Toyota Granvia: Stephen Corby’s review

Toyota’s luxurious people mover, the Granvia, is no fun to drive – but everyone else will absolutely love it.

Not so pretty: the Toyota Granvia

Surprisingly, if you like to be worshipped, gaped at and showered with awe you don’t need to go out and buy a supercar. No, all you need is a big, slab-sided bus made by Toyota. In fact, the only way you could garner the same attention would be by wearing a brightly coloured skivvy and singing about fruit salad and potatoes.

In the week I had with the Toyota Granvia and the six superlative captain’s chairs in its capacious rear, my children were happier than they’ve ever been, and my daughter caught a case of mild celebrity. I have previously taken her to football training in all kinds of spectacular vehicles and witnessed little reaction, but when I pressed the button that opened her sliding rear door on arrival, she was swamped with girls so excited you’d have sworn the back of the Granvia was filled with ponies, donuts and Justin Bieber.

The driver’s view

To say I found this mystifying is a profound understatement. The Granvia is unrepentantly unattractive – it’s basically a Toyota HiAce van turned into a luxurious people mover – and its only goal in life is to make the people in the back seats drool in pure pleasure. I’m usually the one having the most fun in any given car, so the Granvia felt all wrong.

To be fair, from my comfortably padded but not spectacular driver’s seat, the fully reclining rear armchairs complete with built-in ottomans and seat heating did look inviting. Even with an entire under-10s soccer team back there, there was space to stand up and run around. The kids seemed particularly chuffed with the little side tables, the infinite number of storage cubbies, the giant cupholders and the many, many USB charging points.

They loved the remote-opening doors (you can even operate them via the key on approach), and the fact you can change the colours of the mood lighting at night. But more than anything they loved those seats, a passion shared by my wife, who also refused to sit with me in the unheated, non-reclining front seats and declared the Granvia the most comfortable car she’d ever been in. When my family started suggesting road trip holidays around Australia I started to worry they might demand we buy the damn thing (at $75,726, that was not going to happen).

Inside the cabin

You might have guessed that I was not enjoying it quite so much. The Granvia’s ride is a touch wallowy, the diesel engine is noisy, the axles are so far apart that speed bumps can make you woozy, and it steers… like a bus. At 5.3m long, 1.97m wide and 1.99m high (making it too large for many multi-storey car parks), it’s also intimidatingly large. But while you initially think it will be harder to park than a small moon, it’s actually not that bad. What helps, particularly with three-point turns, is that you’re sitting right on the front wheels with very little bonnet in front of you. Is it fun, though? Well, not to drive, no, but yes, because everyone else besides you is so happy.

I never managed to get a full load of humans on board, but with four of us riding, the 2.8-litre, four-cylinder turbo-diesel engine, with its 130kW and 450Nm of torque, provided enough power for overtaking and climbing hills.

The other thing I never managed to fit in there is luggage. While you can slide the six giant chairs to different positions in the back, no matter where you put them you’re still left with precious little room for bags, and there is no partitioned luggage area to stop them sliding around. Even my groceries had to ride in unaccustomed style for the week.

Luxurious rear seats

Which does make you wonder who – aside from nine-year-old girls – this Granvia is for. Essentially, it seems to be the kind of van that rich and/or famous people would be transferred from the airport to the casino in, presumably with their bags in a trailer towed behind it. It’s just too big, too expensive, and frankly too nice, for use as a family hauler, and I really struggled to see what the fuss was about.

Until our final day together, that is, when I asked a colleague to drive so I could try the captain’s experience myself. I sank into the giant, plush, toasty seat, reclined it back, further back, then fully supine. I exhaled. I blissed out. And I remembered, just for a moment, how wonderful business-class travel used to be. Putting the bus in business class, then, is what the Granvia does better than anything.

TOYOTA GRANVIA

ENGINE: 2.8-litre turbo diesel four-cylinder (130kW/450Nm)

Fuel economy 8.0 litres per 100km

TRANSMISSION: 6-speed automatic, rear-wheel drive

PRICE: $75,726

STARS: 3 out of 5