Toyota Avanza review: the cheapest way to seat seven in Bahrain
3.8/5motorssouq Editorial Team
The Avanza is not a car to want; it is a car to need, and it does the job of transporting a large family or a small crew of workers for less money than almost anything else sold new in Bahrain. The 1.5-litre engine is unhurried with all seven seats occupied and the air conditioning fighting a Bahraini summer, but it never feels stressed, and the switch to a monocoque platform makes the ride noticeably more settled than the old rear-wheel-drive van it replaced. Buy it for the maths, not the drive.
Pros
- Lowest realistic running cost of any new seven-seat vehicle sold in Bahrain
- Third row is genuinely usable, not a token pair of jump seats
- Monocoque platform rides noticeably better than the old body-on-frame Avanza
- Any workshop on the island can service it without specialist knowledge
Cons
- 1.5-litre engine and CVT feel strained with seven people and the air conditioning working
- Interior materials are budget-grade throughout, including on higher trims
- Gives up some of the old model's reputation for shrugging off abuse
- Third-row access requires folding and tumbling the second row forward
The old Avanza survived in the Gulf for over a decade on the strength of a formula that had nothing to do with refinement: a simple rear-wheel-drive layout, a ladder-adjacent frame, and running costs a taxi operator could plan a business around. The 2022 replacement gives up that formula for a front-wheel-drive monocoque shared with Daihatsu, and the trade genuinely pays off in everyday use even if it loses a little of the old car's indestructible reputation.
Living with seven seats
The third row is usable by children and short adults rather than being purely decorative, and the boot with all seats up still swallows a reasonable grocery run. Fold the third row and the Avanza becomes a genuinely useful small van for a business that needs to move people and boxes on the same day.
The 1.5-litre engine and CVT are not quick, and fully loaded with the air conditioning working hard against a Bahraini summer the car asks for patience rather than delivering it. It is, however, never harsh about the compromise, and the CVT avoids the flared, droning behaviour that made early CVTs unpleasant.
Running costs and what to expect
This is the entire reason to buy the car: fuel consumption in real Bahrain traffic sits comfortably below what a body-on-frame MPV of similar size would use, insurance is cheap because the car is neither fast nor expensive to repair, and every workshop on the island can service it without a second thought. Reliability data on the new platform is still building in the Gulf simply because the car is young, but the underlying Toyota/Daihatsu mechanicals have a long track record elsewhere in the region.