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By Thelma Louise

Specialist Motoring Reporter


What? No auto locking thingie in this day and age?

Toyota’s Starlet has one glaring omission despite being a nice all-round car.


Driving a car around these days is hardly safe, especially for us women, and even more so if you have children on board too. So, what is quite surprising, is that in 2020, Toyota’s new Starlet does not have an auto locking thingie that locks the doors automatically when you drive off.

I guess you will just have to learn to get into the habit of locking the doors manually via the switch on the inside of the driver’s door every time you start the car to give yourself a chance against the baddies, and also to stop your kids from jumping out the back on the way to school.

The other issue, albeit a small one, was that absolutely no one liked the dark grey and white striped floor mats. It’s different, but from a fashion-sense it simply doesn’t work. Isn’t the main purpose of zebra stripes other than appearing on a zebra’s hide to aid pedestrians in crossing the road?

The positives are that the car is easy to manoeuvre, the accelerator is responsive, and the boot is big. With parking spaces at shopping malls and just about everywhere else seemingly getting smaller by the day, having something that can easily negotiate tight spaces is always a blessing; with the reverse camera being an added bonus.

The Starlet doesn’t feel powerful, but at least the accelerator responds nicely when you push it. In fact, I think the accelerator is more obedient than my children are. When you put your foot down, it listens and does exactly what you asked for. Them, not so much!

When I said the boot was big, I have no idea exactly how big, I mean, what woman really knows this kind of stuff. What I am saying is that the boot is deep, and this meant I could pack all sorts of things in there without removing the boot cover. So many other hatchbacks now days have this flat floor thing going on, and this just kills your available boot space. The Starlet’s boot on the other hand is just begging to be filled with dozens of shoe boxes!

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