• last year
Toyota has updated the 2021 Toyota Fortuner. This big SUV is based on the dual-cab Toyota HiLux and aims to bring a seven seat SUV into the off-road SUV space. Sharing a platform with the Toyota HiLux, does that mean it's like a HiLux to drive? Paul Maric tests it out to see what it's like.

Hardness tester results: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/121Auf6HGvaBqRToYcuAz94alin7Sw55SpOPECBDlnKE

Skip Ahead:
Intro: 00:00
Exterior 00:54
Interior 03:14
Infotainment 04:47
Safety Tech 06:01
Practicality 07:14
On-road 13:44
Off-road 18:39
Verdict 21:04

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#toyota #review #fortuner
Transcript
00:00 G'day, I'm Paul. So when you've got a winning formula like the Toyota Hilux,
00:04 why not turn it into a big old SUV? That's kind of what they've done here. This is the Toyota
00:10 Fortuna. It is the seven-seat version of the Toyota Hilux, so it shares the same platform
00:15 with it. This right here is the top specification Toyota Fortuna Crusade. It's priced at a little
00:21 over $61,000. If this is a little bit too much, the entire range starts at just under $50,000.
00:27 There's a couple of options in there. This competes with things like the Mitsubishi Pajero Sport,
00:32 the Ford Everest, and the Isuzu MU-X. Today we're going to do a detailed review of this car. If you
00:38 want to skip ahead to other parts of this review, you can use the time codes up on the screen there,
00:42 or if you're on YouTube, just scroll down and use the chapters below. And if you haven't done so
00:46 already, subscribe, bell icon, please do those two things so you can find out every single time we
00:51 drive a big SUV. Righto, let's start with exterior. So you've got eight exterior colors to choose
00:57 from, and all but white is an additional $600. The Fortuna's been out for a little bit of time now,
01:03 but they've just done a facelift, and that was in line with the facelift of the Hilux.
01:07 So you can see a few different changes here. You've got a different grille, you've also got a
01:11 different bottom section, different fog lights as well, and just in terms of the design itself,
01:16 I think it still looks pretty impressive. This seems to have grown following a trend with some
01:21 cars where the logos are just becoming exponentially bigger, which I think is a
01:26 little bit funny. But anyway, and you can kind of tell this has off-road intentions because you've
01:30 got quite a decent approach angle there, and I'll explain what that means later on, but it makes it
01:34 better for off-road driving. They've kind of given it a bit more of a rugged and tougher looking
01:39 exterior, and that follows on here with the headlights. They've become nice and slim now.
01:43 This is a full LED headlight. Let's whip around to the wheels. Okay, so you have 18-inch alloy
01:50 wheels. I quite like the design. It's like a bit of a shadow chrome look. It kind of signals
01:56 the intentions of the car. This is more a highway terrain tyre, but you can get all-terrain tyres
02:01 on lower Fortuner models. That'll give you a little bit more latitude when you're driving
02:05 off-road, whereas this will be quieter when you're on the highway and will also be better for on-road
02:10 performance as well, so keep that in mind. A little bit of plastic cladding there on the wheel
02:14 arches, so you know what this is all about. Whip around the side of the car, you've got an indicator
02:19 built into that wing mirror. You get sidesteps here. You get these roof rails as well. I quite
02:24 like the design. It's not like a chrome or anything sort of too showy. It just sort of sits nicely
02:29 there. Privacy glass as well, and then come around to the back. More LED, so you've got LED tail
02:35 lights here. Do you reckon this kind of looks like the BMW X5? You know how the X5 has that thin
02:40 strip and then another thin strip beneath it? Let me know what you think. I can see where they got
02:44 their inspiration from. A Crusade badge down there for the top spec model, and then Fortuner written
02:50 along the top there, and then you have the boot opener hidden away nicely, and then this spoiler
02:55 that sits up the top as well. Now, let me know what you think in the comments section below. This has
03:00 a lot of competitors in this segment, but it doesn't really sell all that well. You don't see many of
03:04 them out on the road, so let me know what you think of that. Would you buy this over some of
03:09 its competitors, or do you think that Toyota probably needs to fine-tune this a little bit
03:13 more? Let me know what you think. We're inside the Fortuner. Let's start with the key. Here it is here.
03:17 So you have lock, unlock, boot, a panic button, the Toyota symbol, a little bit of chrome garnish
03:24 around the edge, and then on the back you have a little outline and it says Fortuner as well.
03:29 This is a proximity sensing key, so there's a button on the door, you push that, it unlocks
03:34 and locks the car. Then once you're inside the cabin, you have a push button. Start.
03:37 Right, let's talk about styling. Yeah, this is kind of typical Toyota. It just feels
03:45 robust but slightly dated, and by that I mean look at this traditional layout here. You've got
03:50 the infotainment system there, climate controls, vents, it's sort of nothing too adventurous,
03:56 including in terms of styling. It's all fairly basic looking, but in terms of material selection,
04:00 feels nice and soft up there, a little scratchy there, but all of these surfaces are padded.
04:05 Kind of gives you the impression that it is a little bit more premium, especially with that
04:08 stitching there, and given this is the top spec model, you kind of need it to feel like you've
04:13 spent a little bit of money in here. How soft are all of these touch points? See, that one there is
04:18 nice. That one there is really nice as well. So we have a tool that tests these out. We have
04:22 tested the main surfaces in this car. If you want to see how this compares to other cars that we've
04:26 tested, just scroll down and use the link in the description below. Now, what about build quality?
04:31 So, being a Toyota, it's actually all pretty good. All of this stuff feels nicely put together,
04:38 and I think if you did a longer trip in this car and were genuinely wanting to do something like a
04:42 drive or a trip around Australia, this would probably be a pretty sensible choice. Moving on
04:47 to infotainment, you get an 8-inch infotainment system with a colour touchscreen. If you do want
04:52 to see a detailed review of this, click up here. We've recorded one previously. Today, I'll just
04:56 give you a brief overview so you can get the basics. So, 8-inch screen, colour touchscreen.
05:01 You also get smartphone mirroring in the form of Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. Both of those
05:06 require a cable. I'll show you what Android Auto looks like to start with. Here it is here. Full
05:11 screen integration. And then if we click here, it's actually not too bad. It's nice and quick.
05:18 Let's see what Apple CarPlay looks like. Here it is here. Full screen integration.
05:22 Nice and quick as well. I'll let you in on a little secret. Toyota's in-built voice recognition
05:28 system isn't very good, but when you do have a smartphone paired, you can use this to send
05:33 commands through to your smartphone, so it's a whole lot more accurate. And hey, by the way,
05:36 if you do want to see a comparison between Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, if you're looking for
05:41 your next phone, or you're just interested to see how the technology differs, click up here to watch
05:45 a video we shot earlier. But what about the rest of the infotainment system? We'll jump over to
05:50 audio. You get AM/FM, DAB+ digital radio, along with an 11-speaker JBL branded sound system,
05:58 along with all the JBL insignia around the place. Let's talk about safety technology. So,
06:03 you have autonomous emergency braking with pedestrian detection. You've got an auto-dimming
06:09 rear vision mirror. You don't get blind spot monitoring, which is really kind of strange.
06:13 You do get a lane-keeping assistant, but keep in mind that it isn't a great system,
06:17 because you don't have e-pass, which is electrically assisted steering rack. So,
06:21 instead of it pulling you back into the lane, it pulses the brakes, and it can be quite jarring
06:26 and take you off guard at times. So, keep that in mind. And you also have a radar cruise control
06:31 as well. On the parking front, you have front and rear parking sensors and a reverse view camera.
06:35 Let's have a look at the quality of that. I'm keen to see what that's like. Quality's okay.
06:39 It's not amazing. And then you have guidelines there for the steering as well, plus a center
06:43 line marker if you do have a tow bar installed. So, before we move on to practicality, I wanted
06:48 to ask you guys a question. What are your thoughts on wood grain? So, you may not have noticed, but
06:53 in between these leather sections, there is wood grain there, and there's like a wood grain hue
06:57 down here. I don't think it's real wood, but do you think wood grain needs to die? I'm still a bit
07:01 of a fan of it, but I'm really keen to get your feedback. So, we'll start at a virtual poll. Let
07:06 me know in the comments section below, is wood grain here to stay or should we stick it on the
07:11 bonfire and let it die peacefully? Right, so moving on to practicality, and we'll start with
07:16 connectivity. I don't know why they do this, but there is one USB port up here, and it's this one
07:22 here. The second you have your phone plugged into that for smartphone mirroring, you have nowhere
07:27 else really to charge your things unless you use an adapter for the 12-volt outlet. So, a little bit
07:32 disappointing there. They haven't really forward thought about that. But in terms of storage,
07:37 where are you going to put your phone when it's not plugged in? Well, you've got room there in
07:41 the cup holders, and there's also a little tray up the front there, but no wireless phone charging.
07:47 And then in terms of coffee cup storage, your coffee cup sits up the front there, but it's
07:51 quite deep, so it'll disappear pretty quickly. You might lose the lid. There are teeth there
07:56 to keep things secure, so when you do put a bottle in, it sits in really nicely. There isn't a great
08:02 deal of storage up the front here though when you look at that, because if you do have a bottle in
08:05 there, it's hard to access your phone storage. So, it would have been nice to see just a little bit
08:09 more storage. But in terms of door storage, you can fit a bottle in there easily, plus other odds
08:14 and ends. Also, keep in mind, just like the Hilux, you have a little bottle holder in front of your
08:19 air vents if you want to keep a drink cool or keep it hot. And you also have a center console here.
08:25 It's reasonably sized. You can see how deep it is there with the bottle. We have two glove boxes
08:32 over here. Deep one down the bottom there that'll fit the bottle, and then another one up the top
08:37 here that is air conditioned as well, that easily fits your bottle. Finally, you have a sunglasses
08:42 holder up the top. Okay, comfort. What's it like? You have single zone automatic climate control
08:49 with individual controls for the rear air vents. Seat heating for the first row. In terms of seat
08:54 adjustment, it is electric for the driver and front passenger. The seats themselves are actually
09:00 really nice and comfortable. So, if you are doing a long drive, this is going to be a good place to
09:04 be seated. The steering wheel sits nicely in the hands as well, and all of these controls are easy
09:08 to reach. I quite like the seat design. It's sort of basic, but looks premium with all the
09:13 stitching and stuff, and it looks like it's rugged and easy to keep clean as well, which I think is
09:16 important. Okay, second row time. This is where the kids are going to be seated, or perhaps the
09:22 adults if you're ferrying people around. What's it like back here? Let's start with room. Knee room
09:27 is actually pretty reasonable. I've got this seat quite far back, but I've got plenty of knee room
09:31 there. Toe room isn't great. My toes are sort of wedged under the seat there, and headroom is okay.
09:37 Not amazing though. If you're taller, you're probably going to be touching on the roof there.
09:40 In terms of other creature comforts, you have mat pockets. I like these little hooks. They say
09:45 they have maximum four kilos, so this is for your shopping and stuff like that. In fact, you guys
09:49 told me that on, which video was it? One of the recent ones we did. I asked you, "What do you put
09:54 there?" and everyone had everything from shopping to handbags, so this is obviously a useful thing
09:59 to have. You have one 12-volt outlet here, but this is pretty handy. You have a 220-volt outlet
10:06 down the bottom that can service up to 100 watts of power, which is good. Center armrest. You have
10:11 two cup holders in there. Fits the bottle in nice and easy. Then you can also put the bottle inside
10:18 the door if you want to. In terms of seat adjustment, you can actually move these seats
10:22 forwards and backwards to give the third row a little bit more room. And as I mentioned before,
10:27 you have blower controls here with air vents located in the roof. It is worth pointing out
10:33 though that your middle passenger has to construct their own seat belt, and then that means you've
10:38 got this thing dangling across the center of the cabin if you do have a center passenger,
10:42 which is a little bit inconvenient. And finally, you have ISOFIX points on the two outboard seats.
10:48 Okay, so it's a seven-seater. How do you get access to the third row? It's not all that easy,
10:53 and I'll explain why. So this part's okay. You can actually tumble this entirely out of the way.
10:59 There's a little grip handle there if you've got little ones that need to climb into the back, but
11:03 there's no easy way to drop the seats. So you've got to come around here,
11:07 open the boot, wait for the boot to open, and you can see this. I haven't really seen this before.
11:16 They pack the seats up against the wall, so you have to manually unclip that, bring the seat down
11:22 into its position, and then pull this up. I'm going to bring this one down as well,
11:27 just to show you what that looks like. There we go. They're both done. Now I'm going to climb in.
11:32 Alrighty, here we go. It's actually surprisingly easy to climb in. So we're in now. Headroom is
11:39 pretty much non-existent. My head is well and truly wedged up against there. Let's see how we
11:44 go with legroom. I'll bring that up as well. Look, it's okay. It's not amazing. Remember,
11:54 this row can slide forward, so if you get your second row passenger to move it forward,
11:59 you can actually fit an adult here, because I have loads of toe room there. It's just the
12:03 knee room's not amazing, and the headroom's not great either. So this is probably only a kid's
12:08 zone, and you'd expect that given this is based on a Hilux. You do have storage off to the side
12:14 though, except there's no USB ports here or any type of charging, which is a little bit disappointing.
12:19 Okay, what about cargo space? Normally with these seven-seat SUVs that are based off utes,
12:26 you don't have a great deal of boot room. This is kind of the same. You've got around 200 litres of
12:31 cargo capacity here. Off to the side, you have a 12-volt outlet. Let's see if it actually fits
12:37 our bags. That one kind of fits in sideways. I'm curious to see if that fits. There you go,
12:43 that actually fits. That's not really that bad. I quite like that. Okay, now if you do want to
12:49 expand the space a little bit, you've got to offload your third row. It's all pretty straightforward.
12:54 It all comes out of the way, then you've got to clip it into position up here. Same story over
12:59 here. Goodbye. Then it goes up there. Okay, so this expands the space to a little over 700 litres,
13:07 but as you can see, it's really a very versatile space. You've got these hooks in the way,
13:11 and then these seats just take up so much room. Let's see how it goes with our bags in there.
13:17 So you can see when you put the bags in, there's actually not that much room to do much more
13:23 sideways. You can expand the space a little bit more though by dropping the second row. Let me
13:28 show you what that looks like. You've got to do that from around the sides. So drop that side
13:33 out of the way, and then we drop this, and that expands the space to a little over 1000 litres,
13:40 but keep in mind it's not flat. You've got this little waterfall section down here.
13:44 Okay, let's talk engine. The Fortuner shares a powertrain with the Hilux, which means the most
13:51 recent Hilux update has now translated, not surprisingly, over to the Fortuner as well.
13:56 So that means a 2.8 litre turbocharged four-cylinder diesel engine makes 150 kilowatts
14:02 of power and 500 newton meters of torque. So that was the increase in the torque. That's really where
14:07 you're going to feel it, and when you're behind the wheel, six-speed automatic transmission works
14:11 pretty well, and you can really feel the urgency about mid-range. That's where you really notice
14:18 all the changes that Toyota has made, and it's not just a tune. A fair bit has gone into actually
14:23 making this a more eager engine and more pleasing to drive. Okay, let's talk fuel economy. Toyota
14:29 claims a combined average of 7.6 litres of fuel per 100 kilometres. Let's see what we're achieving.
14:35 We're on 9.4, so it is a little higher than what Toyota claims, but it's about right when you
14:42 consider that we've been doing mainly city driving and a little bit of off-road driving as well with
14:47 a bit of highway thrown in, but predominantly city driving. Now, what about drive modes? So,
14:51 typical Toyota fashion, you've got three drive modes to choose from. Hit the Eco button and
14:57 nothing really happens. They just dull the throttle response and just make it
15:01 almost entirely lifeless. Normal is just your standard driving mode, and then Sport does
15:06 pretty much the opposite of Eco. The second you hit the throttle, it sharpens that throttle response,
15:11 so like you're getting any extra power, all it does is adjust the throttle map so that when you're
15:16 at 50% throttle, it tells the car that you're at 80% instead, so it makes it feel like it's quicker,
15:22 despite nothing actually really changing with the power output of the engine.
15:26 You can also manually shift gears. You've got paddle shifters here on the steering wheel,
15:30 and then also the ability to rifle through gears over here. You also have a Sport mode for the
15:34 gearbox too. We don't have a 0-100 time for the Fortuner, but we've recorded it anyway.
15:40 Let's see how it goes against the stopwatch.
15:54 Now let's talk about ride. Okay, so this bit hasn't really improved. They didn't touch the
15:59 ride and they really needed to. Hilux has improved over the generations. It's gone from being a
16:05 really firm dual-cab ute to being pleasant but not class-leading. This, on the other hand,
16:11 has stayed really firm. So we're driving along a country road here. The second I move off the
16:15 main surface and hit any of these corrugations, you can just really feel everything through the
16:21 cabin. And most of it's felt at the rear. They haven't really tuned it enough to make it
16:25 comfortable, so it really does feel quite harsh in comparison to something like an Everest or
16:29 a Pajero Sport. One other thing I want to point out as well, the Everest is a full-time four-wheel
16:33 drive. The Pajero Sport can be driven as a full-time four-wheel drive as well. This,
16:38 on the other hand, is virtually a carryover from Hilux. So you drive it in two-wheel drive
16:43 most of the time and you can only use high-range four-wheel drive when you're on sealed surfaces.
16:48 So it's a little bit of a compromise there in terms of that added traction that you get with
16:52 the Everest. And I think this is one of the things that makes me feel like Toyota really hasn't put
16:56 a great deal of effort into this vehicle. I think it really needs a little bit more work to keep up
17:01 with the rest of the competitors in the segment. Okay, let's put it into Sport mode. Let's see
17:05 what it's like in terms of handling. We've got a corner here. It's okay but not amazing. There's
17:11 a fair bit of body roll there and the steering as well. You would have noticed earlier I didn't
17:16 mention that the Sport mode adjusts steering feel because it's a hydraulically assisted steering
17:20 rack. It has virtually no feel at all and because it's not an e-pass system there's no way to
17:26 configure it to have extra weight when you go through the Sport mode. And this sort of lends
17:31 to that theory of mine that I just don't feel they've put all that much effort into the Fortuner.
17:35 The rest of the competitors in this segment use an e-pass system and this just misses out on it.
17:40 Now what about road noise? So it's not too bad. I don't get a great deal of road noise from the
17:45 tyres but the engine is fairly noisy especially when you get up at it. It starts making a fair
17:51 bit of a racket. When it's idling at low speed as well you can really feel and hear it translating
17:55 through to the cabin so it doesn't really feel all that refined. But if you are doing a long
18:00 distance drive it eventually levels out to the point where you don't notice it too much and the
18:04 fact that you're not getting a great deal of noise from the tyres helps improve things a little bit
18:08 when the engine isn't revving. In terms of visibility, yes it is a big SUV but it doesn't
18:14 feel all that big behind the wheel. I can clearly see down the bonnet there. Visibility out the rear
18:19 is okay when the third row is folded up. The headrests in the second row are quite big so
18:24 they block a little bit of the vision but it's not too bad. And then in terms of the wing mirrors
18:28 they're big enough there to clearly see down the side of the car. It is a bit disappointing though
18:31 that you don't get blind spot monitoring. When it comes to U-turns, a turning circle of 11.6
18:37 metres is actually not too bad. Okay, time for some light off-roading. Let's quickly run through
18:43 the four-wheel drive specs we have here. So 29 degree approach angle, that's the angle of the
18:48 face you can approach before you hit anything, and a 25 degree departure angle which is the same but
18:53 in reverse. There's 216 millimetres of ground clearance and 700 millimetres of wading depth.
18:59 Now if none of that means anything to you, you can click up here to watch our four-wheel drive
19:03 controls explained video where I run through that and give you a couple of demos. Now this is also,
19:09 as I mentioned, a two-wheel drive for most of the time. You can switch it over into four-wheel
19:14 drive high range and also four-wheel drive low range which we're just about to do because this
19:18 is an unsealed surface which means there is enough flexibility there. We're not going to
19:22 bind up any gears. There's also a hill descent control which we'll test out in just a second.
19:27 So there's that little indicator saying full drive is active. We'll see how we go up here.
19:32 There is a rear differential lock as well but you can only use that when you're in low range.
19:36 Pressing it now doesn't actually do anything. So let's see how we go up Log Mountain.
19:41 Oh this is effortless. Yeah the suspension is pretty firm so you are getting thrown around a
19:47 fair bit. It's walking up here without any dramas at all. That is really impressive. Okay so let's
19:56 try our descent because I have a feeling we're going to touch a couple of things here. There's
20:01 been some rocks that have moved around recently so it's become a little more treacherous. Yeah
20:07 immediately I'm noticing there this brake pedal is so sensitive. I noticed that with the Prado as
20:16 well that when you're doing descents like this every time you hit a rock or you're coming down
20:20 the brake pedal is so sensitive that you're just constantly bucking and moving around. It can get a
20:25 little bit frustrating. It's actually not too bad. Yeah we did touch down at the start there but the
20:31 rest of this is okay. Let's try out this hill descent control. That is on now. Foot is off the
20:36 brake. Let's see how it goes. Whoa that is running away. Okay it's settled itself down a little bit
20:41 there but for that start part it just ran away from us. So yeah okay look it coped with that
20:47 perfectly fine. Just like the Hilux the off-road systems in these are so good that you can really
20:52 just go anywhere. It's not idiot proof though. You've still got to set a lot of this up manually
20:56 yourself so it is worth doing a bit of training if you are going to do any more serious off-road
21:01 driving and make sure you check out the video I mentioned before. Okay Toyota Fortuna what do we
21:06 reckon? I don't know a little bit underwhelmed with it and I was underwhelmed when it first
21:10 launched because it was just too firm and just felt like an off-road vehicle that was an SUV as
21:16 opposed to an SUV that was an off-road vehicle. They're two very separate things and you want an
21:21 SUV for the family you want it to feel nice and premium inside. This kind of doesn't fit that
21:25 bill. It feels like an off-road version of the Hilux in an SUV form as opposed to a nice SUV. So
21:31 anyway the people who are going to buy this were always going to buy it regardless of what we
21:35 thought and on that token you do have a pretty punchy engine. It'll go anywhere just like the
21:39 Hilux does but I think it's just let down in small parts around the cabin such as those third row
21:44 seats that flip up the sides. It just feels like Toyota hasn't put a great deal of effort into
21:49 this product and I think you're better off buying something like an Everest or a Pajero Sport or
21:53 even just waiting until the new MU-X arrives because that is just around the corner. So let
21:57 me know what you think in the comment section below. Did you buy one of these? Am I... do I
22:01 just have no idea? Am I missing something? Let me know in the comment section below. Did you buy
22:04 something else instead after test driving this? I'm really keen to find out. If you found this
22:08 video useful I would love it if you could share it with your friends. Also hit the like button
22:12 and don't forget to subscribe to our channel and press the bell icon as well. But until next time

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