2017 Toyota C-HR Hybrid Excel

The Toyota C-HR is part coupé, part hatchback and part crossover. It’s a fusion of conventional vehicle bodystyles that indicates most tellingly of all just how many crossover hatchbacks have been launched into what we refer to so often as ‘the Qashqai class’ in the past couple of years. You now have to design one as wacky-looking as this just to get people’s attention.

The C-HR, or ‘coupé high-rider’, has just arrived in UK showrooms, and it plainly aims for a fairly design-savvy crowd. By the standards of the cars it's up against – the Nissan Qashqai, Peugeot 3008, Seat Ateca and Kia Niro – it compromises a little bit of cabin and boot space for the freedom to accommodate that swooping roofline, sloping rear end and those deeply sculpted body surfaces.

If you don’t like the way the C-HR looks, and the idea of a marginally less practical crossover hatchback seems entirely pointless to you – because isn’t that just a normal hatchback, after all? – I guess you know you’re not in Toyota’s target market. The company’s own definition of a C-HR buyer is “a young customer driven by emotional considerations, as well as by style and quality, who wants their car to serve as an extension of their personality”.

So there you are. Those fiddly rear door handles, mounted so highly as to be almost out of reach to anyone small enough to be comfortable in the back seats, are emotional. They’d have that kind of effect on me, I fear. But otherwise, putting all cynicism to one side, the C-HR’s is a design that certainly has its moments and wins plenty of admiring glances on the street.

Toyota offers the car with a choice of 120bhp 1.8-litre petrol-electric hybrid and 113bhp 1.2-litre turbo petrol engines, with either six-speed manual or continuously variable transmissions and with either front-wheel drive or four-wheel drive. Given that it’ll account for seven out of 10 UK sales, it was the hybrid we turned to for our first UK test.

On the one hand, it’s pleasing to slide into the C-HR and find that the car’s agenda isn’t only about high design. The fascia at once looks and feels solidly built. It’s cleverly laid out, too, dominated by Toyota’s 7.0in colour touchscreen infotainment system at the head of the centre stack. The use of high-gloss black plastic on the dashboard and centre console is quite liberal and won’t be to everyone’s taste, and the seats are a little short and flat in the cushion to grant perfect at-the-wheel comfort. But otherwise, thoughtful design and high-quality fit and finish are in plentiful evidence. We like the teardrop-shaped cupholders particularly, made to better admit a travel mug with a handle.

The other good news is that anyone worried how much less rear cabin space the car may grant than their current, more practical but more visually prosaic crossover needn’t really worry – unless they carry large adults in the back. Access to the C-HR’s back seats is easy enough (funny door handles notwithstanding) and there’s enough occupant space for anyone under 6ft tall. Knee and foot space are, in fact, as good as in most compact crossovers. Head room is the limiting factor, with a claustrophobic feel exacerbated by the car’s pinched windowline.

The C-HR adopts Toyota’s TNGA model platform, as seen previously under the current Prius hatchback, with this model in particular using the same hybrid powertrain as the Prius as well. That means the C-HR gets double wishbone independent rear suspension for optimal wheel camber control and uncompromised ride tuning – which does indeed pay off in the driving experience.