2011 Toyota Avalon Limited

It's a good thing that no Avalon owner has a heavy foot, because these front tires are very easy to squeal. It amused me, however, to imagine dozens of blue-haired old ladies or socks-and-sandals grandfathers getting pulled over for peeling out hither and yon up and down the Florida peninsula. Unfortunately, that's the only amusement I got out of driving the Toyota brand's flagship sedan. The Avalon is much like its smaller sibling, the Camry: it's purely an appliance for people who care nothing about cars. At the same time, though, the Avalon is a very nice, spacious, comfortable, and luxurious automobile, especially in the Limited trim that we tested. Toyota's approach with this model is so conservative that it's hard to tell that this Avalon has been updated from the car I wrote about five years ago for a comparison story for this website; one big clue, however, is that there's no longer a cassette-tape deck in the Avalon's center stack. Speaking of things finally put out to pasture, the Avalon might be a great taxi and airport-fleet replacement now that Ford has stopped building its hoary Crown Victoria. Rusty Blackwell, Copy Editor