A Toyota Wish comes true! Well, not exactly but close enough. My wife, Lena has been thinking of buying a bigger car to ferry the whole family clan for outing. She had been rather dissatisfied with the Toyota Vios as it could not ferry her parents, her sister and various aunties and uncles.

Well, being DINK (Dual Income No Kids) couple we do not have much commitment except for the repayment of the house and another condo which I am renting out. Still someday we hope to get a bundle of joy. In the meantime, she has some lofty need for taking people here and there and what better way to do that than to get a MPV.

Working in a foreign bank, her income was pretty good. Much better than mine I’m afraid. If mine was much better I wouldn’t need to try some entrepreneur start ups and not faring any better than I was before to supplement my income. Anyway, this is about the Toyota Wish and how she came to chose it.

With recommendation from a friend who was well verse about cars, who recommended a sale-lady from Toyota. And so we all went with Lena’s parent and her sis tagging along we test drove the Toyota Innova, Toyota Wish and the Avanza models at the PJ section 19 sales office.

We tried the Wish first and it was really a smooth ride with adequate power despite the full passenger load. But when we tried the Innova, I could feel that it was underpowered even though it has the same 2 litre engine capacity. Price wise they were about the same though in terms of comfort, Innova has more room space and better air-conditioning system. As for Avanza, at about half the price of the above two cars, well can’t complain too much if that’s all you could afford though in terms of engine power it was not too bad though it lack the finesse of Wish and Innova.

We found out that Innova was rather underpowered because its body to engine power ratio was poor and that future models will have 2.4 liters capacity to meet with the required power for better driving. Heard from a friend that after they bought the Innova, six months later they sold it because it couldn’t climb up the steep hill inclines! That would have been a big problem as Malaysia has many hills.

We also checked out the Naza version of the Toyota Wish. It was fully imported unlike the Toyota model which was assembled in Malaysia. The Naza Toyota Wish had differing offerings. It was only 1.8 liters that made it lower powered, though it has some nice extras like a sun roof and extra head rest for the middle seat. The worse part about the Naza offering was no alarm system provided. We will have to install it by going to a car accessories shop and it will cost about RM2,000.00 to get it done. Though the car price offered was slightly cheaper than Toyota’s offering, but after thinking it through, it was actually more expensive because the engine was lesser powered and coupled by the fact that no alarm system was included as well.

So it was decided to take the original Toyota 2.0 liter Wish version. Although Lena did take some fancy about some Mazda MPV as well, but in the end the Wish was a better buy because Toyota cars are renowned for their durability and low maintenance cost.

Getting the car should have been a quick affair, but it was the car loan that bog down the handing over. Lena had the option of either taking the staff loan from Citibank or take it from outside. The staff loan interest was calculated on a daily rest so the more you pay back the lower the interest charge. However the offerings from the financing banks were quite good too with Maybank and Hong Leong Bank (HLB) giving very good rates. In the end, she opted for HLB because of the yearly rebate given for prompt repayment. Besides, in case she change job, she will not need to refinance the car. Refinanced car loan has a higher interest charge so by doing it directly with HLB she needn’t refinance the car if she changed job.

After much anticipated waiting, we finally took delivery of the car and had our first real ride. Though we didn’t go anywhere far, just to the mall and to drop off some mooncakes to some friends nearby. The ride was smooth though we had to readjust ourselves to the location of the various controls. The main brakes is no longer done using hand but depressed using the left foot. While the gated gear handle is located nearer to the dashboard and we kept instinctively dropping our hands to the lower section and realized that the gear stick is located further up. The vehicle is longer too, so have to be more careful when making a turn at corners.

We have to figure out all the various levers for the chairs, trunk and bonnet including some new settings for lights. Went through the manual just to find out what those levers did and how to slide those seats to the various positions to optimize the space for carrying things or seating people.

While fiddling with the car, our neighbour sneaked up on us and gave us a surprised! Complimented us on our new car purchase and admired the new car.

It’s new now, and felling very much like young children receiving their precious new toy. The Toyota Wish was a good choice though on the pricey side, still feeling blessed to be able to afford such a luxury. I believe for the next few days we will have some euphoria about it until the first scratch shows up on it!

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Toyota Wish review and specifications