Sometimes a car doesn't immediately make an impression, writes Brian Byrne. And then, gradually as you share a few hundred kilometres with it, you get to appreciate its qualities.
Toyota's Yaris in its two previous iterations was never a car to wildly excite about. Didn't stop it being one of Ireland's top supermini models, though.
It had the brand. It had a couple of distinctive quirks, like the quite successful centre-dash digital display. It was competent. There was a decent diesel option, except that nobody really wants diesel in the segment. It had, in both generations, undistinguished but fair enough looks.
The new one has a sharper, edgier appearance. Mean, even, at the front. Crisp at the rear. The car is no longer cuddly.
It's a bit bigger. Outside and in. Good headroom, elbows don't crash. There's more, uhm, colour in the trim. A shift in the shapes. A return to traditional analogue instruments, now in front of the driver. In the the review car, a touch-screen in the middle of the dash. Toyota Touch, managing the radio, Bluetooth phone and iPod systems, and navigation if you have it.
There's a fine driving position. Even for a tallie like me. And the steering wheel is right on the button for the quarter-to-three with thumbs that I have come to favour after a BMW driving course a couple of years ago.
The back seat has room for three teenagers, the boot capacity is healthy enough, but if you want more, flipping the rear seatbacks doesn't offer a flat larger cargo floor. Though it does give a fair bit more space for stuff.
It all sounds merely adequate. Yawn, even? Nope. More. Much.
Toyota does a lot of things. Solid. Even style sometimes. Reliability. Personality not much, though the little Aygo has it for me. And, so too, I think, has this new Yaris.
Maybe because the engine under the hood of the review car was the basic 1.0 petrol 3-pot which we have already experienced in the said Aygo and the quixotic iQ.
There's something about 3-cylinder engines that grabs me. They buzz. They like fizzing up through the rev band. They are—
—enthusiatic.
And in this review Yaris it made the car just that. I suspect, though it is only such, that the larger engined version might not have the same appeal.
This new Yaris has all the necessary creature comforts, all the attributes to keep the safety heroes happy. It offers A rated emissions and equivalent economy, so even the now-silent Greens can't crib.
But it also comes con brio.
After I came to the new car with a degree of unexpectation, it managed, without a great deal of effort expended, to make me like it.
The new Yaris may not be the best supermini to arrive this year on the Irish car market. Or maybe it is. That's actually more than just one of the regular motoring writers on this island can decide. What can be said is that it should probably be looked at by a wider potential of Irish buyers than were the previous two generations. Which, of course, was a decent spread in their own right.
You can have the 3-pot petrol. Or a 4-cylinder 1.33 petrol. Or even a 1.4 diesel.
Don't know why you'd bother with those last two here.
From €14,760. And enjoy.
