mmarshall

Agreed.....although Toyota ads don't necessarily flood the airwaves any more than the equal amount of drivel everyday from Ford and Chevy. You can't turn on your TV any more without seeing ads from all three of them shuffled among all the ads for prescription drugs, lawyer/accident-claims, weight-loss miracles, incontinence items, and almost anything you can think of for senior citizens LOL.

And none of those vehicle-ads mention markups or supply-shortages.

Toys4RJill

I haver never really liked Toyota TV marketing all that much. I like the Toyota “Start your Impossible” advertising from the past Olympics. But that’s about it. The Lexus stuff from the 1990s I have never really liked. The champagne glass stuff to me is not my cup of tea. I can’t recall advertisements from the 2000s for the Lexus brand either. The most recent ad by Lexus where the man and his surfer wife head away in their RX where she gets like 80 calls or something on her phone because she is a CEO I sort of like. The 2007 Tundra ads where they drove through fire and said “holy smoke” were super lame. I do like some of their print ads. 1980s print ads were the best IMO.


edit: funny enough I just saw a Toyota Corolla Cross commercials on tv right now while I watch the tail end of the Raptors. Lots of millennials in the ad.

spwolf

It is #1 brand in the USA, of course you will see marketing everywhere. That is how the business works.

Corolla Cross is perfect Toyota, very bland and inoffensive, big on practicality, it will sell like crazy, no wonder they built new factory around it in the US.

bitkahuna

iTrader: (20)

i laughed at highlighted part. wouldn't a sellathon ad be a dealer ad and not a toyota corporate ad?

of course... that would be the point of toyota ads... to expand appeal especially to new younger buyers. problem is, millennials aren't watching tv ads but i'm sure toyota is running similar ads on social media, websites, youtube, etc.

bitkahuna

iTrader: (20)

i think you're right.

Toys4RJill

Its not like it was the Golden Girls that was on. It was NBA basketball on a Friday night with the Toronto gold logos..Drake is sometimes there too

bitkahuna

iTrader: (20)

you assume they have a tv channel subscription or streaming service.

i'm sure there's other ways to watch the nba game.

Toys4RJill

Mommy and Daddy's subscription Because they still live at home

Wilson2000

True enough at the present, but I'm longing for some of these massive corporations to be bold, be brash, break the mold, and try different avenues to support sales. Isn't designing and building quality products in itself going to create massive amounts of word-of-mouth advertising, which is arguably the best kind?

I don't want to be constantly brainwashed into buying a particular brand of anything. I look to unbiased reviews and recommendations from friends and family before spending my hard-earned money, especially on an expensive item like a vehicle.

I grew up in the 60's and 70's watching football on TV before the days of fast-forwarding through commercials. I must have seen thousands of Chevy truck commercials, and thus, was brainwashed into believing they were "like a rock" in reliability. Before I bought my 2001 Tundra, I purchased a Chevy truck, but only kept it for a short while. I was constantly troubleshooting and repairing one issue after another. It was the worst "rock" I ever owned. Like a rock, it sat immobile much of the time!

BTW...I worked at the advertising firm that developed and marketed the "Pet Rock."

mmarshall

I went and checked out a Corolla Cross today.....without a test-drive, and not extensive enough to really start a new thread. But I got a good enough look, inside and out, to see that, as I first suspected when this vehicle was first unveiled, this is, for a single person or small family, arguably one of the best all-around daily-drivers in Toyota's line-up. It is essentially what the name implies.....a (more or less) Corolla Wagon on stilts, with a little extra ground clearance, and the AWD option for bad weather. The interior and exterior trim, like with the slightly larger RAV-4, are a little Spartan for my tastes, but, unlike the RAV-4, of somewhat better quality and solidness. The underhood lacks nice gas struts to hold it up (you use a manual prop-rod), but the hood itself isn't that heavy, and it has a nice underhood insulation pad. In the rear of the XLE version, under the floor, was a big full-size temporary spare tire......no run-flats or compressed-air bottles. A pull-shade cargo cover was included. Headroom inside was OK for a 6' 2" person my size, even with the sunroof, but marginal for anyone taller than that. And foot/leg room in the rear was a little tight......the back seat is clearly better off for kids than large adults. But, like I said, it's excellent for singles or a small family. Under the hood, it has what GM should have used in the Trailblazer/Encore GX and didn't......a non-turbo four of reasonable output instead of the turbo-three. A sport-shift CVT comes standard....not my favorite type of transmission, but Toyota CVTs have been more reliable than those from some other manufacturers. The paint was the usual Toyota excellence. The shifter was a nice, simple fore/aft with no zig-zags. My only real complaint with it was the cheap-looking black interior (better-looking two-tone interiors are available) and the Etch-a-Sketch-type video-screen...but the materials used in the cheap-looking interior were of decent solidness. I didn't particularly like the classic Toyota scowling-bulldog grille, but that's a minor issue, and more subjective than anything else. The primary instrumentation (not surprisingly) was similar to the blue-edge Corolla sedan instruments. I didn't test-drive it, but, from the platform and specs, it probably drives just like most other non-sporting Corolla-based products...more or less like an appliance, but that is the way most people who buy this type of vehicle expect it to drive.

.....Oh, and this particular Toyota dealership wasn't quite as generous as the Ford, Genesis, and Lexus shops I've been to lately while looking at and writing up their newest products. This place freely admits it is asking more than list (list on the Pearl-White Corolla Cross XLE I was looking at was around 31K)....the other dealerships said they would let most of their products (with a few exceptions) go for list or less. I would normally have looked at these products at the D.C. Auto Show, but I didn't take it this year for several reasons. (and Steve said he wasn't very impressed with it, either)

Wilson2000

Nice review M&M, as per usual! I could easily see my son upgrading to the Cross, from his Matrix, when the time comes. I agree it is a good move to keep the standard engine NA vs turbo. Don't need the gas struts, but kudos to Toyota for providing the full-sized spare (I thought these might be extinct by now)! Yes, it is like an appliance, hopefully a really useful and reliable one like we have come to expect from Toyota.

SW17LS

This is not a bad little vehicle at all, I sat in it at the car show. I would buy this over the regular Corolla any day of the week.

mmarshall

Thanks, Wilson. It wasn't a true MM in-depth review, just more of a static-inspection. I don't know how old (or young) your son is, but, yes, this would be an excellent little all-around daily-driver for a college student, single guy, single woman, or someone with a family and smaller kids. If he regularly shops for, or carries, bulky items, the cargo area of the Corolla Cross is noticeably larger than that of the Matrix, particularly with the rear seats down. It's also a lot easier to get one of these with AWD (once production improves)......not a whole lot of examples of the Matrix and its Pontiac Vibe cousin were done with AWD, because people were starting to move into the RAV-4 instead.

Individual tastes may vary, of course, but in general, I'd strongly recommend the two-tone interior....the all-black version, IMO, is not terribly pleasant to sit in, even with nice leatherette.

1111GS

I was behind one of these last trip. From a distance I saw Toyota logo. I thought they updated the Rav4. I had to speed up to find out it was a Corolla Cross. First encounter. Nice little car for a specific group.

mmarshall

Was it getting much crowd-attention at the show? Seems like people who aren't looking for a lot of frills, appreciate drivetrain-reliability (although these CVT transmissions may not last as long as conventional automatics), and want something reasonably-priced and versatile, would be taking a decent look at it. Although it (probably) lacks the kind of Buick sound-insulation that the Encore GX has, and definitely lacks the Buick trim and plushness inside, it is arguably the best competition I've seen yet to the Trailblazer/Encore GX, though a little larger than the GM products, and also probably not quite as nimble or easy-parking. I guessing on the road-manners because I did not actually test-drive it.