Back in the summer, we had a family holiday booked to Cornwall – along with most of the rest of the UK as it appeared. As usual, taking two kids on holiday with the standard barrage of equipment meant the family 5-door Mini wasn’t going to cut it. Enter stage left: the brand-new Toyota Highlander.

Toyota have always been good at making both tiny and massive cars – the Yaris has long been a stalwart for new drivers (and more recently, with the GR, which was incredible) and the likes of the Rav4 and Landcruiser for those who want something on the larger end of the scale.

Targeted at families

The Highlander is therefore not technically breaking new ground for Toyota, but unlike the Landcruiser which is the closest large offering, this feels more targeted at families. The Landcruiser is more utilitarian, but the Highlander had genuine comforts on offer, and seven seats that still left a decent boot space.

So a big, family-focused 4x4, with hybrid technology and enough space to pack the kitchen sink meets the notoriously narrow lanes of Cornwall. What could possibly go wrong?

As it happened, nothing did, but there were a few moments when I wasn’t sure if it was going to fit through gaps. Luckily, the very accurate parking sensors and rear camera were there to help me out.

Sometimes, sensors can be marginally helpful at best – alerting you to objects that are still a foot or two away – but the Highlander’s were very useful, especially in one particularly narrow Cornish seaside town where parking was at a massive premium. I took a wrong turn and ended up half a mile outside of the village before I could turn around! Certainly, without the sensors, parking such a large vehicle would have been a lot trickier.

“The Highlander never let me down once”

The great thing about taking a car like this away on holiday is that I get to test it under pretty much all conditions – motorways, tight lanes and car parks a-plenty. I have to say, the Highlander never let me down once.

Good in any situation or weather condition, it is capable over pretty much anything (as you’d expect from the people who brought us the Landcruiser) but also incredibly comfortable to drive and be driven in. Glowing reviews all round from the whole family meant it had a clean sweep of appreciation.

Incredibly frugal

Being a Toyota, it’s also a hybrid. I’ve said before that Toyota’s hybrid system is one of the better on the market. This car measures almost 5 metres long, has a 2.5 litre petrol engine and weighs more than two tonnes before it’s loaded with a family-holiday worth of luggage, but it’s still incredibly frugal. I forget the actual MPG achieved, but it was surprisingly good, all things considered and much better than I expected.

To sum up, the Highlander is an incredibly versatile, comfortable and economical offering from Toyota and my only surprise is that I haven’t seen more on the roads. It is genuinely impressive and even given the £50k price tag, offers better value than most rivals I can think of.