Toyota Reviews

It all depends on how you define long and bulky. But no seven-seater is going to be exactly small, is it? That’s because, to accommodate the third row of seats necessary to seat seven a vehicle physically has to be a certain length and there’s just no getting around that.

But I take your point; a lot of the seven-seat SUVs out there do seem pretty big. Again, however, that’s not a bad thing if you plan to fill all three rows of seats and still have some room left for luggage. The smaller seven-seaters aren’t all that good at this as the third row gobbles up the luggage space, making these cars best for those who only need seven seats on an occasional basis. If that’s your situation there are lots of mid-sized seven seaters around, but they’re pretty much all SUVs.

And while it goes against your preference for a smaller vehicle, the very best seven-seaters aren’t SUVs. They’re usually people-mover vans such as the Ford Tourneo, Kia Carnival and VW ID. Buzz. In fact, some of these even seat eight. They’re also a lot better for accessing the rearmost row of seats and they’ll still have lots of luggage space even with all seats occupied. And, yes, they look big, but that’s physics for you.

In the meantime, you could look at slightly less bulky options including the Hyundai Santa Fe, Kia Sorento, Mazda CX-80 and Toyota Kluger. There’s also been speculation recently that Subaru’s seven-seat Tribeca might make a return to the Australian market.

I’m amazed that you managed to find such a convoluted reset procedure, even if it only provides a temporary fix. You may well be right that this behaviour is linked to heat build-up, especially if it happens after several hours of driving.

It’s interesting that you mentioned the engine sometimes goes into limp home mode, because the transmission’s behaviour sounds a lot like it’s going into limp home mode, too. Limiting the gears the vehicle will select is a classic symptom of limp-home mode, in fact.

The real question then becomes, what’s causing it to do so. Limp home mode can be initiated any time the vehicle thinks that continuing to drive at full power or speed will do further mechanical harm. As such, there’s a huge range of things that will cause limp home mode to engage, including a leak somewhere in the turbocharger’s plumbing, low coolant level, low oil pressure, low fuel pressure, a faulty sensor and many more.

So the first job is to scan the vehicle and see what fault codes are thrown up by the computer. From there, you can home in on the actual problem and fix it. But without those codes, you’re kind of flying blind.

The first piece of advice here is to not drive the car at all until this problem is fixed. A car with faulty brakes is one of the most dangerous situations you can find yourself in, and it’s just not safe to even attempt to move it, even to relocate it on the driveway. The problem could get a lot worse very quickly, leaving you with no brakes at all. And even if it doesn’t get any worse, your limited braking capacity could make an emergency situation much, much worse.

The noise is probably not brake-line pressure escaping, since you don’t have falling brake fluid levels. At which point, my suspicion becomes that the brake master cylinder is at fault. This is a device that uses vacuum from the engine to assist you to push the brake pedal. If the diaphragm inside the booster fails, you will might hear the vacuum escaping, with a hissing noise. Even if the booster is intact internally, a simple hose that connects the booster to the engine could have split and caused the leak. Until it’s fixed, though, you won’t have full braking power and that’s, obviously, very dangerous.