Monday 06 January 2025 1:04 pm

Toyota GR Yaris 2025 review: The ultimate pocket rocket

A normal new car launch goes something like this: fly to the south of France, drive for several hours on glorious mountain roads, check in at a boutique hotel, attend a brief PowerPoint presentation about the car and how profits were up in the last quarter, work through countless courses at a gourmet restaurant, imbibe cocktails on the terrace until politely asked to leave. It’s a tough job, etc.

Like everything else in 2020, the launch of the GR Yaris was far from normal. The venue was the car park outside Toyota GB’s press workshop, in a sprawling industrial estate near Gatwick airport. The assembled journalists lined up, face masks on and socially distanced, each of us given a key inside a sanitised plastic pouch. Instead of Michelin-starred food and five-star facilities, we got packed lunches and a portaloo.

Strangely, though, none of it mattered. Partly that was because, shortly before England entered its second Covid lockdown, it was a relief just to leave the house. But mainly it was due to the GR Yaris: a firecracker of a car that made the suburbs of Crawley feel like the Col de Turini. Rave reviews, numerous awards – including UK Car of the Year – and a long waiting list would soon follow.

Harder, better, faster, stronger

Five years on, Toyota has given the GR Yaris a glow up. There’s more power – up from 261hp to 280hp – along with more torque – previously 266lb ft, now 288lb ft – from the three-cylinder turbocharged engine. Zero to 62mph now takes just 5.2 seconds, helped by four-wheel drive and a modest kerb weight of 1,280kg.

Further changes include tauter springs and anti-roll bars, retuned dampers and a stronger body shell. Inside, you’ll find a new dashboard and a lower seating position, plus the option of an eight-speed automatic transmission for the first time.

The facelift also brings a hefty £10,000 price hike, raising the cost of a GR Yaris to £44,250, along with increasing annual car tax by a substantial £410. However, it’s worth noting that the Circuit Pack – previously the highest spec available, including forged BBS wheels, improved cooling, red brake calipers, Michelin Pilot Sport 4S tyres and two mechanical limited-slip differentials – now comes as standard.

Fighting talk

With its swollen arches, squat stance and jutting jaw – complete with aftermarket-style ‘GR-FOUR’ intercooler – the Toyota is the four-wheeled equivalent of a tightly clenched fist. It bristles with thuggish, street-fighting attitude.

Look closer and you’ll spot the unpainted carbon-composite roof, chubby twin exhausts and subtle tailgate spoiler. It looks particularly cool in no-cost Pure White paint: like a de-liveried rally car.

Auto illiterates will assume it’s a common-or-garden Yaris with a bodykit, but we all know what David Brent said about assuming… In fact, not a single body panel is shared with the regular five-door Yaris hatchback. Based on the WRC-winning three-door Yaris Rally1, the GR is totally bespoke – and a fully paid-up homologation special.

Inside the Toyota GR Yaris

Rally vibes continue inside the GR Yaris, with a manual handbrake lever (remember those?) hip-hugging bucket seats and a rotary dial for adjusting the front/rear torque split. Being kind, the new dashboard has the no-nonsense, functional aesthetic of a competition car. Being blunt, it looks blocky and basic, with Lego-quality plastics to match.

The automatic transmission (a £1,500 option) is a conventional affair, rather than a snappier twin-clutch setup, so I was glad ‘my’ GR Yaris came with the six-speed manual. Granted, the WRC car has a sequential ’box with paddles for changing gear, but choosing a stick and three pedals seems a no-brainer in a car aimed at enthusiastic drivers.

Your buttocks are now located 25mm closer to the floor, but the Toyota still feels like a car you sit on, rather than in. As for the rudimentary rear bench, it’s awkward to access and legroom is tight. “This is the most uncomfortable car you have tested in ages,” griped my lanky teenager. Up front, though, his dad was having too much fun to care.

In its natural habitat

From the outset, the experience is uncompromising. Road noise is ever-present and the suspension – 29 percent stiffer at the front, 10 percent at the rear – jostles impatiently when taking it slow. Its direct steering and compact dimensions are well suited to urban manoeuvres, but the GR Yaris never really relaxes. It longs to let rip and unleash its inner rally car.

Going back to my first drive in 2020, the perfect place for this Toyota to show off its skills isn’t, in fact, a soaring Alpine pass or scenic coastal highway, but the humble British B-road. I’m retracing many of those same Sussex and Kent lanes today and, despite trading some of the original car’s loose-limbed pliancy for tighter body control and a more focused feel, the GR Yaris feels utterly in its element.

Here, where modern sports cars are too wide and heavy, and a supercar scarcely gets into its stride, this pint-sized hot hatchback is an absolute riot.

One of the homologation heroes

It flatters you as a driver, too. If you get carried away into a corner – even on a damp surface – just hold your nerve, keep the throttle open and feel the front tyres bite, then the four-wheel traction catapults you out the other side. Like all the greatest showroom-spec rally cars, from the Lancia Delta HF Integrale to the Mitsubishi Lancer Evo, the GR Yaris can be hustled regardless of the road or weather conditions.

While it isn’t averse to understeer, the chassis also feels quite playful in rear-biased Track mode. It’s scruffier and more wayward than a Honda Civic Type R, but for my money – and bear in mind the roomier, more sophisticated Civic now costs just £6,000 more – the GR Yaris is ultimately more fun.

Other points of note include the deliciously notchy and mechanical gear shift, plus the powerful, tireless brakes. As for the engine, it punches hard and sounds angrily uncouth, yet it also feels like a supporting act in this drama: a means to an end, not an end in itself. Perhaps three cylinders and 1.6 litres can only do so much.

Verdict: Toyota GR Yaris

The prospect of spending £44,250 on a Toyota Yaris is enough to make most people snort derisively, turn on their heel and buy a BMW. But as we know, the GR isn’t really a Yaris at all, despite what the badge says.

Back in the 1990s, the world seemed awash with four-wheel-drive turbocharged tearaways infused with motorsport magic, most of them from the Far East. Today, such cars are almost extinct. Indeed, as the world goes electric, the GR Yaris could be the last of its kind.

It’s one of the great hot hatches and a nailed-on future classic; a car for those in the know, and those who can afford one. But faced with a choice between this and spending a few thousand more on a basic, four-cylinder Porsche 718 Cayman, I’d take the Toyota.