Chicago 2013 – Toyota Avalon Hybrid Sets the Bar Pretty High (w/ video)

This is the new-for-2013 Toyota Avalon Hybrid. For me, the Avalon was the undisputed star of the show – and it changed the way this gear-head looks at cars in (what, to a gear-head, might seem like) a profound and fundamental way. Let me tell you about it.

See, at some point over the last 35 years, I decided that $48,000 was “the most any reasonable person should pay for a new car”. Granted, there’s plenty of things to pick apart in that statement. “Reasonable” is a bit ill-defined. “Should” is probably another word we’d want to define before really settling in to get this well and truly Correct (I mean, should you pay anything at all for a new car? Is all property theft? Should I even say “should”? Would “would” be better?). Problems abound, in other words, and I’m not going to defend the statement. It’s just my opinion, and (as the saying goes) opinions are like a**holes.

I don’t remember why I formed that opinion, but I’ve stuck with it for years. This past Wednesday, though, I was hanging out at Toyota Scion of Westmont before the Chicago Auto Show and happened to find myself in the shotgun seat of a new-for-2013 Toyota Avalon Hybrid.

“Hot damn,” I said, “I can’t believe how nice this interior is! How can people possibly justify spending all that money on a new Lexus when they can get this for … how much is this thing, anyway?”

$35,990.

I was floored. I was sitting inside a car not unlike the one in these pictures, surrounded in absolute quiet, sitting in buttery soft leather seats and gazing across gorgeous black wood and an instrument panel bustling with tight-fitting panels and dark woods. I loved the car. It is every bit as nice as any of the half-dozen Lexus models I’ve been in over the past year, and quite a bit nicer, roomier, and quieter than the GTRs, 911s, or BMWs I regularly find myself in.

Did I mention that the new Toyota Avalon hybrid gets 40 mpg? Seriously, if you absolutely must buy a new car and somehow convince yourself that you need something more than what this car has to offer, I think you’re probably the kind of person who thinks being called “selfish” or “petty” is some kind of compliment (despite skipping the long speeches in Atlas Shrugged).

That’s just my opinion, though. I could be wrong.

You can check out Toyota’s own 2013 Toyota Avalon Hybrid promo video, below, and some of the pictures from the Chicago Auto Show floor at bottom. Enjoy!