Toyota Hycross / Invicto Review: Buy Carens Instead
The Toyota Hycross / Maruti Nexa Invicto is a petrol MPV, which is to say that it has three rows of seats where the third can be folded:
I test-drove it both in the city and on the highway, and evaluated it against my requirements. I wouldn’t recommend either. These are 3-row vehicles. If you want a 3-row vehicle, buy the Carens. If you’re not particular about having 3 rows, buy an M.G. Windsor or Tata Curvv EV. If you insist on buying a fossil fuel-powered clunker, buy the Creta — it’s the best of the obsolete technology. Regardless of what you want, there’s a better option than the Hycross or the Invicto. These are not bad vehicles. They’re good. But the market has excellent alternatives available. We suffer from an embarrassment of riches.
But let’s say you’ve decided to buy the Hycross / Invicto. Which among the two should you buy? Buy the Hycross. The Invicto is just a Low-cross — a low-end version of the Hycross. It misses some features, some don’t work at all, and some work with bugs. The Invicto is easy to dismiss in favor of the Hycross.
If you want to understand the Hycross / Invicto in detail, read on for strengths (+) and weaknesses (-). The points below apply to both cars, except when specified otherwise:
± The car is very long (4.8 meters) and wide (1.85 meters), so it requires far more space to navigate and to park than a Creta.
+ LED headlamps
± The headlamps are not projector headlamps
+ Extremely high driving position over the road
± The car is hybrid with an eCVT. Unlike a CVT, there wasn’t a high lag or a whine.
+ The car is equipped with a 2-liter 4-cylinder non-turbocharged engine. I don’t mind the lack of a turbocharger, since it avoids turbo lag (when you press the accelerator and the turbo takes a second to turn on, until which time you have less acceleration).
- The Invicto has an EV Mode button that is supposed to put it into a purely electric mode. But it didn’t work — it said that the battery is discharged. I drove for some 5-10 km and tried again and it gave the same error. Why didn’t it charge it in all this while? And if it’s not going to work, why have the EV mode button at all?
± You can activate the rear camera only by putting it in reverse.
+ There’s a front camera and sensor. When parking, it beeps as you come close to the wall you’re parking in front of. But, in traffic, when you stop close to the car in front of you, it keeps beeping continuously, which you can’t turn off. This makes it annoying in Bangalore traffic.
+ 360-degree camera
+ Steering feels light
+ There’s no leather in the car, which is good since it avoids cruelty to animals
± Auto hold
- Auto hold jerks forward when you want to get going
+ Adaptive cruise control
+ Button to fold ORMs in narrow roads.
+ Follow me home lights (lights that remain on for a short while after you lock your car, so that you can make your way home).
+ Shows outside temperature
- In the Invicto, when I stopped for more than a minute or so, the car beeped and adjusted suddenly. This happened twice.
- The Invicto has a light above the glove compartment, which can’t be turned off
- The Invicto has mood lights around the panoramic sunroof, but they don’t work.
Comfort
- The headroom is poor. I have to lower the seat to get even a modicum of headroom, but that in turn:
- Presses my stomach, which makes it uncomfortable.
- Poor legroom: I can’t stretch my legs comfortably.
+ 8-way electrically adjustable seat but it didn’t feel comfortable
- The steering wheel touches my knee.
- At 80+ kph, there’s noise caused by the wind hitting the quarter glass. This is very apparent and annoying, and sounds like a defect in the car. Most cars don’t have this problem.
- Engine refinement is not great.
Driving
+ Reaches 176 easily
+ Stable at 176
Digital features
+ Wired CarPlay is supported, which is more reliable than wireless.
+ USB-C
+ The Hycross supports CarPlay via USB-C, while the Invicto does so only via USB-A. The former is better since your phone charges faster.
- The music system isn’t as good as the Creta. The latter makes it emotional to listen to my favorite music. The Hycross uses a JBL music system, while the Invicto uses one made by Arkamys, which is a company I never heard of.
- In the Invicto, the parking camera shows different icons for rear, front and 360-degree cameras. But these icons are blurry and inscrutable, so I can’t tell which is which, and neither could the salesman. Further, the icons keep shaking rather than remaining in one place. I have never seen any company so incompetent at UI development that they can’t make an icon stay in one place. The Invicto doesn’t have the quality expected at its price of 37 lakhs. In fact, the Kiger at 15 lakhs is a higher-quality car!
It shouldn’t be surprising that the Invicto is a mediocre product when you remind yourself that Maruti is a company focusing on low-cost1 cars. Their culture reflects that. Nexa is supposed to be Maruti’s high-end brand, but merely slapping a new logo on the website doesn’t change the company’s culture.
- In the Invicto, the camera screen appears when you slow down. The car thinks you’re parking. You can’t turn this off. I would want Google Maps to be on screen so that I know which way to navigate.
- In the Invicto, say you’ve navigated to the music settings screen. Now, as you drive, every time you slow down or exceed the threshold at which the parking camera is activated (see previous point), the screen blinks. It’s apparently trying to activate the camera screen but failing. Again, low-quality, buggy Maruti junk.
Cooling
+ Climate control
+ You can start the AC remotely using the app.
+ Panoramic sunroof. These are excellent at cooling down in minutes even a black car that has been parked for hours in the afternoon summer sun during a heat wave.
+ Ventilated seats
- You can’t have a different AC temperature for the driver and front passenger, but you can for the front and rear seat.
+ Rear window sunshades
± The glovebox is not cooled, but the AC vents are aimed at the cupholder, to cool the water.
Safety
+ Seat belt pretensioner with force limiter
+ Airbags provide full coverage in front and to the side (head, chest and hip)
+ Knee airbags2.
+ ESC
+ EBD
+ DRLs
+ Auto headlamps
- No active rollover protection.
+ TPMS
- No multi-collision brake
± The Invicto doesn’t have any ADAS features. On the other hand, the Hycross has lane-keeping assist and blind spot monitoring, both visual (an orange icon in the wing mirror if someone is in your blind spot) and audible (when I aggressively changed lanes in front of someone, it beeped).
+ In an accident, the steering column breaks away so that you don’t injure yourself by hitting it3.
According to ChatGPT, the above are proven to reduce deaths and permanent disabilities.
Front passenger seat
+ I can stretch my legs comfortably
- Poor headroom
- The suspension is poor by the standard of the MG Windsor or Creta: I felt potholes and undulations in the road even at 60 kph4.
+ Panoramic window
± Not electrically adjustable
- No height or thigh support adjustment, only sliding front / back and the backrest angle.
- There are lights near the foot which can’t be turned off5.
Rear seat
- I can’t stretch my legs. I can’t even put my feet under the front seats as I can in many cars, since this car has a battery. An MPV is supposed to be more spacious than normal cars, but this car is worse on this dimension.
+ In the Hycross, the seat can electrically recline.
+ In the Hycross, you have an electrically unfolding panel that gives you calf support, so you can sit with your legs elevated, but there isn’t enough legroom. My feet got wedged in between the calf support and the seat in front.
- Poor headroom.
+ There’s a lot of arm room6.
± With the Invicto, you can choose either captain’s seats or a bench seat in the middle row. On the other hand, the Hycross comes only with captain’s seats.
- The panoramic sunroof is not panoramic width-wise, so it’s to the right of your head, not above.
- The window is not panoramic since your eye is near the top.
- The window armrest is not plush.
- The center tray armrest has two cupholders but no phone holder. It’s plush but thin.
+ Dual USB-C ports
+ You can turn the AC on/off from both the middle row seat and the front seat, and you can adjust the temperature and fan speed.
All aspects of Total Cost of Ownership: mileage, repair costs, and resale value. I was amazed to get a quote for my 11-year-old Ritz that was half the purchase price.
… in the Hycross. I don’t remember about the Invicto.
… in the Hycross. I don’t remember about the Invicto.
This is in the Invicto. I don’t remember about the Hycross.
… in the Hycross. I don’t remember about the Invicto.
The feeling of space you get when you stretch your arms forward.