2007 Toyota Yaris
Not short on safety or equipment levels
3- and 5-door have loads of room
Laurance Yap
It's becoming a bit of a cliché these days, but it's true: small, cheap cars aren't what they used to be. You no longer need to be rich — or need to buy a big car — to satisfy most of your automotive needs.
Take the Toyota Yaris, for example. It's a small car, with an even smaller footprint. But it's a safe car, with excellent crash-test scores despite its small size.
It's a peppy car, thanks to a 1.5-litre engine that features the same variable valve timing technology (VVT-i, Toyota calls it, with the "i" standing for intelligence) that you'll find in a Lexus performance sedan.
It's a roomy car, thanks to its tall (both three-door hatch or four-door sedan) body: you sit upright, with your legs in a natural seating position, so it doesn't need as much length to feel roomy as a more conventionally configured compact.
Most of all, it's fun to drive. When Honda first launched its Fit subcompact — one of the Yaris's direct competitors — it brought out several cars in the class to test-drive for context. The Yaris was the only one that came close. And in its sporty RS trim, which includes a more aggressive wheel and tire package, it was even more entertaining than the Honda.
The electrically assisted steering is quick and pure in its responses; the suspension is trustworthy through the bends, always keeping the tires firmly in contact with the ground and the brakes respond right now, with no mush in the pedal.
The five-speed manual (a four-speed automatic is available and even comes with a gated shifter like a Mercedes) slides cleanly through its gates with a satisfying snick-snick.
At least in base three-door form ($13,580), the Yaris is a fairly basic car in terms of equipment; you need to pay extra for ABS brakes, keyless entry or power windows.
But while it may be basic, it does feel like a quality piece. The plastics used for the dashboard and interior door panels wouldn't be out of place on a car that costs considerably more and the gaps between the various pieces are so tight you can barely measure them.
The seats are covered in a semi-shiny, hard-wearing fabric but are comfortable over long trips and quite supportive during cornering.
All the controls, from the silky turn-signal stalk to the climate knobs or radio buttons, have a damped, expensive feel to them.
Add a couple of option packages and you can spec the Yaris up till it's past $25,000; all you'll be lacking are leather seats.
On the menu are all the usual power goodies: a leather-wrapped steering wheel and shift knob with spiffy red stitching and a six-disc CD/MP3 player on the top-grade RS.
The RS also gets you a better-looking instrument cluster and sporty-looking black-out trim on the dashboard; other Yarises get silver paint.
All of the models share a central instrument cluster, which has been a source of some criticism in these pages but which I find just fine to use.
The biggest news for Yaris this year is the sedan variant ($14,530). It shares the Yaris's five-seat capacity, but its longer body makes for improved rear legroom and the trunk is also pleasingly large.
And despite being part of the same family, it looks like very much its own car, with a unique nose that ditches the rectangular headlights for a more tapered set and unique wheel designs.
Inside, the centre console has been reconfigured as well.
Even in sedan form, the Yaris is terrifically practical. It's spacious to begin with, thanks to that tall roof and high seating position and you can fold the rear seats to increase the size of the rear cargo area; do so in the hatchback and you can stuff a surprisingly big box — say, for a big TV — in the back.
The cabin is also full of storage compartments, from large door pockets to dual gloveboxes to cupholders at the edge of the dash and at the base of the centre stack to two compartments that each hold a dozen CDs.
What the Yaris doesn't have, however, is the Honda Fit's impressive "magic seat" arrangement, which is now the class benchmark. That car's rear seat not only folds flat, but it folds into a much lower floor and can fold up the other way to create two separate large storage areas. All without having to remove the rear head restraints.
Though it's priced aggressively to start, most Yarises will leave showroom floors with a fair number of options and accessories that push its price up to a point where it looks a bit expensive, especially compared with some of its Korean-made competitors like the Chevy Aveo, Suzuki Swift+, Hyundai Accent or Kia Rio, most of which offer more standard features.
That the Yaris forces you into option packages is slightly frustrating, too — why, for instance, does ABS come with power windows?
Then again, none of those cars can match the Yaris's solidity and quality — though the last two come close.
And there's almost nobody that can match Toyota's reputation for reliability or resale value.
Count that last variable in and you end up with an economy car that'll probably be more economical to run than most of its major challengers.
wheels@thestar.ca; yap@mac.com