It is actually a year since I drove this car but time has not dimmed the memory of it.

I get quite a few hire cars for business trips and had this Auris Horribilis for a day trip from Leeds to Stafford. Unfortunately I had to come back in it as well.

I will start with the good points:

• The 1.4 diesel engine had reasonable performance and was very economical.

• My wife quite liked the wheels.

• I can’t think of anything else!

Now the bad points:

• The 1.4 diesel engine was painfully noisy with a deep pulsating drone at motorway speeds. Eventually I resorted to selecting neutral and coasting downhill to make it go away.

• The gearchange was abysmal with a high mounted MPV style gearlever and the gates at an odd angle – 3rd to 2nd just didn’t want to know.

• The handbrake lever resides against the flying buttress centre console – it is applied by pulling towards the rear of the car so it is vertical when applied. For years handbrakes have had the button on the end. In a break (!) with tradition Toyota have decided in their wisdom to move it and have a slider about 1inch from the top of the lever. You would probably get used to it with ownership but I stalled the damned thing 2 or 3 times fumbling about for the release!

• The dashboard trim is hard, unyielding, shiny plastic. It is rattley, it creaks.

• Same material is used for the glove box interior – zero friction so stuff slides around every time you take a bend, brake or accelerate.

• Same material used for dash top oddment tray! A hard stippled finish gives it the coefficient of friction of wet ice. Nothing stays in it. It is useless.

• Oddment tray under the flying buttress can only be accessed if you have double jointed wrists or alternatively get on your hands and knees outside the car and reach through.

• Trip computer – to change the display reach through the steering wheel to a button on the instrument panel.

• Which brings me to the real piece de resistance! Adjusting the brightness of the dash illumination! How could they get this wrong I hear you say – just have a little rotatey twisty thingy on the dash. Oh no! Not dear old Toyota! The electronic dash needs to be permanently illuminated and in a dash (!) of common sense when you put on the lights it dims – after all it needs to be brighter during the day. BUT on the day I had it there was fog and rain so I needed to put the lights on and off. The night-time dimming made the instruments virtually invisible in daylight. Here is how you adjust it – try this while keeping an eye on the road!

o Reach through steering wheel to a button in the instrument panel

o Assuming odometer is displayed - push button once for trip 1, twice for trip 2, 3 times to adjust. Now press and hold. (NB press and hold on the wrong one and you reset the trip, press and don’t hold and back to odometer you go)

o Repeatedly press button to scroll through the brightness level options (no delay here or back to odometer you go!)

I am generally easy to please when it comes to hire cars and I usually really enjoy driving different cars and will often take a detour on the way home just to drive it a bit more. Not this one! Straight back to Enterprise and threw the keys at them.

To think I had the choice between an Astra or the Auris Horribilis – I’ve had loads of Astras so I thought a change would be nice.

How wrong could I have been!

• Which brings me to the real piece de resistance! Adjusting the brightness of the dash illumination! How could they get this wrong I hear you say – just have a little rotatey twisty thingy on the dash. Oh no! Not dear old Toyota! The electronic dash needs to be permanently illuminated and in a dash (!) of common sense when you put on the lights it dims – after all it needs to be brighter during the day. BUT on the day I had it there was fog and rain so I needed to put the lights on and off. The night-time dimming made the instruments virtually invisible in daylight. Here is how you adjust it – try this while keeping an eye on the road!

o Reach through steering wheel to a button in the instrument panel

o Assuming odometer is displayed - push button once for trip 1, twice for trip 2, 3 times to adjust. Now press and hold. (NB press and hold on the wrong one and you reset the trip, press and don’t hold and back to odometer you go)

o Repeatedly press button to scroll through the brightness level options (no delay here or back to odometer you go!)

It is amazing how some companies still get the small details so wrong.

It is similar to the volume buttons on an iPhone. Unlike any phone known to man with separate volume controls for the speaker in your ear, the ring tone, the alarm and the key clicks the iPhone's volume buttons control all those things AT ONCE! So sitting in a quiet office you turn the volume down as people are shouting in your ear to then later find you can't hear the darn thing ring when you are in the pub in the evening - or worse still not hearing the alarm go off the next morning as you had turned the volume down the day before in the office! Drives me nuts.

God is in the details and I love the little (dare I say it) German details in a Skoda. See this earlier post of mine re the "rotatey twisty thingy on the dash" and its neighbour the headlight adjuster:

http://briskoda.net/forums/topic/175195-vw-attention-to-detail/

I had this Auris Horribilis just before the Toyota quality storm broke.

I know that for the 2010 model they have put the handbrake release button back where it belongs but neither know nor care whether they have fixed the requirement to reach through the steering wheel to reach controls.

My sister had one of these (1.4 petrol) and she never complained while she had it. Earlier this year she traded it for a 1.4 TSi Scirroco. I asked her why she didn't get another Auris - "Cos it was total cr4p! Worst car I ever had! Gear change was awful, it was noisy, uncomfortable, tacky horrible interior trim..."

Re the I-phone - I have never understood the obsession with these things. A real triumph of marketing if ever there was one.

Whenever I get a new phone the 1st accessory is a spare battery (OEM - not 3rd party!!) and an external charger (under 5 quid off ebay). That means that under heavy usage I always have a fresh charged battery and I can leave the empty on charge in car or office without leaving the phone behind. What do I-Phone make you do? Send the phone back to the manufacturer to get a replacement battery. DURRRR!!!!