Living with the GR Yaris
Review by Jacob Lerklint
The Toyota GR Yaris, I haven’t been this excited by a Toyota product in ages, forget everything you know about the regular Yaris because this Rally homologation special shares almost nothing with it. The project began in 2014 when the head of Toyota, Akio Toyoda wanted Toyota to once again enter the world rally championship. Finally, after having entered the WRC in 2017 and with great success the coming years - Akio Toyoda and Rally legend Tommi Mäkinen set out to build a homologated Rally special with help from Gazoo Racing, that would eventually go rallying.
In 2020 the final product GR Yaris is completed, a three door Yaris with 260hp, 3 cylinders, 4wd fully homologated rally car for the road sharing only the door mirrors, headlights and taillights from the standard Yaris.
Just looking at it and you can immediately tell the difference from a standard Yaris, the roof is 10 cm lower, the body is 5 cm longer and 6 cm wider. The roof is made from carbon fiber, yes carbon fiber roof on a Yaris. This thing is special alright. It doesn’t just look cool, under the skin is where most of the money has been spent. The doors and the bonnet is made from aluminum, the rear bumper is made from Super Olefin Polymer. The chassis is completely bespoke with only the front half of the car shared with standard Yaris and the rest is adapted with parts from the Corolla and CH-R. The 4wd system is supposedly the lightest on the market and the whole car only weighs in at 1280kg which is very light for a 4wd car these days. At the rear there’s an electronically controlled clutch pack to divide the torque between the wheels.
When buying the GR Yaris you are spoiled with two choices, you can either go for the Convenience package which is more road oriented with all the tech and comfort you’ll want. Or you can choose the Circuit pack which includes a bit more technical upgrades including forged 18 inch rims, thicker anti roll bars and most important a front and rear Torsen limited slip differential. The circuit pack is about 20000sek more expensive than the convenience pack but for that you’ll get a lot of performance enhancing goodies.
The car I have been driving this last week is the GR Yaris optioned with Convenience package. You miss out on the limited slip differentials but having driven it in all kinds of weather and roads for over 2200kms I rarely felt the lack of LSD’s ,except in a few cases when the roads were wet and greasy, but the car was fitted with winter tires. At first I felt a little bit cramped in the car; the seats doesn’t go as low as you’d want and with the roof being so low the rear view mirror blocks some of the view out. You get three different choices for the four wheel drive system: there’s a Normal mode which sends 60% of the power to the front and 40% to the rear. In Track mode you get a perfectly balanced car with a 50/50 power distribution. The mode you’ll want to drive in most of the time is Sport mode, you then get 70% going to the rear wheels. The GR Yaris is a very easy car to drive, yes it’s relatively stiff but it’s never uncomfortable.
It doesn’t take long to realize how special the GR Yaris really is, the response from the Rally breed turbocharged 1.6 liter three cylinder is immense, the ball bearing turbo spins up extremely quick. The sound from the 3 cylinder engine is good on the inside, not so good from the outside. And the six speed Manual gearbox is a peach, it’s smooth but has that enjoyable mechanical feel with every gear change. You can have it rev match for you if you press a button. The steering is heavy but up there with one of the best in terms of feel. Although we are on winter tires the grip you get with GR Yaris is incredible, point the car in the direction you want to go in and the Yaris deliveries no matter how slippery it is. With 260hp and 360nm you never feel down on power. I haven’t had this much fun in a car for such a long time, and you’ll never want to get out of it. Whom knew unlimited amount of grip could be this fun. You have to remind yourself that you are sitting in a Toyota.
When you get tired of too much grip, just yank the handbrake lever, it decouples the 4wd system which makes it so easy to do handbrake turns. The brakes are also fantastic, 365mm four piston front discs. A smidge over 400.000SEK might seem expensive for a Yaris, but that is a small price to pay for a Rally homologated hot hatch that performs this good.
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