Toyota GR Yaris Review & Prices

The Toyota GR Yaris is (pretty loosely) based on the latest version of the dinky Yaris and packs serious performance thanks to plenty of mechanical upgrades developed through Toyota’s World Rally programme. 

Just take one look at it – that’s not the face of a car that’ll spend its life pottering to the Post Office, is it? The standard car’s grumpy, downturned grille has been ditched in favour of a huge, barn-door-like opening in the front bumper with enough mesh to keep all the colonel’s chickens safely cooped-up.

Add to this some gaping air intakes, contrasting black trims and a set of wheel arches so swollen that someone should pass the GR Yaris a giant ice pack, and you’ve got yourself a seriously menacing little hot hatch. In fact, it’s one of our favourite hot hatches – picking up the Best Hot Hatch and the overall winner back at the 2021 carwow Car of the Year Awards.

The GR Yaris’s roof is 10cm lower than the standard car’s, and it’s made from carbon fibre – just like on a BMW M4. You also get a unique three-door layout instead of the standard Yaris’ boxier five-door shape. The changes at the GR Yaris’ back end are comparatively subtle but include a pair of real exhaust pipes and a slim rear diffuser – although this probably does little to improve the Yaris’ aerodynamics. 

If you were hoping for some kind of raw, stripped-out interior, you might be a touch disappointed by the GR Yaris’ cabin. There’s no roll cage, no low-slung bucket seats and you get conventional seatbelts instead of any fiddly five-point racing harnesses. You might struggle to sit in it wearing a crash helmet, too.

Group Test: Honda Civic Type R (FK8) vs Mercedes-AMG A45 S vs Toyota GR Yaris

The steering wheel does get some contrasting red stitching, however, plus you’re treated to some snazzy metal pedal trims and a set of more supportive sports seats. There’s also a healthy smattering of GR badges (21 on the car in total, in fact), and the gear lever has been raised up by 5cm over the standard Yaris to help you reach it more easily.

The back seats are less spacious than in the normal Yaris, and you only get two of them – the standard car’s central seat has been thrown out and replaced by a small tray. It’s not particularly comfy for anyone back there, either. Boot space has taken a bit of a hit, too – the GR can only carry 174 litres of luggage compared with the standard Yaris’s 286-litre capacity. Other hot hatches like the latest Honda Civic Type R (410 lires) and Volkswagen Golf R (341 litres) are considerably more useful for lugging things around. You can thank the GR’s revised rear suspension and new four-wheel-drive system under the floor for that drop in practicality.

Four-wheel drive, yes – not something you expect to find in a staid and sensible Yaris. However, very little about this GR car’s engine and drive system is sensible. Under the bonnet – but tucked as far back as possible for better weight distribution – sits a 1.6-litre three-cylinder turbocharged petrol engine pumping out a whopping 261hp. It’ll blast from 0-60mph in 5.3 seconds, which is even quicker than the 320hp Honda Civic Type R.

When you put your foot down, it takes a second or so for the turbo to draw breath but once it does the Yaris accelerates like it’s been hit from behind by something very large moving very fast. The standard four-wheel drive means traction is never an issue.

On a twisty road, you’ll be changing up and down through the six-speed manual gearbox pretty often, but this only adds to the fun. Add in the clever optional differentials (more on these later) and you’ve got yourself a tiny hot hatch unlike any other.

Separating it further from the standard Yaris, the GR comes with fully independent rear suspension to help maximise grip in corners. Pay extra for the optional Circuit Pack and you get stiffer suspension, lighter alloy wheels, and a set of upgraded differentials that can split the engine’s power to whichever wheel has the most grip for neck-snapping corner-exiting acceleration.

In Normal mode, this system sends just over half of the power to the front wheels, while Sport mode ups the ante and sends 70% of the power rearward to make the GR Yaris feel more agile when accelerating through corners. Track mode splits the power 50:50 but it can send as much as 100% of the engine’s power to either the front or rear wheels to maximise traction at any given moment. This is something you might expect to see in a Mercedes-AMG A45 or Audi RS3, not a tiny tuned Yaris.

All of the controls are bubbling with feel, while the steering is neither too light nor too heavy, and the huge brakes let you make the absolute most of the brick-wall stopping power. So, there are more practical hot hatches about, but as a driver’s car, the Yaris is nothing short of sensational.

Have a look at how much a Toyota GR Yaris costs through carwow, or see our latest used Toyota models. You can also check out the latest new offers on Toyota models, and when you’re ready to make a change, don’t forget you can sell your current car through carwow too.

Technically, at the time of writing, the GR Yaris isn’t available in the UK. The waiting list had grown to such an extent that sales have been suspended. Before it was taken off UK price lists, the GR Yaris was a seriously expensive car, at least by Yaris standards. A standard hybrid Yaris costs around £22,000. A GR Yaris was, at minimum, £10,000 more than that, and you’d have paid another £3,500 for the all-important ‘Circuit Pack’ that gets you tweaked suspension and a clever differential for parceling out the power.

Mind you, that still makes a Circuit Pack GR Yaris slightly more affordable than a basic VW Golf GTI, and while the Volkswagen is vastly more practical, and a better day-to-day option, the GR Yaris absolutely has it on toast for performance and fun. It’s also around £10,000 cheaper than the new Honda Civic Type R, which again is a far more practical, roomier car but which is actually slightly slower than the GR Yaris. Actually, the Civic Type R, with its mixture of humble origins and blistering performance, is probably the closest competitor, in spirit, to the GR Yaris.

You could also make a case for the AMG versions of the Mercedes A-Class being competition for the GR Yaris, and indeed Audi’s fantastic five-cylinder RS3, but these are vastly more expensive cars, and while they’re certainly fast, they don’t have the GR Yaris’ cheeky sense of fun.

Surprisingly good on motorways, but compromised around town – none of which matters once you get the GR Yaris onto a twisty road, and then it’s just absolutely awesome

In town

It might be based on a town-friendly Yaris, but the GR Yaris loses out in urban situations, simply because it’s been designed for the open road, not the car park in Tesco. The turning circle is slightly bigger than that of the regular Yaris — 10.6 metres compared to 9.6 metres — which you won’t notice all the time, but which makes ultra-tight manoeuvres that little bit trickier.

The ultra-firm suspension obviously doesn’t do its best work in an urban setting. It’s actually not terribly uncomfortable, as the damping control of the shock absorbers is so good, but sharp bumps — like a small speed hump — will have you wincing. Mind you, the brilliant high-backed bucket seats in the front do take some of the sting out of the ride comfort around town.

Visibility is fine up front, but the GR Yaris’ roof slopes down quite a lot at the back — for aerodynamic reasons — and that, combined with a small rear side window, means that rear visibility and your over-the-shoulder view aren’t great. The reversing camera system helps, of course, but front and rear parking sensors are only standard on the ‘Convenience Pack’ version.

On a side note, the horn is pretty pathetic making only an apologetic ‘toot’ which seems at odds with the car’s aggressive hot-hatch styling.

On the motorway

You can use the GR Yaris as a daily driver – honest – and it actually has some useful features for commuters, such as radar-guided cruise control. There’s also lane-keeping assist, which helps to keep you centred between the white lines.

There is quite a bit of wind whistle when you’re up to motorway cruising speeds in the GR Yaris and that’s accompanied by rather too much in the way of tyre roar. The firm suspension means that you’ll get some fidget and wiggle on anything but a perfectly smooth surface, but it’s not all that bad, in the context of high-performance cars.

On a twisty road

This is what the GR Yaris was designed for. It is a truly awesome car when you get it onto a good road. The controls, especially the steering, have the kind of feel and driver feedback that’s increasingly rare these days, while the six-speed manual gearshift is so good — precise and with an oiled, mechanical feel — that you’ll be swapping between gears just for fun. The pedals are placed nicely so that you can ‘heel and toe’ your gear changes if you like, but there’s also a neat i-MT system that will automatically ‘blip’ the throttle on a downchange, matching the engine RPM to the driveshaft speed, giving you a smoother — and delightfully noisier — shift.

Naughtily, the manual handbrake has an automated system whereby when you pull it up, it automatically disconnects the four-wheel drive system, making it easier to do skiddy handbrake turns. Maybe just keep that between ourselves though…

The GR Yaris gets a totally different rear suspension to the standard Yaris. Out goes the simple torsion-bar setup, and in comes a bespoke independent rear suspension that actually means that the whole rear structure of the car is pretty much unique, and nothing like a standard Yaris. The suspension is firm, of course, but out here away from town it has a chance to flex and is actually very well resolved.

When you switch the GR Yaris into Sport mode, it doesn’t just make the throttle sharper and the steering heavier, it also puts the four-wheel drive system into a different mode, sending 70% of the power to the rear wheels, rather than the usual 60:40 front-rear distribution, which makes the GR Yaris feel even more responsive in corners. You’d think you wouldn’t notice the difference, but actually you really do — the car feels like it’s being pushed rather than pulled.

There’s also a Track mode, which as well as putting the four-wheel drive into a perfectly symmetrical 50:50 front-rear split, sets the GR Yaris into fully-epic form, allowing you to hook up to the apex of a corner like a racing driver, and then feel the four-wheel drive system just hauling you up and out and down the next straight. Probably best kept for track days though, eh?

Either way, the brakes are excellent — 356mm front discs with four-piston calipers, and those discs are grooved and ventilated too. Again, there’s lots of feel and plenty of ability to haul you down from high speeds — and it all adds up to a car for which you’ll get up early on a weekend just so you can go out and enjoy it on a quiet road. It’ll still be a quiet road though as the exhaust note is nothing special, and Toyota has tried to compensate for that by piping fake engine noises into the cabin, which is only partially successful at best.

The little 1.6-litre three-cylinder engine needs revs to work properly — it won’t lug from low down — but once you get it running above 3,200rpm it just races to the redline. It probably helps that thanks to an aluminium bonnet, doors and boot as well as a special rear bumper made out of thinner, more flexible plastic, the GR Yaris weighs in at just 1,280kg — not half bad for a four-wheel drive high-performance machine.

The car the GR Yaris actually reminds us of the most is the old Tommi Makinen special edition of the Mitsubishi Lancer Evo VI, and maybe that’s no surprise as Makinen himself was running Toyota’s world rally championship team when the GR Yaris was designed. However much Tommi was or wasn’t involved in making the road-going Yaris, you can certainly feel his spirit in it. It’s absolutely incredible.

Up front, the GR Yaris is practical enough for day-to-day us, but it’s a different story in the back as the rear seats are almost useless and the boot is tiny

Practicality

Space in the front of the GR Yaris is just fine. The big high-backed bucket seats don’t rob too much space — although you do sit a little bit higher up than you might like — but the fact that the basic dashboard of the standard Yaris is carried over means you get some practical storage areas, including one under the front-seat armrest, and two cupholders for the coffee which will inevitably spill when the driving gets a bit too enthusiastic.

There are also useful, if slightly narrow and cheap-feeling, door bins and a reasonably-sized glovebox. The driving position is excellent — aside from the fantastic high-backed seats there’s a reach and rake adjustable steering wheel too. One annoying note is that the handle to release the door is kind of buried in an awkward, circular plastic bit of trim on the door, which makes it hard to get at.

Space in the back seats

And the GR Yaris was doing so well up till this point. Remember that we said Toyota had made the rear roof of the GR Yaris lower than standard for aerodynamic purposes? Yeah, well that’s ruined the rear headroom. Anyone over 5’5” is going to find that their head is brushing the roof lining, and there are only two seats in the back — the middle seat has been replaced by a small, shallow storage area and there’s no centre rear seatbelt. The back is made worse by the fact that the rear side windows are tiny, and the big front seats rob most of your forward vision.

It’s just not a nice place to be. Legroom is pretty tight too, and the three-door layout makes getting in and out tricky, not helped by the fact that only the passenger seat tumbles forward to allow you in and out — only the backrest of the driver’s seat moves and neither seat will return to the same position as you started in. It’s just not a practical car — if you need a fast hatch that comfortably fits people in the back, look at a Honda Civic Type R or a Skoda Octavia vRS.

Boot space

The regular Yaris has a fairly average boot, by the standards of its class, but at 286 litres it is at least tolerably practical. Not so the GR Yaris. Toyota has simply not compromised when it came to the design of the rear suspension or the position of the rear differential for the four-wheel drive system, and the penalty for that focus on performance is a tiny boot.

You get just 174 litres — a rival Ford Fiesta ST might have less power and only front-wheel drive, but you get a 292-litre boot so it’s a far more useful day-to-day proposition. That sloping rear roofline doesn’t help when you fold down the back seats, as although they do fold properly flat, there’s a small boot aperture and another big lump where the rear roof meets the rear pillars so loading up bulky items is just a no-no.

The GR Yaris’ cabin is simple and spartan, but pretty well-equipped, however the old-school infotainment lets it down, and the spec list is a bit confusing

The GR Yaris’ cabin reminds us of old Subaru Impreza Turbos. It’s cheap and full of black plastic, but enlivened by some excellent seats and the knowledge that Toyota hasn’t wasted money on giving you soft-touch plastics; it’s spent the cash on the engine and suspension instead. Which is just as it should be.

The GR Yaris uses the same basic dashboard as the standard Yaris Hybrid but does away with that car’s ‘binocular’ digital instruments in favour of simpler analogue dials. These aren’t exciting, maybe, but they are clear and simple to read and there’s a nice little GR Sport badge in the speedometer (a badge which is repeated on the seats, the floor mats, and the engine stop-start button).

Between the dials there’s a little screen which is your trip computer and digital speedometer, and which gets a couple of extra GR-specific displays including a G-meter (which tells you how hard you’ve been cornering) and a turbo boost gauge that gives off faint memories of the electronic dials used on the famed Lexus LF-A V10 supercar.

In the centre of the dash, there’s an eight-inch touchscreen which, sadly, doesn’t yet get Toyota’s updated and much-improved infotainment system. Instead, it uses the old Toyota Touch software which looked outdated even when it was new, and which is hugely fiddly and unintuitive to use. Thankfully you do get Apple CarPlay and Android Auto connections, so you won’t miss the fact that the GR Yaris doesn’t come with standard built-in sat nav although that does come with the optional Convenience Pack.

Actually, that brings us to an annoying point about the GR Yaris. You can spec the car with the Convenience Pack, which gives you a blind-spot monitor, rear cross-traffic alert, a head-up display, front and rear parking sensors, and an upgraded JBL stereo. You can also spec the GR Yaris with the Circuit Pack, which gives you front and rear Torsen differentials (more grip, more speed), special GR-tuned suspension, gorgeous 18-inch BBS alloy wheels with special Michelin Pilot Sport 4S tyres, and natty red brake calipers with the GR Sport logo. The problem is, you can’t have both packs on one car — so if you want the Circuit Pack, and you really, really do, you have to forego the better stereo, the extra safety kit, and the head-up display. Which seems a bit mad, really.

On the upside, two-zone climate control, with proper physical buttons, not a touchscreen, is standard and you get a front USB connection (just the one, though) and a 12-volt socket too. You also get a nice little plaque mounted between the seats, which reminds you — as if you needed reminding — that the GR Yaris was ‘Developed for the FIA World Rally Championship.’

With a little three-cylinder turbo engine and relatively low weight, the GR Yaris’ fuel economy is going to depend very much on how you drive it. Officially, the average fuel consumption is 34mpg. Now, if you drive really, really, really carefully you might manage a bit better than that. But you’re not going to drive really, really, really carefully are you? Use the GR Yaris’ performance – bearing in mind that this is the most powerful three-cylinder engine you can buy – and you’ll soon see fuel economy plummet to more like 25mpg, and even worse if you’re driving it on a track day. 

Emissions are pretty high too, at 186g/km so you’ll have to pay a hefty amount in road tax for your first year, although at least the GR Yaris’ price tag means you won’t have to pay the surcharge for cars costing more than £40,000.

The standard Yaris gets a full five-star crash test rating from Euro NCAP, including an 86% rating for adult occupant protection, which is good for a small car. The GR Yaris hasn’t been tested separately, so we don’t know if it’s unique construction and modifications have made any major differences in crash safety compared to the standard Yaris, but it’s reasonable to assume that it’s in the same ball park.

Indeed, one could argue that with four-wheel drive, sharper steering, better brakes, and greater agility, the GR Yaris might actually be the safer car overall.

The GR Yaris gets plenty of safety equipment as standard, including pre-collision emergency braking, lane-keeping steering, radar guided cruise control, road sign recognition, auto-high beam lights, ISOFIX for the two rear seats (although good luck getting a bulky child seat back there…), vehicle stability control (which can be entirely switched off if you want), and a tyre pressure warning system.

Convenience Pack models come with a blind spot monitor and a rear cross traffic alert, as well as front and rear parking sensors, although as noted above – annoyingly – you can’t combine that with the performance-focused Circuit Pack.

All versions get keyless entry, remote central double locking and an alarm, but given the car’s potent performance and its desirability, we’d recommend taking extra precautions to make sure it’s kept secure in a garage, or behind a driveway post, and you’ll definitely want to use a Faraday Cage for the keys at night.

Toyota in general makes some of the most well-built and reliable cars in the world, and the GR Yaris – broadly – should be no exception. However, it is a specialist model with lots of bespoke parts, so you’ll need to be aware that those can be reliability weak points, especially if the car is being driven hard on track days. There have been reports that the GR Yaris’ four-wheel drive system can overheat under heavy load (such as a long track day) and when that happens it will disconnect drive to the rear wheels, leaving you with a front-drive 261hp Yaris… If it does happen, the system should re-set once it cools down, but obviously it’s a concerning point for wear and tear. Toyota, incidentally, recommends that you change the GR Yaris’ engine and transmission oil twice as often if you’re regularly doing track driving.

The GR Yaris has also been the subject of a specific recall for its front-facing collision warning and automatic braking system because the radar unit may not have been properly calibrated before it left the factory. This affects cars built between May 2020 and August 2021.

Every new Toyota comes with a standard three-year warranty, and if you keep it serviced with a Toyota main dealer, that warranty automatically extends each year for an extra 12 months and 10,000 miles, until you hit the ten-year mark, or exceed 100,000 miles. However, there is an exclusion clause in the warranty for “Vehicles which are used for races or other associated track driving” so you have been warned…