Toyota Urban Cruiser 1.33 review

Tips & Advice

The Urban Cruiser is Toyota's answer to the Kia Soul. It's more expensive, but is it worth it? Read our review to find out

"The Urban Cruiser picks up where the iQ left off"

Toyota pretty much established the junior SUV market with its quirky three-door RAV4. And the Urban Cruiser is a spiritual successor to that car, just with a much sillier name.

More importantly for Toyota’s brand credentials, I reckon that the Urban Cruiser has to be good enough to pick up the up funky, city car baton from the new Toyota iQ and run with it. But is it?

The Urban Cruiser is a small SUV slash MPV, aimed at taking on the likes of the Kia Soul and the new Citroen C3 Picasso. And in the flesh it looks OK, appearing quite a lot bigger than the Yaris supermini on which it’s based.

It’s designed to be small on the outside and big on the inside, and that’s sort-of-true, with space for four adults and a few bags being a possibility. But the Urban Cruiser’s £14,500 asking price seems massively steep when you sit inside and feel how nasty some of the dash plastics are. Yes, it has lots of toys as standard – like seat heating, keyless go and Bluetooth – but that can’t disguise the fact that the interior is nowhere near as well thought out as an iQ’s.

Tall drivers will struggle to get comfortable behind the wheel too – the seat didn’t go down or back far enough for me and I’m not exactly a giant at 6’2”.

The Urban Cruiser is available with a clattery diesel engine and four-wheel drive, which is only offered for sale because it gives Toyota the headline emissions figure of 130g/km of carbon dioxide; making it the most efficient SUV on the market.

The front-wheel drive version, powered by a characterful 1.33-litre petrol engine is a much better bet, and will account for about 90 per cent of sales. It’s almost as clean as the diesel, thanks to a very impressive stop-start system too.

Calling the Urban Cruiser fun to drive would be inaccurate. Its steering isn’t really direct enough for a city car, but it rides over potholes with plenty of composure. And that little engine powers the Toyota along on all types of roads with enough verve to keep up with traffic without much fuss. Body roll isn’t too bad for a fairly slab-sided motor too.

After just how appealing the iQ is, the Urban Cruiser is a bit of a disappointment, because it’s just not as stylish or innovative as Toyota’s real city car. And when you consider that an Urban Cruiser is designed to be driven by city dwellers with only very occasional need for more than two seats, I’d be more tempted to wait until June, when the iQ3 powered by the same 1.33-litre engine goes on sale.