Our intrepid Auto123 contributor Michel Crépaut criss-crossed Croatia in a plug-in hybrid Toyota C-HR. Here’s the second part of his review.
See: I Criss-Crossed Croatia in a C-HR… PHEV! (Part 1)
Whilst commiserating with each other for missing out on the Grossglockner and after exploring Ljubljana in Slovenia, we finally emerged in Croatia behind the wheel of our Toyota C-HR GR PHEV.
The attraction
For our first stop in Croatia, we had decided in advance to extend it to three nights after learning of Opatija's nickname: the Pearl of the Adriatic. As early as 1885, visionaries began developing the Emperor Franz Joseph I Promenade in a town pampered by the Austro-Hungarian elite. Measuring 12 km long, this paved path follows the twists and turns of the coastline. By day or by night, dotted with romantic streetlamps, there’s magic in the air.
On one side of the trail, the blue waves lap the steps of the many coves where people have been taking dips for ages and where masts of pretty sailboats bob about. We met the Maiden with the Seagull standing on her rock, a symbol of the city, no doubt a first cousin to Denmark's Little Mermaid.
On the other side stand noble walls of century-old villas and historic hotels, revealing almost secret passages that lead, among other places, to the exotic plants of Angiolina Park, or, a more refreshing pleasure, to the ice cream vendor.
Unlike the glitz of Cannes' Croisette or the Cartesian Promenade des Anglais in Nice, Opatija's coastal path exudes a charmingly vintage and warm atmosphere. Peaceful, too. Because unlike the French Riviera, which borders noisy car traffic, the Croatian Riviera disconnects walkers from modern frenzy. A blessed time during which the C-HR did not budge an inch.
It returned to service — and how! — when my sister, who has lived in Sweden for over 40 years, and her Scandinavian husband arrived. After introducing them to the charms of the Lungomare (the colloquial name for the famous promenade), we set off for the Plitvice Lakes, another promising destination.
The gentlemen took their places up front in comfortable bucket seats, the ladies on the 60/40 bench seat. Nothing chauvinistic, I swear, just plain common sense since my brother-in-law stands over 6 ft tall.
Even though we had studiously avoided hard-shell suitcases, four travelers in a C-HR presents a challenge. I had to push down with all my weight on the tailgate before hearing the reassuring click of the trunk locking. In the end, the 310-litre cargo space of the C-HR GR PHEV took in what we forced on it, with the exception of one piece of luggage, repurposed as a central armrest for our back-row occupants.
It would have been simpler with the Canadian-spec C-HR. As mentioned, it’s longer, plus its tailgate is also less angular and its battery, though much larger (77 kWh vs 13.6 kWh), is spread out under the floor; the plug-in hybrid’s battery eats into the cargo space. In fact, behind the rear seats, the all-electric C-HR offers more than double the volume of its PHEV counterpart at 720 litres. With the seats folded down, total capacity is 1,685 litres versus 1,160 for the PHEV.
Perfection
About 160 km separate Opatija from Plitvice, the largest (300 sq km) and oldest national park in Croatia, designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1979.
It may have been loaded to the max, but the C-HR climbed the coastal road without complaining. The coast receded behind us as we pitched the little crossover onto mountain switchbacks where the regenerative braking discs did their work very competently (the electric C-HR's regeneration is adjustable via steering wheel paddles).
After the Gorski Kotar plateau, Croatia's “green lung” planted with fir trees and lush valleys, isolated villages and stone walls emerged from the meadow. Finally, the appearance of white rock flush with the ground (flush-fitting like the C-HR PHEV's door handles, an aesthetic and aerodynamic touch bypassed in Canada because of our frosty mornings) announced the start of the park.
The magic of this unique park relies in part on a chemical reaction in the water between minerals and microscopic vegetation that transforms into travertine (or tufa), a porous limestone known since antiquity (See: the Colosseum in Rome). At Plitvice, this travertine has carved out 16 lakes with fascinating turquoise and emerald colours that feed into one another through 92 waterfalls, including the highest in Croatia at 78 metres.
You can’t swim there (to protect the delicate formation of the travertine), but you can walk to your heart's content year-round. Visitors, equipped with a ticket purchased long in advance (to limit crowding), choose from eight distinct routes (between 3.5 and 21 km) punctuated by interludes on electric boats.
The water is crystal clear, elves inhabit the forest, the waterfalls sparkle. My iPhone came out often to immortalize this barely tamed wild beauty.
With our Nature quota as filled to the brim as the C-HR, we felt ready to tackle Zagreb, the capital of Croatia.
Humanization
On a pedestal, proudly upright on his horse, Count Josip Jelačić, the national hero who abolished serfdom in 1848, seems to direct traffic with his pointed sabre. Since 1975, city leaders have made his job easier by transforming the heart of Zagreb into a vast pedestrian zone. Only blue trams travel through it, at a snail's pace, to spare tourists playing hopscotch on the network of rails.
The central square, designed for humans before machines (the poor C-HR, once again it had to be tucked away), sums up the atmosphere well. The buildings are less elegant than in Vienna, but time ticks away more slowly. We felt it even more as we happened to enter the city on foot on the day a marathon was being run. With the streets turned into the exclusive playground of athletes, Zagreb's human scale was magnified.
From the Count's statue, sprawling avenues climb toward the Upper Town and descend toward the Lower Town, the two historic sections to explore. Among the highlights, the patriotic roof of St. Mark's Church whose tiles form coats of arms, the stories and items in the Museum of Broken Relationships dedicated to love stories that ended poorly, the seven horseshoe-shaped green spaces and the Dolac Market, the “belly of Zagreb”, bristling with red umbrellas. That’s not to mention the dozens upon dozens of cafes where visitors and Zagreb residents take time to catch their breath.
The avenues where cars are tolerated are lined with offices, shops and apartments. But there’s a challenge: how to access them, if even for 10 minutes to pick up your shoes from the cobbler or drop off Aunt Irma and her suitcases? Impossible along the pavements because the trams run right alongside them. Only one solution: pull up right in the middle of the street and, with hazard lights flashing, unload passengers at their own risk.
Fascination
Our trip was drawing to a close. After leaving Croatia and before returning to our starting point in Vienna, we spent 24 hours in Graz, Austria's second-largest city and yet another historic centre praised by UNESCO. I could dwell on the 260 steps carved into the rock that we climbed (funiculars are for others, not because it dates back to 1894, but because feasting in restaurants requires a certain self-flagellation in return) to reach the terraces of the Schlossberg, the fortress overlooking the old town.
I cannot hide the terror I felt being foolish enough to go back down via The Slide, the world's longest underground slide where, sitting on a piece of fabric, you hurtle down a metal tube winding through pitch darkness at 35 km/h for what feels like eternity.
I mention that anecdote only as an onramp to share my fascination with another type of underground space: the helical ramps connecting the levels of multi-storey car parks. When I see one, I can’t help myself; I have to try it! Yes, I have watched too many Hollywood car chases…
I had just found the reserved space for the C-HR on the first floor of the car park. All I had to do was park and start exploring Graz. That was when I spotted the access ramp. I succumbed.
I positioned the front of the C-HR where my experience told me to start the climb. However, I realized I wouldn’t reach the upper floor at supersonic speed because the dimensions of the PHEV and those of the ramp were just a little too similar. My feet were going to have to display some real finesse. That was without counting on the driver assistance systems of the Toyota Safety Sense 3.0 suite.
As soon as a corner of the car got too close to the low wall, the C-HR would either brake abruptly, emit a warning chime as pleasant as a root canal or choose the nuclear option, which was both at once. But I had no choice but to rely on them because this C-HR's sporty shell renders all four corners of the car invisible. You assume their presence, you guess the rest. Without disabling anything, it was in a terrible mixture of doubts, sudden stops, advancing millimetre by millimetre, and shrill audible alerts that I finally, about 10 minutes later, reached the second floor.
It was empty, except for bicycles and motorcycles…
Torn between bursting out laughing and utter dismay, I had all the space in the world to execute a U-turn and begin descending that infernal ramp. But fatigue, my heightened senses, and my stubbornness played a nasty trick on me: I just wanted to get out of the trap I had gotten myself into.
I entered the curve. In the rear-view mirror, I saw the gap separating the damned wall from the C-HR's flared wing. I could have slipped a sheet of paper through, hardly more. I blamed the car's designers! I tried over and over, always that infinitesimal gap between success and disaster. Then, exhausted, I resigned myself to hearing the horrible sound of metal scraping against concrete. In slow motion.
I parked the scarred C-HR where I should have right from the start and assessed the damage. A paint job was awaiting the kind dealership.
Moral of the story: before tackling Everest, always make sure you have the right equipment and the right frame of mind.
The thousand and one tender explanations my sweet provided during dinner to excuse my stubborn clumsiness helped keep the swan song of our rich adventure in Croatia from turning into an off-tune dirge.
Croatia. A country to which I wish a future as bright as the present it offers its inhabitants and visitors. A nation both traditionalist and modern, eco-friendly and connected. Indeed, much like the Toyota C-HR. May these resilient people retain the lesson of history, and I mine when facing a spiral ramp.
