Three Years Later, is the Toyota GR Yaris Still Worth The Hype?

Hello everyone, anyone who would have thought that in 20120 and 2021 the car that petrolheads would have been fighting each other to get would have been a Toyota Yarus, but that was the case with this powerful gr now, although 3

years

later

. Since its introduction and with the facelifted version just around the corner, I now think it's the perfect time to ask if it's

still

a car to get excited about. I suppose the most sensible thing to do is to start by reminding ourselves what it was that did this. Such a special car when it was launched, you will see that the GS is an example of a breed that 20

years

ago was relatively common but today is a genuine Rarity, a special rally homologation that you see in the 90s, these were the cars that It had to be had and simply Almost every magazine or television program would try to carry out at least one test a year in which they pit the Impressor Subaru against the ambitious Lancer Evo and let's not forget that this category has also given us other legendary high-performance cars, including the Lancher Delta Integral.

The Ford Focus RS, and of course this car's spiritual predecessor, the Celica GT4, is today perhaps, unfortunately, best known for the blatant rules violation that the Toyota Europe team carried out in the mid-1990s and, for those who don't know, I actually have an example of a celika. GT4 and although I've felt quite sorry for it over the years, I

still

love it because to me it's a genuine icon and, I think, much loved by anyone who's ever found themselves in an arcade playing Sega rally 2. However, by the late 2010s the performance car landscape had changed dramatically and the homologation special is now simply a fond memory effectively replaced by the hot hatch and there is a good chance that, if If it were any other company, the chalk would never have happened, but it did.

It just so happens that the man at the top, Akio Toyota, is a real petrolhead, by which I mean he's the kind of car company boss who sneaks off on the weekend and goes racing with a fake name so your management team doesn't know what you're doing. I'll probably never meet him, so AIO, I salute you now. The genesis of this occurred when in the late 2010s Toyota decided to announce a new generation of its venerable Yaris, its superminimal car that is fundamentally a pretty good thing, but one of the biggest changes made, as with many others. manufacturers, was the fact that they were no longer going to make a

three

-door version, but would instead sell it exclusively as a five-door, which posed a big problem for the rally team because, as far as they were concerned, this one did not It was an ideal starting point for a racing car, so, as the story loosely goes, the rally team said: is there any chance that a version

three

or just could be made so that we can continue racing and, with luck, succeed? and AIO very happily said yes you can more than that, while Toyota is telling me, he said I want you to build that car and I want to make sure it's not only good but I also want it to be affordable and that's how I got this and I remember very, very good when I went to try it as one of the first people in the country invited to do it.

I looked at the car, saw what Tood had done, and said to the guy there, how are you? selling this for profit and turned around, he looked at me and told me to ask another question. This thing is absolutely sensational, not only is it a custom body, Shell 3o versus 5, but it has a carbon fiber roof, lots of lightweight panels made from materials like aluminum composite. the car is even built on a combination of two completely separate platforms, so, while the front is technically speaking mostly yarus, the platform they sound like calling gab, the rear is what they call GAC, which is closer to a Corolla or a CHR and that's because they wanted the Wishbone dual suspension to give the rally cars better traction.

Also for that rally car experience it has a custom-made all-wheel drive system, unique in this segment and is controlled by a small selector down here that will put it in normal mode. a 60% front offset for torque on the track a 50/50 split and in sport 30% front and 70% rear the engine is also quite special: it's a 1.6 L turbocharged 3-cylinder that makes 260 depending on where you have horsepower. and 270 again is pound-feet of torque and about 370 Newt M at the time was the most powerful three cylinder in production and although at the time people chimed in to tell me ah no, that's not true because kig has the game right.

Firstly, it's not really a series production car and secondly, at the time of launch they hadn't made any of those and in fact even delivered petrol. Now I'm not so sure that the new version has even more power: 280 horses. but to be honest, at around 1,300 kilos it already had enough inside, which is where the makeover was probably the least dramatic: the car was fitted with these bucket seats which were famously set too high and the rest It was essentially the same as always. For an entry-level Toyota, this first-generation car also came exclusively with a nice, short six-speed manual that, if you want, can also rev-match in the downshifts and I must say it does a pretty good job and all.

This was yours for a base price of £30,000, on top of which you could add one of two convenience packs which added front and rear parking sensors, satellite navigation and a slightly better stereo, as well as I think a couple of other features comfort-oriented. or you could have the track package which gave you these nice BBS Alloys Michelin Pilot Sport 4S tires and locking differentials both front and rear, naturally almost everyone opted for the track package and very few people opted to have the convenience that unfortunately Toyota did not allow. combine the two and the reason cited was for homologation purposes because they already had to homologate the regular car plus the convenience package plus the circuit package and then if they had done a combination they would have had to have it homologated as Well, and when in Its first year they delivered only 600 of these to Britain, it just didn't seem

worth

it, I think it was a mistake, as was what I said the day I reviewed this car because I remember loving it. and to be really surprised, as I think was the case for almost everyone in the motoring press.

However, I concluded my review by saying that it is a lovely car, but I really don't think they are going to sell that many of them. My reasoning for that. being the fact that yes, it was fantastic, wonderful and brilliant, but on a dry road, a Honda Civic typ R would be just as fast and a Honda Civic typ R has really useful rear seats, which it does, but they are compromised and They are much bigger. To boot, it also cost almost the same money and had even more power, so as I saw it, this was the car that people were going to look at and say, Yeah, I like that idea, but you know, I'll buy the Civic that was. wrong, oh, patent pending, three point turn, hill torture test, anyone, let's see how the GI RS works, okay, let's deliver.

I mean, if I was doing this correctly, it really should be a handbrake turn, shouldn't it? The turning circle is not great, oh there is reverse gear, this car has a carbon fiber shifter that doesn't have the pattern, there is a hole in the hill which is good, yeah not that bad, visibility no It is excellent, the B pillars are big and thick and the 3/4 side visibility is quite restricted in the rear it has a kind of moving air mailbox, but it is not terrible, the clutch is easy to modulate in the city, the car jumps a little and has bumps, that's another thing you get with the circuit package, a stiffer suspension, but I know what it is, it's okay, it's tolerable, some of the modifications to this car are

worth

mentioning in particular that it is owned by a lovely couple called Harry and Lucy and is actually Lucy's car.

She wanted it, chose it and made some modifications to it. It includes a Maxton design front splitter and side skirt which I think actually looks good on it and it also has an ex upgrade. The center section is now titanium but resonant and the rear is stainless steel but a little freer than the original. and dispenses with the gasoline particulate filter, these items were manufactured, I believe, by a company called garage whiff. I could have been horribly wrong about the pits, something like that, they're a Welsh team and I'll put a link. for them in the description below because I feel terrible for forgetting their name, oh and I almost forgot, there is also an air filter in the front, which gives it a bit more turbo noises, however, they haven't remapped the car, so in terms of power and everything else, it should be standard in any case, the car now sounds.

I think I should. I actually remember that day when I drove it with Toyota, they told me two things as I was getting in the car. said first right, press and hold this button here and it will turn off the lane departure warning and we are also very sorry that it doesn't sound very good, but we have already given a couple to some aftermarket companies so they can find a solution. exhaust, this one is probably a little L for my taste, but it works pretty well and I think now it's time for the car to be warm enough to talk to you about why I love this thing so much, so I put the car in mode track, which is my favorite mode and, in fact, that of many of Toyota's test drivers.

This is the one with a 50/50 torque split and I'm going to enjoy this ride. There are very few times in history where a car has been designed with such single-minded dedication to the art of driving as this one and even fewer where it has performed so well, this thing is absolutely amazing, yes the suspension is a little too much nervous at low speeds, but by the time you have pulled out of the car park you've forgotten about that and instead started paying attention to things like the fact that the steering is simply lovely, it has the best feel ever, No, but it has a beautiful hold and communicates the grip very well.

The levels that the car has are monumental. This thing is awesome and I have to keep reminding myself that there is about 4° because honestly the car doesn't seem to care. OMG this thing is naughty if there ever was a car! that's going to get you in trouble is this it just prompts you to constantly say go faster go faster go faster go harder big girl blouse is brilliant once you get on that suspension really starts to work the steering is still brilliant this short The gearshift is magnificent and the engine, who would have thought that a 1.6 turbo three-cylinder could be the highlight of a car, but here it is, very quickly you forget about the fact that the interior is a bit cheap and nasty, the buttons down here feel like they're from a 20 year old car that was already cheap, so you don't care, it even sounds pretty good bouncing off the limiter.

I normally never do that with a car, but hey, Harry and Lucy were really insistent that I do it. that a couple of times and I don't want to disappoint people when they have brought me their car even better than that they are young she is only 23 years old he is a mechanic they do some work on their own cars not all of them and so they have to be attentive to issues practices like fuel economy and this in a race will yield around 40, which is fabulous. There are annoyances because this is a car full of circuits, it does not have navigation even though there is a button up here that says map does not work Toyota made a mistake with that and I think they have rectified it for the new version these seats were always a little too high although they are quite good, very comfortable, they hug you very well, kindly and honestly I have come here this morning in the almost £200,000 rear drive Audi R8 GT, not only are the seats better on this, but I am driving this Much faster than I dare go with the Audi simply because it has the ground clearance they had.

They didn't want to lower it, they didn't want to ruin it and it just speaks to me all the time in a way that the Audi just doesn't. This is great now, the fact is, of course, a lot of people didn't do it. I know when they first made their deposits and I think one of the reasons these cars suffered, if you want to call it what they did when you, is the fact that we were essentially in the middle of the whole Covid lockdown thing. for a long time. people had plenty of disposable income, not much to spend it on, and when this was announced, they looked at it and said it sounds pretty good.

I think I'll try it and as soon as they realized how weird they were. and how many people wanted one, every single dealer he knew ended up with a waiting list as long as his arm, and therefore even longer.People wanted one because they knew that if they could get one, they would make an instant profit and that's why. For a while, if you wanted to have one of these and you weren't friendly or lucky, you had to pay a bit for one now, although fortunately that has changed a bit, particularly with the arrival of the second generation and people. having to go back to their lives or having had fun with one and realizing it's not exactly the car they wanted, the back isn't big enough, all that kind of stuff, they just get on with their lives and so on now.

They have still kept their money pretty well. You could buy a car like this with some miles on it. This one is almost 30,000 for about 27 grand and while yes, you could argue that's a lot to pay for a Yaris, but it's not. just a yes this is a gr which may not mean much to people but trust me everything i have driven with the gr badge attached is not just a trim level like the GR sport the normal variant which is what that Lucy had before this, they have been special cars, really special ones and this one is just magnificent, the gr86, which is also brilliant.brilliant car and if you are looking for something that is a proper Legend at a reasonable price, buy this one.

Most people I know who have one of these also have serious car collections, they have millions of pounds worth of sometimes quite exotic stuff. and there's a good reason those guys use one of these on a daily basis because the fact is they know that most of the time it's better if you have a weakness. Some I don't love the feel of the brakes, they are a little soft. trips a little long the interior is for rent under the seats are too high the INF entertainment system up here is a bit rubbish none of that matters even a little bit and if you like driving trust me you have to try one of these 3 years old about to be replaced doesn't matter in 30 years.

I'll keep telling you to buy one anyway. I want to say a huge thank you to Harry and Lucy for bringing their car and, as always, to you for watching, no. Don't forget to hit the like button, comment below and subscribe if you haven't already. See you next time, bye.