Toyota Tarago GLI Minivan Review

Overview

If you look under the hood of the Toyota Tarago GLI you will find a 2.4 liter four cylinder engine that packs a significant amount of power and fits the car quite well. Although with a price tag of $50,000, I expected to see something different from this type of design

Some of the features on the Tarago GLI model are the Antilock Brake System (ABS), Electronic Brake Distribution (EBD), and Brake Assist (BA). Those features all work together to provide better handling and control for the vehicle.

Toyota has proven that they create quality and reliable vehicles of this type in the past and have proven that again with this model. If you are a fan of the 'people mover' style vehicles, you should be pretty happy owning one of these.

Details

If you look under the hood of the Toyota Tarago GLI you will find a 2.4 liter four cylinder engine that packs a significant amount of power and fits the car quite well. It can produce about 125kW of power easily at 6000RPM, which was impressive to me. The engine may not be top of the line or the fastest, but you can be certain that it will work just fine for the Tarago.

The exterior of the Tarago GLI is very conservative and was not appealing to me at all. The front end is basically one very long slope and looks like a future car you would see in an early eighties movie. The overall shape of the car makes it look like you are driving an enlarged bullet. Other than that there is absolutely nothing special about the exterior. It is actually pretty plain and even a slight change in some of the features or design would have made the Toyota Tarago much more attractive. In my opinion they could have done a much better job on outside of the vehicle.

The exterior is not the only thing that looks like it came from a bad eighties future movie. The dashboard, unfortunately, became a victim of this as well. With all the buttons crammed together and a center set speedometer, style was one thing that this car definitely did not have. It appeared rather cheap looking along with some of the other interior plastics. This was definitely disappointing to see in a vehicle with a price as high as this one.

Normally, it is not a big deal to have the speedometer in the center and it just a driver preference. Although with the Toyota Tarago GLI the placement of the speedometer is actually very dangerous. The speedometer sits at an angle and when you look at you have to tilt your head a bit just so you can read it. This adds to the amount of time you are not looking at the road and could lead to serious accident if you are not careful. The gear lever is another problem in itself. It has a sequential shift and the lever is pretty small. The short lever is mounted on the dashboard and would have been a lot better if they had used a column shift arrangement.

The Toyota Tarago is mainly known for having lots of room. If you see one on the road, chances are it has a lot of people inside of it. Although I am not a big fan of how the Tarago GLI looks, the vehicle appears to be built solid and should be pretty reliable throughout its life. At the same time though, with a price tag of $50,000, I expected to see something different from this type of design.

Some of the features on the Tarago GLI model are the Antilock Brake System (ABS), Electronic Brake Distribution (EBD), and Brake Assist (BA). Those features all work together to provide better handling and control for the vehicle. You will also find other basic features such as cruise control, dual-zone climate control, a six speaker CD player that is MP3 compatible, front SRS airbags, cargo storage area, and of course power windows.

The best feature of owning a Tarago is still of course all the space that it gives you. You can easily fit six adults in the three rows of seats comfortably and with a decent amount of leg room. The engine will of course have to work harder when you are toting around a lot of weight/people and even harder if you want to keep the car at a cool temperature. When you have a lot of people in the car your engine is not the only thing that suffers from it. You also have to deal with the significant drop in the quality of how the vehicle handles. This is definitely a bad thing since most people buy these types of cars to carry around larger amounts of people or belongings. It does not become a real danger or anything, but should definitely be improved upon in later models.

One thing owners of older model Taragos will notice is that the newer version is actually smaller than the previous ones. The trunk took the biggest hit in size and leg room was next to go. This can most likely be attributed to the fact that the new version has sliding doors on the right and left sides of the vehicle.

With all that said, there is still light at the end of the tunnel. You will get used to the speedometer location and somewhat awkward gear shifter after time. Once you have that down, you can enjoy quite a few nice perks of owning a Tarago. Although the dashboard design is a little strange, it comes in handy when you are in need of places to store things and if that is not enough you even have cup holders in the doors to rely on as well.

In conclusion, the Toyota Tarago GLI is not an appealing looking car and has a few issues that could be improved upon in later models. At the same time, it is still good for carrying a big group of people around or a lot of stuff. Toyota has proven that they create quality and reliable vehicles of this type in the past and have proven that again with this model. If you are a fan of the 'people mover' style vehicles, you should be pretty happy owning one of these.