Toyota GR Yaris review - see why I plan to buy one!

Um, I was just having a quick run in this field because I went out into the field to try this out. It is the new Toyota Yaris GR. It is effectively a rally car for the road. It is one of the cars that has excited me the most. My 20 years as a car journalist and today I'm going to explain to you all the features and improvements this car has, it's crazy and then I'm going to see how it feels when you drive it. Does this add up to a car that is amazing on the road before we get into all that, make sure you subscribe to this channel and hit the bell icon to turn on your notifications that way you won't miss a single charge and you'll probably catch me going to the bathroom again.

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toyota

yaris

just a five door, Well, yes, the normal one, but Toyota built a three-door version specifically because of the homologation rules for going to rallies.

Now this is what your rally car looks like. It hasn't been fully introduced, it was supposed to be for the 2021 season. The benefit is that now we have this road car that they had to produce, which is crazy, so the roofline is 10 centimeters lower than on the regular Yaris, because they need it nice and light in the back so it can fit in a big. spoiler for the rally car, the only things that are really carried over from the normal

yaris

are the door mirrors and the front and rear lights, everything else is different, it even has this thing that is crazy, a carbon fiber roof in a yarist nut, I mean. that helps lower the center of gravity a bit and increases body rigidity, as does the three-door body design instead of the five-door.

Oh, this car is also about two inches longer than the regular 18-inch yaris. The lower wheels look gorgeous too. I love the look of this car. Attracts large bees and many flies. They love it too. Let me know what you think about it in the comments below. Here at the front, the Gi Yaris is much more aggressive. Like the normal yaris, it has a huge grill and is the same shape as the radiator, so it helps with cooling. Plus, it's supposed to provide a bit of downforce when you're going at high speeds, that's what Toyota says.

Anyway, I'm not sure that's true. You've got your GL badge there and you can think of GR as Toyota's version of BMW M or Mercedes AMG. Now if you look here you'll see a huge vent this is real it actually channels air into there and it comes out a little hole there to help cool the brakes this vent every single thing here is fake and I'm not that interested in this weird one carbon fiber effect plastic shame about that otherwise good front here at the rear you can really notice how much wider it is than the normal yaris it's actually six centimeters wide it's a bit accurate which is quite a bit, providing a wider track distance between the front and rear wheels for improved cornering, but also allowing for flared wheel arches, which helps improve sideways deflection. of the car that the car has a new roof spoiler and diffuser apparently both work and provide downforce according to

toyota

i'm still not sure i believe them but i'll tell you what's not fake for sure the exhaust pipes hallelujah for that here in the Inside the Gi Yaris is a glass-badged sports steering wheel that feels good to hold.

You also get some sport seats that hug the body a little more than in the standard car and have this Alcantara material to give you grip. so you don't slide off your seat when you're turning corners. I like the fact that it has a backrest release mechanism instead of a ratchet so you can get it in the ideal position. My only minor complaint is the fact that I wish this seat would go down a little more. Being a spotty car, I like to go as low as possible. You also get some aluminum pedals with spoiler and a leather gear selector with some red stitching and Toyota has raised the gear knob. up five centimeters so that your hand doesn't have to travel as far to touch it, sorry for operating it, then you have another knob here that I will talk about a little later and here on the center console you have some special buttons, there is one that activates the function of automatic signal when you are changing gears and there is one for the stability control that allows you to turn it off in a Yaris.

Then there's this little plaque here that says developed for the fia world rally. championship, in case you forgot, there are dolls that are a little different than normal yaris, they are just normal analogue dials and have white numbers, red hands, these dars look too basic for my taste. We also have a small digital display between them with some additional gr sport gauges, so you have one for your turbo boost and another for the torque distribution of your four-wheel drive. Some of the features include a gr yaris wow floor mat and a gr start stop button. This car comes with a pretty decent amount of standard kit, so it has dual zone climate control, it also has a reversing camera, although it is a little faded, it has keyless entry and it has Apple Carplay and Android Auto for the infotainment system.

So it doesn't really matter that it doesn't have satellite navigation as standard because you're just going to use Google Maps anyway. Let's move on to the more technical aspects of this car, starting with the most important of all, the engine. It's underneath this pretty slick looking engine cover with glass badges and some red accents. The engine itself doesn't look that interesting so I'll keep it covered then, so it's a 1.6-litre three-cylinder turbo petrol and apparently it's the most powerful three-cylinder petrol turbo currently on sale because it makes 261 horsepower. force and 360 newton meters of torque. I'm going to see how fast this car is from north to six, stay using my specialized timing gear, so I'll launch it with stability.

Oh, that was good. I got a 60 in 5.3 seconds and you're doing 60 when you shift from second to third, which means that actually the feeling you get from this car is much faster than one that doesn't do 60 in 5.3. seconds, it really feels super fast when shifting into gear. One of the key things about the gi yaris is the fact that it has four-wheel drive. In fact, Toyota developed an entirely new four-wheel drive system, the first to be developed in 20 years specifically for this. auto and it's not like those found in German hot hatches, where they are primarily front-wheel drive and then send some power to the rear wheels when you need it;

It's permanent all-wheel drive with a 60 power tilt in the front and 40 in the rear now, if you prefer this car to have a little more rear-wheel drive, no problem, if you turn this knob to the left, it was the kind of sport mode and then it sends 70 of the power. back and only 30 forward now, if you turn it to the right then you go into follow mode and then it's a perfect 50 50 power distribution, if you just want to go back to the normal 40 60 just press it and you'll get to mode normal again, Toyota is giving this car a completely new rear suspension setup, so instead of the normal torsion beam that the standard yaris has, it has independent rear suspension, you get some seriously upgraded brakes on this car, the front discs are 356 millimeters in diameter, that's bigger than on the supra, they are clamped by four piston calipers at the rear, you get 297 millimeter discs clamped by two piston calipers and you also get michelin pilot sport 4s tires as standard , the steering has been tuned precisely for this car to do.

It's more responsive and more precise, plus it uses an aluminum strut to help save weight, you get a stiffer sports suspension than a regular Yaris, but if you pay an extra £3,500 you can upgrade to the Circuit package and then the suspension is still tuned more to do it's a little stiffer and you also get slightly beefier anti-roll bars at the front and rear, you also get graduated forged alloy wheels that save a total of 10 kilograms of weight, plus the brake calipers are painted red , although the big news is that that package includes a Torson front and rear limited-slip differential for even better traction on corner exit.

That brings me to the price of the giara which starts from just under £30,000 but you'll want that circuit pack so you're talking £33.500 sounds like a lot for a yaris but if you get finance put down £25 percent, try to finance it with 9, it will cost you less than £300 a month, which means it's actually quite affordable, it's more affordable in financing than quite a bit. many other cars because it should hold its value well because only 25,000 will be made worldwide. There's one problem though, well, I've done this car for homologation purposes, so, this is basically a rally car for the road that I may never have ever run the rally version of this and that comes down to five annoying things. about the gi yaris because of that headroom on the sloping roofline at the rear, it's horrible, plus it's a strict two seater here at the back, the middle seat is now just a tray of sorts, if you want a High performance japanese hatchback that can carry people in the back in comfort, click on the pop-up banner to see my in-depth

review

of the honda civic thai park.

Additionally, this car has three problems. just door, let's get in and get out, you have to do this kind of lava, excuse me while I get out of the vehicle for such an aggressive looking hot hatch, this car has a horn that sounds so puny and comical, I mean, just listen to this, a normal yaris. Boot capacity is 286 liters and we have some space underneath here, but due to all the four wheel drive gubbins there is technically no space in this 174 liters so it is quite a bit less than a Ford Fiesta St and if you click on the pop up banner up there you can see my video, that car, you won't be able to carry much of this, actually for just over two grand you can get something called a convenience package, which includes parking and an upgraded jbl stereo.

Built-in satellite navigation for the infotainment system, rear cross traffic alert, blind spot monitoring and even a head-up display seems like pretty good value, the only problem is that, for reasons in the UK and elsewhere from Europe, you can't have that package and the return circuit is also one of the others thanks to emissions regulations. The exhaust on this car doesn't sound particularly good. Listen to it. Now Toyota tries to fix it by pumping exhaust noise through the car stereo to make it a little more atmospheric, but I just don't. I don't like it when manufacturers do that, it's not all negative, although here are five good things about this car.

Get this, frameless windows, like on some expensive sports cars, apparently that's because it helps make the entire body more rigid. Toyota has changed the pedals on the car and also By making them out of aluminum, the accelerator pedal is a little larger and has a new bushing to improve the feel, the brake pedal has this small side wall to prevent your foot from slipping underneath and the clutch pedal is made heavier once again to improve feel. Toyota used 260 more welding points. and an additional 15 meters of adhesive when building the body of this car compared to the regular yaris to help make it more rigid.

I'm just going to prove that now it is screwed. Wow, the gi yaris is made of hood and tailgate doors. Aluminum instead of steel. Additionally, the bumper is constructed of a lightweight polymer that is 38 lighter than a standard bumper and is quite flexible. Still, overall you save 24 kilograms over the standard Yaris. In fact, this car weighs 1280 kilos, which is not the case. Bad for a four wheel drive hot hatch, this car not only has a manual gearbox - in fact you can't get an automatic - but it has a good old manual handbrake, and when you lift it and apply The brake is automatically disengaged. the four-wheel drive systemWheels, that's right, Toyota is actively encouraging you to do handbrake turns in this car, okay, let's talk about what it's like to drive this little GI Yaris well.

I have to say this is a really amazing car, the controls they have. I feel very sorry about the steering the gear change, I mean the gear change is just a delight. I love shifting gears in this car. It's such a mechanical feeling. The pedals are well placed so you can heal and tow, but if you don't want to do that. so you just use that auto signal feature and it will do it for you, but I want in, I want to heal and towing this car is all about the driving experience and yet the suspension is firm, but it's not terrible, it's actually Quite a well-resolved suspension system.

In fact, I'm going to change this dial. The four wheel drive system put it in rear drive mode so it's 70 to the rear and you notice it. I didn't think you would. You can feel that the car has been pushed further. through a curve instead of pulling and I thought that would be the way I drive it but no the best thing is follow mode and I know I'm on the road but I don't care because in follow mode, this thing just goes crazy on the road. It just latches on and pulls you out of the corners, I mean it really is epic, it really helps the steering, it's so sharp and direct and the brakes are so nice the feel through the pedal is exceptional this car is all about the feel it's the kind of thing you just want to go out and drive on the weekend I don't do much anymore because I just don't have the time but if I had one of these these motors would go crazy you have to spin it it doesn't take much of a load it really sounds over the top 3000rpm and then just runs to the redline it doesn't run out of breath it reminds me of tommy mcenan's mitsubishi evo six which isn't too surprising when you think that tommy mackinnon is in charge of the gr racing wrc team and you can feel its spirit, you can feel that kind of thing in this car, it's absolutely Great, finally let's see how these cars like to drive on the highway because you can use them as a daily driver and I'll tell you what it has a feature that you don't get as standard in German cars much more expensive and I don't.

I don't have it on my mercedes a45 amg and I really missed it and that's the automatic cruise control, it has it as standard so I'm going to put it on now, set the speed and I can use the radar control to keep me at a safe distance . The car in front also has lane keeping assist. In fact, it will keep me centered in the lane. I can't believe I have. My only complaint about this car when driving down the highway at high speed is that it gets quite a bit of wind whistle. around the door mirror and a bit of tire noise rumbling in the cabin other than that, it's okay, you know what?

There have been a few cars that really stood out in my time as a motoring journalist and that I completely fell in love with from the start. the first was the bmw 1m coupe, simply amazing car, however it was a bit pointy and scary at the limit, another was the toyota gt86, brilliant pure sports car, unfortunately it is a bit underpowered, another was a suzuki chimney , super cute, affordable, amazing. Off road it's a bit rubbish on road although I ended up buying one of those and another car I instantly fell in love with is this one, it's amazing, I absolutely adore it and there doesn't seem to be anything serious about it. compromises like those other cars I just mentioned, so I'm really worried I might end up buying one.

The question is: should I sell my Porsche 996 to finance a Toyota GR Yaris? That's the question, let me know what you think. the comments, so what is my final verdict on this car? Should I avoid it? Should I consider it? Should I select it or just go ahead and buy it right? It looks fancy saying avoid it, however if you want a pure driver's car that is absolutely brilliant and unique in this day and age then go ahead and buy it, in fact I'm very tempted to go ahead and buy it myself, I'm not. I'm going to end up with another car.

Maybe I'm too worried. I'm going to end up with another car. I already have too many. It's so good. I love it. I love you. I still do not do it. I wish I had done it. But I got it, I really shouldn't talk to cars, it's just weird.