Replaced my 2012 Fortuner with a 2022 Fortuner 4x4: First impressions

The brakes on the 2020 Fortuner are far better than the 2012 model.

BHPian keerti_ck recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

Bought the Mighty Fortuner home!

Finally, after long PDI's and couple of sleepless nights, we finally took delivery of the vehicle on Wednesday afternoon. Delivery was done at Nandi Toyota - Kanakapura Road and it was seamless. The usual sweet distribution along with Key Handover and the photoshoot session. The Salesperson had told that the number plate would not be available, but he'd try to procure them before delivery. I was pleasantly surprised when he informed us that the number plates had come and the same was fitted after the key’s handover ceremony. I had also got the 360-degree camera fitted at Toyota. Attaching a few pics for your viewing pleasure. The Puja was done at Ganesha temple in Jayanagar. It was kind of gut wrenching to see a brand-new OLA S1 scooter bought for Puja just refusing to start. It was stuck at P and the poor guy was frantically making calls to the support folks. My heart goes out to his experience. Hope his issues are sorted soon.

We went to our native temple about 100km from Bangalore to seek the blessings. A few things that I was able to notice immediately after coming from the 2012 Fortuner.

Positives:

• The Engine is super smooth and delivers negligible noise when compared to my old beast.
• The clutch is not very heavy and gear shifting’s are a breeze. iMT works great but I realized that it’s more for city usage. You rev harder with iMT on and there’s an increase in RPM during the gear shift.
• Braking. Oh god! This is a HUGE improvement. The braking feels so much better. Never ever did I feel the need to have better brakes
• Getting used to 6th gear. Having driven a 5-gear vehicle all my life, 6th gear is something that I’d need to get used to
• Cruise Control – Tried the same on a few stretches of the highway and it works like a charm. Once you set the cruise control the increments are in 1 km each. Somewhere I’d read that it was in miles, but no, the display tells you the speed at which it is set, and you can increase/decrease it accordingly
• Dual Zone AC works like a charm. My missus was sitting on the front seat only for a short duration of time and she told me that AC was much better compared to our old beast
• Horns are loud enough. No qualms there

Niggles:

• The body roll is controlled but it’s still there. Very evident when you push the car through the corners. Wasn’t able to see any major issues there
• Dead pedal. For my last car which again was a 4x4 MT, it had a massive dead pedal where I could rest my left leg. That has been removed
• Use of Filament bulbs in a lot of places like the 3rd row and the doors. Come on Toyota! You take half a crore for the car, and you cut corners there? The ones on the door cladding are worthless. Not cool
• Bi-Beam LEDs are not extremely powerful even with the LED foglamps. Maybe I am used to the HID powered fogs and headlamps from my old car, but this is something which probably I need to get used to
• Music system could have been a better. The front experience is great but nothing out of the ordinary for the middle and 3rd row passengers

Eventful things – Not too happy about

2 major events happened.

The ICICI FASTag that came with the car started deducting tolls at its own whims. I got 10 messages of Toll getting deducted at toll booths which were 600+ km from Bangalore. Had to raise about 10 tickets with the customer care for the reversal and the promised ETA is 25 working days! Anyone else had the same issue? I am thinking to close this ICICI FASTag account and get another provider. My previous one was with IDFC, and I had no issues ever.

During the aftermarket fitment of the accessories like the Side cladding, Auto folding mirror (They just added some unit on the driver side door and yes, they removed the door padding) which was like a 5-minute work, LED fog lamps on the rear (looks damn cool!) etc., I noticed that the right side ORVM was of Pearl white Color! When I had done my PDI, everything was Super white, and something had changed between then and the delivery. I had to double check to be sure and I called Toyota and informed them about the mix-up. He was equally surprised and asked me to visit them on Friday. In the meanwhile, I was also told by the folks at Throttle that they’d broken a clamp during the fixing of the 360-degree camera near the left well and beadings of the door were not properly fixed. This information too was passed to the Salesperson. He was humble and apologized for this and informed that all of the aforesaid issues will be fixed within 30 minutes.

I went to the dealership today and as promised, they swapped the mirror with the super white one and were genuine enough to tell me that it was a mix-up as there were 4 other cars the same day for the camera setup. The broken clamps were replaced, and the vehicle was delivered to me within 20 minutes. Happy me! On my way to Carzspa in RR Nagar for the ceramic coating (I am getting a Crystal Shield Pentagon 10H), the DPF regen started and it went on for about 20 minutes after which promptly the message disappeared.

A question to all my fellow bhp’ians here. My car has run about 288 km and is it normal for the Regen to start so early? Seeing posts of DPF failure is giving me jitters. Anything that I need to look out for? My car is Sep 2022 manufactured.

Will keep you folks posted once I receive my car on Monday.

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