A luxury crossover with a mainstream price? The 2021 Toyota Venza
Love is spending all day driving to and from upstate New York taking someone on a pilgrimage to their baseball team's first World Series win. [credit: Elle Cayabyab Gitlin ]
After dragging my better half to a lot of car races over the years, it was an easy yes when she asked if we might visit the Baseball Hall of Fame a few weeks ago. She is as big a fan of baseball as I am of motor racing, and her beloved Washington Nationals were being celebrated for having won the World Series, after all. Sure Cooperstown, New York, does indeed lie nearly 6.5 hours north-northeast from where I write this. But I quite like driving, and a 13-hour round trip is a better way than most to get to know a car.
But which car? As luck would have it, my calendar was double-booked that week. In the red corner, a 2021 Porsche 718 Boxster GTS with a revvy 4.0L naturally aspirated engine, manual transmission, and fixed carbon fiber bucket seats. In the pearl-white corner, a 2021 Toyota Venza with cooled and heated seats, adaptive cruise control, and a hybrid powertrain capable of a combined 39mpg (6l/100km). You'll be able to read about how addictive that Porsche was in the near future, but obviously it was the wrong tool for this particular job.
So after checking with the nice people at Toyota to make sure they were OK with me adding 750 miles (1,207km) to their new crossover-they were-the day booked off work, and with all the forms filled in to satisfy New York's public health people, we were all set.
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