TOYOTA YARIS GRMN
Humble origins, but the tiny Toyota is a big deal, reckons Antony Ingram
CAST YOUR MIND BACK TO 1996, BEFORE Toyota’s first Yaris came to be. Not the most inspiring of mental holidays, I grant you, but stick with me here.
Toyota’s contemporary tot was the Starlet, a vehicle about as generically ‘small car’ as it’s possible to get. A vehicle further from a hot hatchback you could hardly imagine, and aside from Toyota UK’S admirable attempts to jazz it up in SR form with some Speedline alloys and a Castrolinspired flash of graphical colour, it had the charm of a roadside Portakabin café and the agility of a diving suit.
Yet, as is so often the case, things were different in Japan. Over there, alongside the standard blue-rinse Starlets, was something called the Glanza V. The name sounded like it came from another planet, and for all its similarity to a regular Starlet it might as well have done. Out went the anaemic 74bhp 1.3, and in its place a dual-overhead cam, turbocharged 1.3-litre was installed, delivering 138bhp to the front wheels. The garden-centre bodywork was almost entirely covered with air dams, scoops, wings and skirts, and the Glanza sprinted to 62mph in a shade over eight seconds.
Why am I telling you this? Because 2018’s Toyota Yaris GRMN is as far removed from the base product as that Glanza was back in the mid-1990s. From the chrysalis of a model better known for its worthy-but-dull hybrids, it was almost inconceivable that one of the year’s most refreshing and entertaining hot hatchbacks could emerge.
This was a parts-bin car in the best possible sense, components hand-picked to be greater than the sum of their parts. The 2ZR-FE 1.8-litre four-cylinder engine had started life in Corollas and other family cars, before passing through Lotus where it gained a supercharger. In its final, Yaris-shaped home, the 2ZR made a frenzied 209bhp and 184lb ft of torque, through a six-speed close-ratio gearbox and Torsen diff.
The black lattice-spoke alloy wheels were forged by BBS, the dampers developed by Sachs, and the GT86 donated its small-diameter three-spoke steering wheel. Sports seats completed the effect in an otherwise unremarkable Yaris cabin, but made all the difference to how it felt, even if drivers ended up perched a little too high.
True, the GRMN couldn’t quite match the polish of the similarly special Peugeot Sport 208 GTI, but to drive it was to understand the name. GRMN stands for Gazoo Racing tuned by Meister of the Nürburgring, and Toyota will only apply the tag to cars that have spent sufficient time there to earn it. Playful, revvy and adjustable, the Yaris GRMN absolutely did, and this makes it an even more credible performance car than those sporty Starlets of the Gran Turismo era.
There is one other thing that separates the GRMN from the Glanza V, though. Unlike that car, Toyota saw fit to sell the GRMN in Europe, and in limited numbers at that. Just 600 Yaris GRMNS were built in total, with the UK’S allocation of 100 selling out almost immediately despite a £26,295 price tag.
If not for the way it drives or the high-engineering cool, the GRMN’S skunkworks rarity guarantees its status as a future icon. And if that’s what Toyota’s engineers can do with the Yaris as a starting point, the brand’s credibility and the Yaris GRMN’S collectibility should only grow further when Gazoo Racing gets its hands on the latest Corolla.
‘THIS WAS A PARTS-BIN CAR IN THE BEST POSSIBLE SENSE’