Toyota Teases Mouthy New Avalon Sedan For Detroit

Toyota has something big in store for the Detroit Auto Show, and it appears to be 90 percent grille.

Toyota will unveil a new Avalon sedan at the 2018 Detroit Auto Show, which takes place in the third week of January. The automaker issued a teaser with its confirmation of the new Avalon’s existence, and while it looks pretty similar to other new Toyotas, I have some questions.

The good news is that the Avalon will pick up the best of what modern Toyota has to offer. There are some aggressive-looking headlights with LED elements and some strong sculpting on the hood, which means the Avalon will mirror the Camry in a departure from Toyota’s previous design language, which was a little too safe.

However, I wonder if Toyota is going too far overboard here. Most everything below the headlight is grille — there’s barely any non-grille space on the edge of the bumper. The Avalon is Toyota’s largest sedan, and its demographic tends to skew older. It’ll be interesting to see if Toyota’s newfound desire for stronger looks will jibe with the Avalon’s core buyers.

We don’t know much else about the new Avalon. It will likely ride on a modified version of the Toyota New Global Architecture platform, a front-wheel-drive platform that underpins the new Camry and will eventually grow to cover a whole bunch of Toyota’s non-truck models. A hybrid version will likely remain available, and it’ll probably snag up a bunch of tech from the new Camry, include a Wi-Fi hotspot. We’ll find out in just a few weeks.