Toyota’s Dynamic spend-setter
IT’S A SIGN of advancing years. It first happened at the cinema when the young girl behind the desk charged me twenty quid for a ticket and a bag of popcorn. “Twenty pounds!” I exclaimed, “When
I was 18 I paid that for a Mini.”
My daughter, who was about 20 at the time, rolled her eyes.
Naturally, now that I’m even older it happens all the time, most recently with the new Toyota Yaris.
Toyota’s supermini was launched in 1999 and immediately scooped the honour of being European Car of the Year.
Unusually for that rather random competition (there’s often a noticeable national bias) the Yaris was a worthy winner.
Not exciting but well made, straightforward and efficient.
Hopefully the new model that we’re testing today is more of the same. But it costs £21,920.
Blimey, you could buy a hot Ford Fiesta ST for that a couple of years ago. I thought superminis cost under ten thousand pounds? Once they did.
Thanks to the ruddy virus the cars that we’re testing in sunny Sussex are Belgium specification cars in left-hand drive.
The one we’re driving is very similar to the UK’s Dynamic specification car which sits more or less in the middle of the range.
Below it as the entry level model is the £19,910 Icon and next up the Design at £20,970.
At the top is the flagship Launch Edition at £24,005. Of course, quoting on-the-road prices in a world in which over 80 per cent of buyers use finance or PCP schemes is fairly irrelevant.
Still, money’s money and a retail price of say, £16k, would mean lower payments.
One of the reasons the Yaris is a bit more expensive than we’re used to is that all the first models to go on sale in the UK, whatever the trim level, have hybrid powertrains.
This set-up is comprised of a three-cylinder 1.5-litre petrol engine that produces 90bhp.
Helping this is a 59kW electric
motor that, combined with the petrol engine, gives a total system power of 114bhp.
There was a hybrid version of the last generation (the Mk3) Yaris but this one has a lithium-ion battery instead of the old car’s nickel hydride unit.
The new battery has several advantages: energy regeneration from braking is more efficient and the extra torque provided by the more powerful lithium-ion battery makes the rising of revs that you get with Toyota’s CVT automatic transmissions less irritating.
THIS YARIS can also spend much more time operating on electric power alone. Toyota’s design departments have been producing some great work over the last few years.
Their new Corolla, launched early last year, is a transformation compared to the bland, unremarkable white goods that came before it.The Supra sports car is a blindingly attractive design and even the little Aygo is cute and appealing.
This Yaris is no exception.
It’s built on an all-new platform that is considerably stiffer than the one that the previous Yaris used.
That’s good news for the way the car drives and also for NVH (Noise,Vibration, Harshness).
The torsion beam in the car’s rear suspension is 80 per cent stiffer, which has allowed the engineers to use softer springs and still not end up with a car that rolls in corners.This should pay dividends in comfort.
I’d rather test a left-hand drive car, in a slightly different specification to the final UK models, on our British roads, than drive a proper UK car on roads in Spain or Germany that are as smooth as a marble floor. I have found many times over the three decades that I’ve been doing this job, that a car that drives beautifully on smooth continental roads, is a boneshaker on our poorly-maintained highways.
The Yaris looks appealing on the outside but not so much on the inside as there’s a lot of grey plastics and not much design flair.
The car bucks the modern trend by being slightly smaller than the model that it replaces.
However, the wheelbase is 50mm longer and the car is a bit wider so the cabin space has grown.
There’s plenty of room in the front but the rear is cramped compared to several rivals and the 281 litres of luggage space seems fine until you compare it with the Renault Clio’s 391 litres.
There are none of the crisp digital instrument displays that you’ll find on the new Seat Leon or Peugeot 208.
But at least Toyota has at last fitted a car with an infotainment system that can be mirrored with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.
This has the additional benefit that you don’t have to use Toyota’s own rather clunky system with its poor graphics.
Transition between electric power and the petrol engine is supremely slick, and even more so once you get the hang of driving the Yaris smoothly to get the right blend of performance and efficiency.
As promised by the new suspension the Yaris is comfortable even over our roads.
Managing over 50mpg during quite brisk driving was simple, getting nearer the official figures won’t be too difficult either if you drive the car smoothly and spend a lot of time in town – an environment in which the Yaris will be running in EV mode on the majority of occasions.
If you’ve owned a Yaris in the past you’ll love this new one – and if you’re after a hybrid it takes some beating. Shame it costs so much. But then again so does everything these days.