A petrolhead's review on the Toyota Alphard: The appeal is easily recognised

These things litter Hong Kong’s roads everyday, ferrying families, businessmen, Uber customers, and other individuals who often can afford a private driver. They may look like MPVs to the rest of you (myself nicknaming them ‘boxes’), but to the majority of the Hong Kong public, they’re luxury vehicles. One in particular, is a local favourite: The Toyota Alphard/Vellfire.

Now prior to experiencing the joys of sitting in a box, I had a particular disdain for these vehicles. Other than the fact that my ex-friend who stole my crush family owned one as their family car, I support the attitude towards why people buy MPVs: you’ve done your breeding, now you’re just waiting to leave this terrible earth. Also, I can’t count how many near misses I’ve had with drivers of these, in particular one nearly took our car out due to the massive blind spot on the driver’s side, and in my opinion, they’re just an apartment-sized Camry (coincidentally they share the same engine) on four wheels.

But just yesterday, I got to experience one for myself after that same crush-stealing ex-friend of mine, offered me a lift along the way to where was going (a diecast store, after all I felt I deserved a reward for enduring 5 hours of SAT testing).
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Stepping through the sliding doors, and sitting in the leather-wrapped ottoman seat, my perspective surprisingly, took a major change. The main thing I got out of my brief time with the Alphard was that it’s easy to see the appeal in these things: the passenger experience is so comfortable and luxurious. Plus with ammenities such as seperate zone climate control and an in-car TV on the roof, its no wonder families love these for those long journeys (especially considering you always see one making its way from HK to Shenzhen [Mainland] and back). You really do feel isolated from the entire world when you’re in one of these Alphards, and I’ve never been in a more comfortable car where you can slouch back and relax whilst talking to your passengers.

Plus from the driver’s perspective, the engine has good punch to it as well, good levels of torque and overall power. And this is the only car I’ve observed where it makes sense to use the manual-mode on the automatic gearbox, considering the total weight this has to carry and the amount of throttle needed to get it anywhere.

In the end, as I got out of those power-sildiing doors again, and headed off to get a 1:43 scale Nissan Skyline or Subaru Legacy (I ended up getting an R33 Skyline GTR Sedan Autech Anniversary Edition), the baggage I previously held towards these boxes had somewhat dissipated.

I finally got the appeal of these things, whether they’re the Nissan Elgrand/Serena, the Mazda 8, Honda Stepwgn, or Toyota Noah/Alphard/Veilfire. They offer space and luxury for the whole family to enjoy in their seats, or for solo-buyers, a piece of exclusivity whilst riding from the streets of Central to a business meeting in Shenzhen. In other words, think of an airline that offers what are normally First-Class cabins at the typical costs of Economy Class, or just decide to use First Class as the only class of cabin in their planes.

In someways, as I have made up with the ex-friend of mine, I have also made up with these boxes I have previously held significant hate towards. Will I buy one of these in the future, no (not even if you paid me). But I at least see why this is in the hearts and parking spaces of many of my fellow Hong-Kongers.

This content was originally posted by a Car Throttle user on our Community platform and was not commissioned or created by the CT editorial team.