Toyota Auris TRD grew up

Toyota have really tested the loyalties of its petrol head enthusiasts by heeding the call and endowed the bog standard Auris Sport X with the Toyota Racing Development stamp of approval and a centrifugal supercharger.

The changes are substantial. Some are good, others simply not good enough.

It’s a bog standard Auris Sport X on the outside with just three minor differentiators. A tiny TRD badge nestles below the Auris badge on the bootlid, a dark window tint has been applied to the greenhouse and finally, the body is hunkered down thanks to a Sportivo suspension upgrade. The rest of it is unchanged, typical Auris right down to those undersized alloy wheels.

The standard white paint looks great though on a bodyshell that’s dated well since its SA release five years ago. Having said that, 18-inch alloys and a more aggressive air dam treatment or a visual clue on the bonnet alluding to that newly aspirated four pot heart would have done wonders, as would a deeper wing.

Oh dear, if you thought the exterior was unspectacular, wait until you climb inside. The cabin is untouched from the standard Sport X with not so much as a telltale TRD badge or sticker in sight.

What you do get is a neat Japanese interior that is built to last, and features a plethora of modern conveniences such as air conditioning and USB/MP3 connectivity with a leather-bound steering wheel featuring controls for multimedia and Bluetooth sync.

Performance

At last! Toyota have heeded the call and blown their four-cylinder Auris engine to the tune of 133kW and 203Nm. Flatten the clutch, floor the throttle, punch it into first gear, drop the clutch and go! ‘Uh, oh.’ There was no catapulting towards the horizon, nor being fired out of a shotgun. Just a laboured crawl to a premature redline of 6 400rpm and then no amount of snap shifting would save it from a puffy cloud of rev limiter.

I pulled over immediately, popped the bonnet and confirmed that there was indeed a supercharger under the hood. Now, it’s not all bad news so let’s unpack what just happened. This car had done just 300km when I collected it, and just under 1 000km when I returned it. That’s still a very tightly wound engine. It’s Valvematic (improved VVT-I) system revs best beyond 5 000rpm, at which point it gets a second wind, but in this supercharged iteration, has the task of spinning up with the added weight of a supercharger’s belt in tow.

There still is a notable increase in power and effervescence as we close in on that sweet spot.

Problem. The original car’s red line of 6 400 has been retained. So you spend far too much time waiting for the power to come on song, and just when it does you hit a cushiony rev limiter necessitating a gear change once more which will send you out of that narrow usable power band. Bugger. And the noise! Why isn’t there any? The original car’s pipeworks has been left untouched so no aural pleasures here I’m afraid. It sprints to 100kph in 8.7 seconds, that’s around a second off the pace of a proper hot hatch.

There are other issues. Such as the fact that the donor car never benefited from (or needed) traction control, and none has since been fitted to this car. Also the standard brakes remain. The sporty suspension that felt compliant in the city, was on eases and circles endowed with gecko-like grip, if still very prone to under steer.

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