In lieu of photos of either vehicle there's a couple of the destinations inserted at random. One is a building site in East London (with a tall pile of twisted metal that is allegedly art) and the other is a boat full of bananas.
Car one was my in-laws Vectra Estate. It’s about three or four years old and they’ve had it for most of that. It is grey. The spec seems to be of a reasonably high standard though not with built in sat-nav or anything like that. I’m not sure what size the petrol engine is but large enough to give it some performance. I drove this from our home in NW London round to the Olympic park and back, complete with three adults plus an American and a child, using dual carriageways with a maximum speed limit of 50mph so perhaps not a ‘complete’ road test.
Car two was my mum’s Yaris. This is an 02 reg which she has also had since it was about a year old. It is green. I would suggest that the spec in this is quite low - it has a tape player. The engine is pretty small, maybe 1 litre? It has no performance anyway. This car took two regular adults plus one American and one child from NW London to Portsmouth and back using various motorways and A roads.
Vision out of both is somewhat restricted compared to the old cars I usually drive particularly at roundabouts and such like. Looking backwards to reverse park the Vectra was hopeless though I expect my feel for its bulk would probably improve with more experience. It also has a tow bar so I had this protuberance to consider too. Getting in to a tight-ish spot near Bromley by Bow station involved Mrs_Seth leaping out to direct me into the space. A similar manoeuvre in the Yaris would have been easier since the back window is pretty much vertical and at the back of the car.
Forward motion in both I found I would struggle with the throttle response. I think it is a feature of modern cars that the accelerators are heighly damped such that if you rev them it takes some time for the revs to drop again, as though they have a massively heavy flywheel (which may also be the case?) Anyway, I found myself pulling away in both with many more revs than I would have liked simply because the light throttle pedal meant it was difficult for me to gauge the response. Similarly, when underway changing gear was sometimes accompanied by a jolt as I’d change the gear and lift the clutch before the revs had dropped to a suitable level for the next cog.
The Vectra seems to have a lot of travel to the brake pedal before anything starts happening which is again an unusual feeling for me as I am used to a fairly hard pedal straight away. So as with accelerating, it took some concentration to try and slow down to a stop in a smooth fashion. The Yaris was not quite so havily ‘assisted’ which helped matters. The same was very much true of the steering. The Yaris actually needed a bit of effort to steer but the Vectras wheel was super-light and I had not real idea of which way the wheels were pointing.
Seating position in both was acceptable but then I did not make many adjustments in deference to the usual drivers of both so can’t fairly comment. However the centre arm rest of the Vectra was very much in the way of being able to change gear or use the handbrake and if I were seriously looking at buying a car like this, this one feature would absolutely drop the car off my list. I will adapt myself to pretty much anything but it seemed frankly ridiculous that a car should be made difficult and uncomfortable to use in deference to some perceived comfort/storage item. Every gear change required me to twist my body/shoulder/wrist in order to allow myself to grab the gearknob. 0/10.
The accelerative performance of the Vectra certainly left nothing to be desired but if combined with steering inputs when entering a roundabout I really had no idea when traction might be broken as there was no feed back whatsoever. Similarly when braking. The Yaris is a slow car. Moving across a lane on the motorway to overtake something meant keeping an eye out for a decent gap rather than being able to dart out and speed up in moments. It would cruise happily at 70 but would need dropping down a cog to maintain speed on some hills. Accelerating down a slip road was quite amusing as a couple of times I tried it foot to the floor in 3rd and it would just gather revs, noise and some speed but without any sense of hitting a sweet spot in the power band. Just gradual acceleration. It probably wouldn’t stay amusing for long if I owned it.
Of the two I preferred driving the Yaris. The controls were less complicated. Its indicator stalk would move and stay in the up/down position rather than being ‘tiptronic’ as they were in the Vectra. Ditto the wiper stalk. To my mind the Vectra’s system was added complication for no benefit whatsoever. I was most annoyed by the fact that there was a just audible ‘plip’ though the speakers in the Vectra to tell you that you’d turned the wipers right off as the stalk position never moved. Electronics for the hell. Driving both was bland but there is always a sense of achievement when managing to make good progress in something slower and there was a lot more feedback and less over assistance in the Toyota. Neither was ‘fun’ though.
