Chris Harris vs the rally-bred Toyota GR Yaris | Top Gear Series 30

It comes from

toyota

and it's called the gr

yaris

and at first glance it looks like the gr ticks all the boxes for a hot hatch, it makes around 250 horsepower which is adequate hot hatch power, it hits the 16 around five seconds and reaches the maximum. at 140 miles per hour which is proper hatch pace everything is pretty much as it should be until you hear about the price because this

toyota

yaris

costs over £33,000 33 grand protoyaris now that's hard to sell after the whole yaris badge evokes a certain lifestyle and not a particularly sporty one, i'm talking about saga cruisers stanley stairlifts tottenham carpets in short 33 thousand dollars for an improved oap mobile sounds like a big ask, especially when you consider the competition because For £14,000 less than the gr you could have one of those, the fiesta st, same size as the yaris, absolutely brilliant to drive or for a couple of grand less you could have one of these civic types, much more power, What a wonderful thing it seems, he eats kittens for breakfast. and for practically the same money you could have one of these, the mercedes amg a35, faster, more powerful and with a badge that doesn't scream zimmerframe, but here's the thing: you can't compare the yaris to normal hot hatches because it's not a normal model. hot hatch, let me explain, these are some of the biggest legends of the world

rally

championship, where to be eligible to compete the cars have always had to be closely based on a road car that you can actually buy, so to have more chance of winning, I really want to build a road car that is designed especially for racing, but that would be very expensive and as a result it almost never happens, but occasionally an automaker decides that yes, they will build a completely new road car and very fast, since it is perfect. base for your next

rally

car, these are called homologation specials and are some of the best cars ever made.

The audi sport quattro was shortened to make that monster with the big wings. Lancia delta in garlic is the road car with the highest homologation ever created. in which har kang could have won those championships and this could be my favorite, the evo six mitsubishi in which tommy mackinnon dominated the sport and then all the kids race in their dreams, the ford escort rs cosworth and what rally car he created, do not get wrong. This is a distinguished company and Toyota has now given the same treatment to its most unlikely car. The Gr Yaris is not a hot hatch.

This is a genuine rally car for the road. The engine is only a three-cylinder turbo petrol, but it is the most powerful on the market. world at the moment and it's packed with motorsport technology, but it's strong and then there are the brakes, the brake pedal has an immense feel, it's very good and they're powerful, but what really sets this rally yaris apart is its four wheel drive and the way it works with the rest of the chassis to hold the car to the road that short wheelbase those wide tracks those sticky michelin tires i think you can drive on the outside of a bmw m3 on any roundabout it has that grip unless of course you put it in sport mode which tells it not to accelerate and even better when you pull the handbrake it disconnects the rear axle so you can do proper rally style handbrakes, you know what What does this bring out?

My interior colin mcrae moves, that's ridiculous and it has a Toyota badge. in it, which by the way is one of the few things that the gr yaris shares with the original oap spec that your grandmother drives the normal yaris has five doors, this three, the roof is four inches lower and because your car rally should be made of the same material as your road car, that roof is now also carbon fiber, while the hood and doors are lightweight aluminum. Toyota has reinvented the little garis and now it really belongs to this lot. For me, a homologation special is a car that looks normal when you see it from a distance, but up close you see the width and the specialness, those wide tracks and the absolutely perfect yaris, I think it's an instant icon, I really do, It's honestly one of the best cars I've driven in years and absolutely belongs in this company. a machine you