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| The 2015 Toyota Avalon Limited. |
In its third year of this generation, the 2015 Toyota Avalon continues to impress. Last year,
I wrote that the Avalon is the modern-day equivalent to the late-1960s Ford LTD or Chevrolet Caprice. Those cars were nine-tenths of what you got when you bought a Lincoln Continental or a Cadillac Sedan or Coupe deVille, but at six-tenths of the price.
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| 1967 Chevrolet Caprice magazine ad. |
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| 2015 Toyota Avalon Limited. |
A top-of-the-line Avalon Limited like our test vehicle would have been everything a Lexus buyer could ask for, save V8 power, just a few years ago. And the Avalon's choice of a 3.5-liter V6 makes fill-ups much easier to take, with an EPA fuel economy estimate of 21 city/31 highway. If that's not enough, there's the 40 mpg city/39 highway
Avalon Hybrid, which our Publsher and Executive Editor says he'd buy in a heartbeat, based on a lengthy roadtrip last spring.
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| 2015 Toyota Avalon Limited interior. |
The Avalon Limited comes with so much standard equipment (click
here) for its base price of $39.980 that there's little more you could ask for. Our test vehicle came with only two option packages, the Technology Package (Dynamic radar cruise control, automatic high beams, pre-collision system and Qi wireless charging---which works with Galaxy and Lumia phones, but not with iPhones, unless you perform some not-recommended-by-Apple modifications) for $1,950 and a 17-inch alloy wheel and tire package for $860. With $825 delivery processing and handling fee, the as-tested price came to $41,895.
Is it a replacement for a Lexus? Well, the ES350 is based on the Avalon platform, so they're very comparable, with only a small price increase for the Lexus. The GS350 has a 1.2-inch longer wheelbase (the space between the front and rear wheels), but is shorter overall, and is more powerful, but
the one TireKicker drove most recently was $15,000 more as-tested. And the big Lexus, the LS460, is five inches longer, all of that in the wheelbase, is an inch and a half wider, has 100 more horsepower, but
the examples both Michael and I drove last year cost almost exactly double the price of an Avalon Limited.
Yes, there's the status of the Lexus brand, and it is well-earned. But much of that comes from being a luxury marque with the reliability of Toyota. For all but status-seekers, the Avalon Limited delivers most of Lexus' luxury and all of Toyota's reliability for a fraction of the price.
