2018 Toyota C-HR: We’re Driving it This Week

The 2018 Toyota C-HR (Compact High-Rider) is one of the most anticipated vehicles coming this year and we’ll be driving it in Montreal later this week. The C-HR was to be part of Scion’s lineup in North America but, when the Scion brand was folded, it quickly became a Toyota model. Introduced at the Los Angeles Auto Show last November, the C-HR will arrive in Canadian dealerships this spring.

With its polarizing design, the C-HR clashes heavily with the much more staid and conventional vehicles in Toyota’s “fifty-shades-of-beige” lineup and this qualifies as a very bold move for the conservative Japanese brand. The C-HR is built on the TNGA (Toyota New Global Architecture) that underpins the recent Prius hybrid and is powered by a conventional 2.0-litre four-cylinder engine, developing 144 horsepower and 133 pound-feet of torque, driving the front wheels through a CVT automatic transmission.

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No manual gearbox, no all-wheel-drive system and no hybrid powertrain will be available. The C-HR is only a front-wheel-drive vehicle, and that will put it at a disadvantage against its immediate competition, as the Honda HR-V, Mazda CX-3, Jeep Renegade, Nissan JUKE and Chevrolet Trax all offer optional all-wheel drive. Also, the C-HR is available as a hybrid in Europe and elsewhere, but only available with a conventional gas engine in Canada. That’s unfortunate.

The wild design of the exterior is echoed inside the cabin with a very original and modern look for the dashboard, although the instrument cluster is more old-school in design.

Look for a complete road test of the 2018 Toyota C-HR here in the coming days. Keep in touch…