Road Trip: 2009 Toyota Venza a few refinements short of a great ride

Road Trip: 2009 Toyota Venza a few refinements short of a great ride

Filed under: Crossover, Toyota, Reviews

2009 Toyota Venza - Click above for high-res image gallery

Earlier this spring, our own Alex Nunez reviewed Toyota's latest crossover type thingy, the Venza, and came away rather impressed. I do a fair bit of traveling for my day job, which usually entails schlepping a sizable amount of video equipment around. Typically we pack up our A/V gear and FedEx it to a location since airlines charge so much for extra baggage and won't guarantee arrival times. For one of our recent trips, however, we decided to hit the road and venture from our Ann Arbor offices down to western South Carolina. As it happened, a Venza was available for duty and appeared to be well-suited to the task at hand.

We loaded up cameras, tripods, microphones and other miscellanea before heading due south on US-23 for Ohio and parts beyond. Our Venza was finished in a unique Sunset Bronze Mica color with the same ivory leather interior that we sampled previously. Under the hood was also the same 3.5-liter V6 engine that we've enjoyed in numerous Lexus and Toyota vehicles with torque going to all four wheels via Toyota's all-wheel-drive system.

As Nunez described, the Venza doesn't really fit in the typical crossover category because it's taller than a typical wagon yet shorter than vehicles like the Ford Edge or Chevrolet Equinox. It's more like a tall Camry wagon than anything else - which, at least in theory - is just ducky by us. Find out how the Venza fared on our road trip odyssey after the jump.


Gallery: Road Trip: 2009 Toyota Venza

Photos by Sam Abuelsamid / Copyright (C)2009 Weblogs, Inc.

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Road Trip: 2009 Toyota Venza a few refinements short of a great ride originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 28 Dec 2009 11:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.



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I love this thing.... Trying to convince my mom to buy one down the road hehehe

:hit3

Front end kinda looks like a ford and toyota had sex and produced this. And Im not a real fan of the toyota emblem "pushing" down the grille. I do like the vehicle though

before getting the 4runner, i almost got the venza. it drives nice and the smart key system is really nice.

For some unknown reason I had to read the entire story, I guess I like this vehicle enough to know what their inputs are.

For those who didnt read it all: the two negatives that the writer talked about were seats and misaligned interior trims.

To defend toyo, my friend has a G35 that has a mediocre wood trim as well, and Infinity is supposed to be a luxury brand. As for the seats, I just hope that the v2. of this vehicle comes with better seats because if I were to buy this, it will definitely be a road-tripper.

i didn't feel there's a problem with the seats. they were power and lumbar was easy to adjust to my comfort level. you're right about interior trim as most if not all cars will have some kind of issue when you buy new.