The best of both worlds

Our City Hybrid of the Year is the Toyota Yaris.

Hybrid technology features in every Toyota Yaris trim level and a recent package of improvements has made this petrol/electric supermini model smarter, plusher inside, better to drive and quieter.

Petrol/electric technology has worked well for the Toyota Yaris and the result is that hybrid variants account for an increasingly large proportion of total Yaris sales.

It has also helped that this model has been refreshed in recent times as part of a general Yaris range update that included 1,000 new parts and saw 576,000 man hours of development.

Though this wasn’t the market’s very first hybrid supermini, it was the first able to improve upon the running costs of comparable eco-conscious diesel models in this segment, while matching (or beating) them on price.

The Yaris Hybrid is powered by a combination of a 1.5-litre petrol engine and a small electric motor which together produce 100hp.

That might not sound much, but such is the torque of the motor that it feels as if it’s got the lazy flexibility of a bigger engine, which is exactly what you want around town.

You can pull away and drive just over a mile purely in electric mode if you’re light on the throttle and when the petrol engine does kick in, it’s anything but uncouth.

With ever stricter emissions-based tax legislation, the 79g/km hybrid future-proofs itself better than any diesel – which could be critical.

Even if you didn’t care what fuel economy or emissions figures it was getting, you’d be impressed with its ride quality in town, its smooth powertrain and the way it integrates big-car features into a supermini. Choose the base Active model and you’re getting an awful lot of car for around £16,000.

It’s a car that works brilliantly at its key remit: taking the slog out of city driving.

The entry-level hybrid Toyota Yaris, the Active model, is a lot of car for the money.