Replying to: tourguide (Nov 26, 2008 11:50 am)
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Replying to: mary99 (Nov 26, 2008 12:04 pm) I think so. The connector that hooks up to the ipod itself is wider that a standard USB plug. They probably figure their baby boomer target market for the Venza doesn't care about MP3 connectivity much. That kind of thinking is going to get them into trouble. They ought to be able to look around and see what is going on with the other manufacturers.
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Replying to: tourguide (Nov 26, 2008 12:16 pm) However for those who do have an interest in playing downloaded music, for the present MP3 inputs are the 'standard' because these are the most numerous. If at some time there develops more demand for an Apple interface and that becomes more numerous then the technology will be changed. Toyota is all about serving the largest demand meaning the most numerous number of buyers. This is very much akin to the 'complaint' that the Corolla has no true performance model. Well that's true. That's because the larger number of buyers is in the basic transportation subsegment that wants reliability and fuel economy over performance. Similarly here more buyers are likely to have MP3's than iPods. The MP3 buyers get served until preferences change. It's all about serving the greatest number of buyers. |
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