Tarnished armor
Tarnished armor
Toyota Highlander has good fuel economy but shows flaws in legendary quality
November 15, 2007
If coincidences didn’t happen, we wouldn’t have a word for them.
OK, maybe not. Still, I was surprised when a 2-foot piece of plastic trim came tumbling out of the 2008 Toyota Highlander SUV I was testing just three days after Consumer Reports had downgraded the automaker’s rating for reliability.
That aside, the new Highlander is an acceptable, if unexceptional, crossover SUV.
The Highlander is a mainstay of Toyota’s lineup and an established leader among crossover SUVs, the soft-roaders that have SUV looks but are functionally little more than tall sedans or wagons.
The Highlander falls in the wagon half of the equation. It’s built on the same underpinnings as Toyota’s Camry and Avalon sedans and exists to carry families and groceries with a slightly less anesthetizing effect than a minivan.
To accomplish that, Toyota scrapped the old Highlander’s very upright, conservative styling and replaced it for 2008 with slightly rounded conservative styling.
The most noticeable and effective visual change is a trapezoidal grille that borrows from Toyota’s beefy Tundra full-size pickup, giving the Highlander a tough and businesslike face. The new model is also about 4 inches longer and 3 inches wider than the 2007 model.
Prices for the 2008 Toyota Highlander start at $27,300 for a front-wheel drive base model. The least expensive all-wheel drive model costs $28,750. The top Highlander model, an all-wheel drive Limited model, starts at $34,150.
Toyota builds five- and seven-seat versions of the Highlander.
All Highlanders come with Toyota’s powerful 270-horsepower 3.5-liter V6 engine and smooth five-speed automatic transmission.
I tested a fairly well-equipped all-wheel drive five-seat version of the Highlander Sport, the middle model in the lineup, that stickered at $32,703. All-wheel drive models account for 57% of Highlander sales, but five-seat models are a mere 30%.
The Highlander competes with midsize and crossover SUVs, depending on its seating configuration. Five-seat models compete with vehicles like the Ford Edge, Mazda CX-7 and Nissan Murano, while seven-seaters go up against SUVs like the GMC Acadia, Honda Pilot, Hyundai Veracruz, Mazda CX-9 and Saturn Outlook.
The range of competition shows just how amorphous the crossover SUV segment is. Models like the Edge, Murano and CX-7 win buyers with style and performance, while passenger capacity and comfort are key criteria for the larger vehicles.
If you want to be all things to all people, it helps to have more than one suit, as novelist Graham Greene wrote. The Highlander’s attempt to split the difference between the stylish, sporty five-seaters and the practical family oriented models keeps it from hitting the bull’s-eye of either target.
This is a mystery to me. Toyota has one of the smartest product-planning groups in the auto industry, but both of its crossover SUVs — the Highlander and the smaller RAV4 — come with either five or seven seats. With two different models — each a best-seller in its class — I don’t understand why Toyota chose not to give each a sharper focus and attack the competition head on.
The Highlander scores a clear win in the important area of fuel economy, however.
The EPA rates the all-wheel drive Highlander — with five or seven seats — at 17 m.p.g. in the city, 23 on the highway and 19 in combined driving. That’s 1 m.p.g. better on all counts than the Saturn Outlook and GMC Acadia — my picks for the best seven-seat crossover SUVs.
What’s more impressive is that the Highlander whips the Pilot, which rates 15 m.p.g. city, 20 highway and 17 combined. It also beat the CX-9, Veracruz and even smaller SUVs like the Edge, CX-7 and Saturn Vue.
Compared with the Outlook and Acadia, a Highlander will save you $135 a year in fuel costs, according to the EPA’s calculations, which assume 15,000 miles driven annually, 45% of them on the highway.
That’s a handy chunk of change, but the Saturn and GMC both do better at the core task of carrying passengers in all three rows. That’s largely thanks to the fact that they’re 12.7 inches longer than the Highlander.
The Outlook and Acadia’s third-row seats are considerably more comfortable and easier to access for adults than the Highlander’s third row, based on a brief test of a three-row model.
The five-seat Highlander I tested for a longer period was a pleasant, quiet and comfortable vehicle to drive, with plenty of power, firm brakes and good steering feel and response.
The instruments and controls were easy to read and use, and the small rear-video screen that’s standard on everything but the base model could make the Highlander the vehicle of choice for drivers with reverse-a-phobia.
The second row of seats features a slick removable center cushion that lifts out to make the Highlander a four-passenger midsize SUV, a type of vehicle that’s only slightly more common than mermaids in Lake Michigan.
When you remove the center cushion, it fits neatly in a compartment in the console between the two front seats. That console also holds a little tray that fits between the remaining two rear seats, providing cup-holders and storage space.
The Highlander also comes with an impressive list of standard safety equipment, including antilock brakes, electronic stability control, roll-sensing curtain air bags, front-seat side air bags and a driver’s knee air bag.
Those features come at a cost, however, and the Highlander Sport I tested was about $3,000 more than a comparably equipped Saturn Outlook and $2,000 more than a comparable Mazda CX-9.
It had a slight price advantage versus the aging Honda Pilot, but not enough to make up for the long piece of plastic that fell out of the Highlander I tested.
I heard an odd, hollow sound the first couple of times I exited the vehicle, as if my shoe had touched a piece of cheap or poorly fitted plastic. I searched, but couldn’t find the culprit in the footwell or under the seat.
The next time I heard the sound it was followed by the clatter of plastic hitting cement. It was the sill cover, the piece of interior trim that runs along the edge of the vehicle’s floor under the door.
There was a time when we thought quality shortcomings in new Toyotas were mythical creatures. I’m not saying I’ll believe them, but if the folks at Consumer Reports tell me they’ve seen a mermaid, take me to the water.
