STYLING | 6 out of 10
Expert Quotes:
Presentation within the cabin is clean and straightforward, if a bit plain.
Edmunds
The Avalon was reshaped and restyled for 2011, but if your eye is untrained in the art of automaker refreshes, you probably won't be able to distinguish a 2010 model from a 2011.
Autoblog
For being a redesigned car, it still looks too conservative and not all that different from the old car at first glance.
AutoWeek
last year’s Elks Club interior has been remodeled along the lines of a Ruth’s Chris Steak House
New York Times
new but familiar-looking LED taillights and a license plate holder that's been moved from the bumper to the restyled trunklid
Cars.com
Well-executed but traditional to a fault, the Toyota Avalon wears a little more metallic trim in this go-around, and slightly more thrifty interior finishes.
While it's still generically handsome, we've seen the Avalon before--it's changed little from the last generation, with a few bolder details figured into the stretched-Camry body. The grille is as formal as ever, but it's wider and more prominent. The underliner that shapes the headlamps is a bit prettier. From some angles, the Avalon's side moldings and cutlines clearly evoke the Mercedes E-Class--the crisper shoulder line on the Toyota is almost as pronounced as the one on the Benz. At the rear, the Avalon wears its most emphatic design statement, taillamps incised with a C-shaped string of LEDs.
Inside there's an elegant dual-cowl dash, with the second cowl arching over the radio and climate controls. Woodgrain trim dominates, along with big knobs and a big LCD screen that controls the Avalon's available navigation system. The gentle swells formed into the dash are some of the more effortless Toyota efforts, and save for the bugle-bead radio buttons and the matte artificiality of the woodgrain trim, the cabin strikes us as styled and trimmed above its slightly downscale mission.Conclusion
Tradition has nothing on the Toyota Avalon: the details are a little brighter, but the shapes are very familiar.
