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Is My GR Yaris a Prince or a Pup?

gaycarboys - Alan Zurvas

My 2021 Toyota GR Yaris: Things I love and Hate

OK, the GR Yaris is only mine for a week, but I’ve given it a thorough seeing to just the same.

Full Specifications HERE: GR -Yaris -spec- table -DEC-20_

People have been banging on about it for since it was announced. For 18 months we’ve had to endure one load of codswallop after another. Every chav known to mankind wanted one. For the last week, I’ve been only a gold chain and fake Burberry cap away from living on a council estate.

What is all this flim flam?

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ABOVE: 2021 Toyota GR Yaris, George IV Inn – Picton NSW

Let’s start with the things I adore.

Oh, those looks!

GR Yaris is a beauteous, muscled, youth with the classically chiselled features of a halcyon Hollywood hunk. It oozes charm and personality,  everything the 5-door hatch isn’t. The 5-door is one compromise after another, and a hideously over-priced one at that.

Bugling wheel arches house 18” ENKEI alloys. They look positively evil, in a shade of black that came straight from hell. This 3-door hatch shares only 3 things with the 5-door, which now looks distinctly dowdy by comparison. The menace continues from the front.

It seems to hunker down low on the road, where a glimpse of the blacked-out, Lamborghini-esque, carbon fibre roof is caught for the first time. The LED lighting arrays front and rear, are shared with the 5-door as are the mirrors. Those 3 things are the only are shared with the 5-door, thankfully.

As they say around at Lotus, “add less weight,” and this is something Toyota took to heart. GR Yaris weighs a mere 1280kg. The roof is carbon fibre, and the doors, hatch and bonnet are aluminium, meaning the tailgate is 24kg lighter than her frumpy sister’s.

Remember, GR Yaris is made for the WRC, and the Bates team are busy ripping a pair of road-going GR Yaris coupes to bits. But there’s a problem, the RWC rules have a minimum weight of 1200kg, below which no punter may dare. The GR Yaris is now so light, the Bates team will have to add ballast, but they’ll add it where they want it, HOORAH!

Full Specifications HERE: GR -Yaris -spec- table -DEC-20_

The Cabin

Perhaps it is the gritty aura created by the delicious metalwork outside, but the interior looks less low-rent than that of the frumpy, over-stuffed, 5-door. The cheap plakky bits are camouflaged by the black-on-black theme, giving the atmosphere an mysterious, ethereal feel.

The sound system is JBL and does the job, and the 7” LCD screen has DAB and Apple CarPlay/Android auto, so most will like it. The heads-up display gives just the data you need, no more, no less. It augments the traditional dials and 4.2” MFD in the binnacle. More about that in the “things I hate”, section.

Front seats are bespoke GR Racing seats, and they’re impressive enough. The rear lay flat,  60/40. They look great, and promise so much, but there is only a few inches between them and the front seats.

Space is tight even in the front, I’m not gonna lie!

It makes you feel like GR Yaris is giving you a big, warm hug, and more importantly, that you’re directly hardwired to the mechanicals. You feel part of it, and it feels part of you.

The Engine:

In saving weight, not only did they use light-weight materials, but they chopped a cylinder off. Yes ladies and germs, the 1.6L is a 3-cylinder. I don’t pretend to understand the current obsession with tri-pots, but this one is a peach. The single-scroll turbo blasts out a mountainous 200kw/370Nm, only 10kw short of the last Aussie Commodore’s V-sixers, and that was a full 2.0L bigger. And here’s the rub, it gets to 100 in 5.2 seconds.

You can have any transmission you want, as long as it is a 6-speed shift-em-yourselfer. It gets an extra bit of spit-and-polish with a rev-matching button for spiffy downshifts.

Deep in her nether regions is the GR-Four AWD system, and it is absolute bottler! Toyota says it can theoretically shuffle up to 100% of power to front or rear. Confusingly then, the drive mode options are normal, sport, and track. The front/rear power split is 60/40, 30/70, and 50/50 respectively. So, where does this 100% business come from? Riddle me that?

There is a $5,000 “Rallye” version that adds hard suspension and Torsen Limited Slip Diffs front and rear. After driving GR Yaris for a week, I’d save that dosh for posh nosh. It’s fine just as it is.

Full Specifications HERE: GR -Yaris -spec- table -DEC-20_

The drive:

GR Yaris is a big raspy, howling mix of all that is good in motoring design. It is all the better because it is not perfect. It makes you work for your dinner. Shifting gears can be a terrible burden for some, a chore that must be endured for others, but not with GR Yaris. It is a pearler.

The demands of city driving elicit the occasional whine from the turbo, and the 1.6L 3-pot sounds a little bit like a hair dryer with a buggered bearing. That throaty note really gets on my tits, but push it, take it by the neck and wring it for all its worth, and you’re world changes. The angels roar is if their balls had been gently grabbed. While that picture sinks in, we’ll move gracefully onward.

I took the GR down the M5, hung a right on the Picton road, and on into the quaint, historic  town. Regular readers will know the George IV as one of my favourite spots on the planet.

The tarmac in and about the town is an eclectic mix of billiard table, wash board, and moon crater. There is bend, after rewarding bend. Each twist with its own personality, made more challenging by the tragic neglect suffered after years of government incompetence.

Coming up the old Razorback Road is simply glorious. Sharp 90° turns of deeply rutted bitumen made the GR-Four AWD grip like a kid in a candy shop. We’ve taken a cornucopia of cars over that very road. Some of them cost many more shekels, but most of the got the strop right royally. They bounced and shimmied, and carried on like pork chops. The GR Yaris shrugged it all off.

It’s front and rear stabiliser bars keep GR Yaris nailed to the road. The suspension is further sophisticated by MacPherson Struts at the front and trailing multilink around back. These are the details that cost the bucks.

To add the icing on the cake, the 50L tank took a whole 41 litres to fill.

Here’s what I didn’t like

It’s a fact that the bad makes the good all the more piquant. So, our good must be very piquant indeed.

The tacky plakky bits might be hidden by the Batman colour scheme, but it still feels like a 20 grander, not a car costing north of 50k. And for this money, I’d have liked a fully digital driver read out. The dials just don’t cut it.

While we’re inside, can we talk storage. There is 141L in the boot. OK, that’s not great, but nor is it bad. Since the rear seats are utterly useless, you may as well leave them folded down. However, the downside is your oranges will be all over the shop.

The glove box is petite, and the door bins aren’t any better. There are trinket trays on the facia of the dash, but your stuff falls out. Just don’t bother. The is another trinket tray at the rear of the console, and 2 useless cup holders. They’re so far back that you’ll either slip a disc, or tip your coffee over the gear stick trying to use them.

Then there is that pair of racing seats.

The car is meant to be thrown at warp 10 corners. The side bolsters need more heft if they’re to hold you in place. Maybe it works for skinnier people, but I am not a skinnier person. I did a bit of severe sliding.

In for special mention is the cabin noise, which at highway speed, is appalling. The tyres were screaming for mercy and quite a bit of wind noise around the window seal.As if that wasn’t enough, the exhaust drone, menacingly entertaining at first, is more like a fishwife on payday, after a few hours.

The last thing is the one I have a love/hate relationship with, and that is the ride. It is firm and even firmer with that stupid RallyE upgrade. My bits jiggled, making me feel even older and fatter than I actually am.

Conclusion

Full Specifications HERE: GR -Yaris -spec- table -DEC-20_

Well, this will come as no surprise, I adored it and would happily buy one.

Despite my jubblies doing a hula on those crappy roads, I was smiling the whole time. I overcame the noise by turning the DAB up, and the looks and comments from others made me chuffed.

For a car this size, the price is stratospheric. At $49,900 plus on-roads, you could find yourself in a run-out Golf R. Actually, you wouldn’t, they’re all gone, and you’d have needed another 10 grand.

Price: $49,500

Engine: 3-cyl Turbo Petrol (Euro 6)

Power: 200kw/370Nm

CO2 g/km: 172

Econ L/100k: 7.6 (we achieved 8.5)

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