2018 Toyota C-HR

[Wolf.17]

The future is here, and it’s not lower, not wider, not sleeker, and not faster, and it wears ridiculous taillights. Look past its robot Donkey Kong styling and the 2018 Toyota C-HR is the vehicular embodiment of lazy conventional wisdom as the second decade of the 21st century dissolves away. It’s not bad, but it’s not trying, either. It’s okayish by default.

Now that trunks are swiftly being eradicated like smallpox, the C-HR is naturally a five-door thing like a crossover, except that all pretense of off-road ability—including even optional all-wheel drive—has gone AWOL. It sort of fills the slots that Toyota used to po[CENSORED]te with both the larger Venza and the smaller Scion xD, with a shout-out to the Matrix. The letters stand for Coupe (though it isn’t one) and High Rider (though it doesn’t ride all that high). As such, it’s a philosophical rejection of the boxy-box Scion xB aesthetic that once seemed destined to endure and now survives only in the Kia Soul.
The C-HR is essentially Toyota’s interpretation of the Nissan Juke with a hyphenated nudge to the Honda HR-V. It’s bigger than either of those—the 103.9-inch wheelbase exceeds the Juke’s by 4.3 inches, and its 171.2-inch overall length is 8.8 inches longer. Like those competitors, it includes similar features such as high-mounted rear door handles and a foreshortened tail. And somewhat like the Juke, the C-HR has the profile of a crouching chimpanzee.

Ordinary to an Extreme
Under that crouching-monkey exterior is a mechanical package of astonishing ordinariness. The C-HR is structured around the same Toyota New Global Architecture (TNGA) that underpins current Prius models. It’s likely that the next Corolla will share much of this CUV’s basic engineering when it appears soon.
It’s a unified structure supported atop a strut front suspension and a control-arm setup in the rear, the latter being fairly progressive for the class. The rack-and-pinion steering is electrically assisted, the anti-lock brakes are ventilated discs in front and solid discs out back, and the engine is positioned transversely up front driving a continuously variable automatic transmission (CVT). Consider every small-car conventional-wisdom box checked.

Propulsion comes courtesy of a 2.0-liter member of Toyota’s now decade-old ZR four-cylinder engine family. It has dual overhead cams, 16 valves with variable timing, and a relatively long stroke. But it is rated at just 144 horsepower way up at a screaming 6100 rpm. The torque peak comes at a more reasonable 3900 rpm, but there’s only a meager 139 lb-ft. This is an unpretentious and modest powerplant.
Modesty and unpretentiousness don’t, however, work well with a CVT. Generally speaking, CVTs operate best when lashed to modern turbocharged engines with a thick low end and a torque curve that starts down low and stays flat good and long. For example, the 174-hp turbo 1.5-liter inline-four that Honda installs in the Civic (as an upgrade to a 158-hp, 138-lb-ft 2.0-liter four) produces its 162 lb-ft of peak torque at only 1700 rpm and sustains it all the way to 5500 rpm. That car’s CVT doesn’t need to seek out higher engine speeds to find adequate grunt.
In contrast, the relatively peaky and not-very-generous torque curve of the C-HR’s naturally aspirated inline-four means that the CVT’s drive belt desperately hunts for thrust. And that results in a thrumming drone that is most irritating at full throttle.

By 2011 standards, the C-HR’s drivetrain is fine for a CVT. But for 2018 it feels, and sounds, painfully archaic. That said, there is a bit of fun to be found using the preprogrammed virtual gears accessed via the transmission lever, but it’d be easier if there were shift paddles behind the steering wheel. There aren’t. Although we suppose that, with this half-hearted attempt at manual shifting, it’s better half a heart than no heart at all.