Bought this car as a cheap commuter. I'm doing 20,000 miles per year and the renowned Toyota reliability, chain driven engine, high claimed mpg and cheap retail price appealed. Tyres are also cheap and I benefit from free road tax.

Having now put circa 40,000 miles on the clock (up at a total of 70,000 miles overall), the car has been absolutely faultless and living up to Toyota name. MPG at 70mph is comfortably sitting at 66-68, which I cannot grumble at. Sitting at 65mph and you can easily see over 70MPG. Being a diesel, it has decent low down grunt (for a small engine), but soon runs out of puff if you push it too hard. Practicality is also excellent. Acres of head and legroom both in the front and back, with a completely flat rear floor (no transmission tunnel hump in the middle).. Boot space is adequate for it's size but nothing special. Rear reversing camera and cruise control is a huge plus. Don't think I'd want a car without either now that I've had it. For some reason, i really like the windscreen washer integrated into the windscreen wiper.

Downsides:
The car is wallowy through the twisties irrespective of approach speed. It feels narrow and slab-sided, which adds to this effect. You can't approach a corner with as much confidence as you'd like. many, many hatchbacks handle better than this and instill you with more confidence.

Wind noise. For some reason, and at certain speeds, you get horrendous wind whistle through the rear windows. They sound like they're partially open, but I've checked on numerous occasions as well as checking rubber sealing around doors and can find no issue. Up at motorway speeds, wind noise is not especially great (but then it is a small car, so marginally expected).

Interior quality. Quality of materials used is abysmal. Centre console literally feels like a plastic milk tray insert. You can move the whole thing if you even give it the slightest knock. The whole dashboard shakes if you pull away even slightly aggressively and the doors feel paper thin. Even the door handles (a place you touch quite often in a car funnily enough) are made of cheap plastic.Why not make them out of metal? minor gripe, and I probably sound like I'm splitting hairs, but the parcel shelf is the worst I've even seen. Feels like it's made of papier mache and even the fabric glued on it isn't cut correctly.

Infotainment system. No apple car play or android auto. Feels like toyota wanted to go their own route at this point. It does pair with your phone and sometimes locks your phone from use, to force you to use car's touch screen, but there's literally no point. You cant scroll through your spotify and change playlists etc.

Gearbox. Feels like you're stirring a pot of soup even when in gear. My first car had a better feeling gearbox and it was a Corsa C!

Brakes. It's now on it's 3rd set of disk brakes in it's life. I wouldn't say I'm especially hard on the brakes, but replacing them an average of every 30,000 miles seems a bit excessive.

Overall as a product for the sole purpose of getting you from A to B reliably, economically, safely and don't care too much about looks, it ticks all of the boxes. Past that, it's mediocre at best. However, I purchased this car solely to get from A to B reliably, economically and safely, so it does what it's supposed to. I intend to keep it as a cheap work-horse and see how long it will last. I'll just need to get something more exciting for the weekends.