• Good use of some high quality materials
• Nice, clear infotainment screen
• A nice mix of physical and touch controls

How is the quality and layout?

Toyota has listened to criticism and made the second-generation C-HR’s interior far more appealing than the first, at least up front. There’s a greater spread of soft-touch materials, higher-resolution screens and a classier feel all round.

It retains physical controls for the heating, buttons on the steering wheel and the infotainment screen is mounted high, making it an easy car to interact with. For a start, the door cards are almost all hard, scratchy plastic and would look more at home on an Aygo X supermini.

But you can tell where Toyota has trimmed its margins, and this is more jarring in the more expensive plug-in hybrid version. The door cards feel a little cheap for a £40,000 car but, in fairness, they should be easy to maintain. We’re not particularly fond of the dashboard trim near the A-panels, either. It almost feels like they were added as an afterthought, as they wiggle on their mounts.

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Infotainment and tech

Entry-level Icon trim gets an 8.0-inch touchscreen and 7.0-inch driver’s display that we’re yet to try. Move up a rung and both screens are boosted to 12.3-inches with a higher resolution and more features. The infotainment is responsive, looks good and has easy to follow sat nav. Alternatively, all models come with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.

The driver’s display isn’t quite as intuitive as what you’ll find in a Cupra Formentor, but still shows a wide variety of information clearly with sharp graphics. Space up front is plentiful, even with a panoramic sunroof fitted, although things aren’t as jolly in the back.

You can’t get the plug-in hybrid in the most basic Icon specification, so you can only have it with the car’s larger infotainment set-up. This is a good thing, because the extra real estate makes it easier to read navigation instructions. Plus, it looks swish and gives you tangible justification for the PHEV’s steeper base price.

The touchscreen is teamed with the 12.3-inch digital gauge cluster you get on Design-spec versions of the C-HR hybrid but, because it’s wired into a PHEV system, it displays some extra info, such as your remaining EV range and battery capacity.

Comfort

• Excellent driving position
• Supportive front seats
• Unimpressive rear comfort

The driving position is fundamentally sound with seats that have a good array of adjustment including driver’s lumbar on all but Icon. They’re comfortable on longer journeys and hold you in place reasonably well if you’re cornering hard.

The rear seats are much flatter, while the centre perch isn’t sculpted or particularly wide. There’s also a small tunnel for the centre occupant to contend with, but it’s not very tall. The Isofix mounts on the rear outer seats have plastic covers and are easy to slot into, saving plenty of sweating and swearing.

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