4th Report: Re: Boot
A clear advantage of running a long-term car for several months is it gives us more time to notice subtle details that could be missed on a shorter test drive. And, indeed, more time to notice fairly obvious things, should your correspondent be slow on the uptake.
For instance, I spent a good few weeks with our Yaris being disappointed with the surprisingly small size of the boot, even for a supermini, when compared with the Ford Fiesta ST I own. I’d been planning to write a report highlighting this, and it was only when I looked up the official capacities and realised they were much closer than I’d expected, that I realised the Yaris has an adjustable boot floor. Lower this, and hey presto, it wasn’t ‘surprisingly small’ after all, and day-to-day use got a bit easier.
That being said, with an official capacity of 286 litres, although only four litres off the ST, the Yaris is still a bit down on the biggest luggage spaces on offer with rivals in this segment, and still occasionally feels tight especially for height, with taller items in close proximity to the parcel shelf (which sits 2cm lower than in the ST).
On the subject of not noticing things, I hadn’t realised until recently that with my iPhone connected to the car via Apple Carplay, I had the facility to select particular songs and albums on Apple Music via Siri voice control. For me personally, this is a bit of a game-changer, allowing me to safely programme whatever song may pop into my head while driving down the motorway, for instance. It sometimes takes a couple of goes to pick up what I’m saying, and sometimes repeats the start of a track before it gets going, but I’m not going to hold the Yaris responsible for this given it seems just as likely to be my phone at fault.
One thing I did wonder is, with this sort of functionality available, what is the point in so many manufacturers now developing and deploying their own ‘natural voice control’ technology? The Yaris comes with its own ‘Hey Toyota’ system, which to be honest I never use, since its functions include controlling the car’s own sat-nav – I prefer to use Apple Maps – and adjusting the temperature, which I’m quite happy to do with the knob on the centre console. I have come across these systems in various cars, with varying degrees of effectiveness, but it feels inevitable that at some point they all fail to understand you, and place you in the uniquely annoying position of driving down the road while literally arguing with a machine. Given that pretty much all fleet drivers especially will now have access to Apple Carplay and Android Auto, it begs the question of whether manufacturers’ investment in these systems is especially wise.
| Model | Toyota Yaris Premiere Edition 129bhp |
| P11D price | £28,715 |
| As tested | £28,715 |
| Official consumption | 67.2mpg |
| Our average consumption | 62.4mpg |
| Mileage | 3,949 |
3rd Report: Limiting factor
A couple of months ago, the EU brought in rules mandating the installation of intelligent speed assistance technology on all new cars, requiring them to automatically warn their drivers if they are breaking the speed limit. Although the UK is no longer part of the EU, manufacturing practicalities mean that models sold here are also highly likely to come with the technology – and this includes our Yaris.
Now, I realise it’s hard to complain about a driver being warned if they are breaking the speed limit – particularly from a risk-conscious fleet manager’s point of view. However, I do object to a car making a bonging noise, as the Yaris does, every time the speed limit changes. It’s particularly noticeable if I drive into my local town centre from my house, as this journey sees the limit go from 30mph, to 50mph, to 40mph, and back to 30mph within a few hundred metres.
To get rid of the annoying noises, I have to turn off the road sign assist feature, which with the Yaris includes both these limit change notifications and the speeding warning. This involves using a button on the steering wheel to click into a settings menu on the instrument cluster display, scrolling onto another page of the menu, and selecting the function to turn off the road sign assist.
Under the EU regulation, the intelligent speed assistance system has to restart every time the car is switched on, meaning the road sign assist function has to be turned off again each time I use the car, should I not want the annoying limit change noises to also return. And while I realise Toyota’s hands are tied here to a certain extent (although it’s their decision to package the various systems up in this way), I do find it annoying to have to go through the whole procedure again, rather than there being a shortcut button that could bring up my preferred settings, for instance. Also, it is annoying that to remove the bonging sound, I have to turn off the whole system, since I do find having the current limit passively displayed useful from time to time, such as when passing a speed camera – and turning off only the limit-change noise is possible with other cars I’ve tested recently.
Road sign assist is just one of a wide array of ADAS fitted to our Yaris as part of the Toyota Safety Sense package. This also includes the intelligent adaptive cruise control, which I am more appreciative of, finding it particularly useful on long motorway drives. However, I do also have a quibble with the reversing camera (not part of Safety Sense, but as with that package standard throughout the Yaris range). This is because, unlike with some other systems, this features guidelines on the camera view that only point straight back from the vehicle, rather than bending to match steering wheel inputs.
Of course, at less than four metres long the Yaris is hardly the trickiest vehicle in the world to park – but nevertheless, it feels like something where there’s room for improvement.
| Model | Toyota Yaris Premiere Edition 129bhp |
| P11D price | £28,715 |
| As tested | £28,715 |
| Official consumption | 67.2mpg |
| Our average consumption | 63.9mpg |
| Mileage | 2,896 |
2nd Report: Small but assured
Not so long ago, people who reviewed cars would find it difficult to talk about superminis without highlighting a basic limitation – that they were only really designed for short urban journeys, and that while they were technically capable of travelling at motorway speeds, you probably wouldn’t want to attempt a long journey in them, with drivers who regularly covered major distances really needing something bigger. These days, however, the picture is very different, as has been proved during my early time with our long-term Toyota Yaris. Despite the constant growth of modern cars this is still clearly a small vehicle – less than four metres long – and yet I have completed several long motorway journeys in it with no complaints at all. Refinement is good, so you don’t arrive at your destination tired, and the seats are also comfortable when used for long periods.
With 130hp on offer from the hybrid system, there’s plenty of power, and the presence of the electric motor also means a good torquey throttle response. And in addition, the presence of an automatic gearbox and adaptive cruise control system together takes much of the stress out of motorway driving – particularly if stop-start traffic is encountered.
Taking the Yaris out of its urban comfort zone hasn’t proved ruinous for fuel economy either. OK, the 64.2mpg we’ve averaged so far is slightly down on the official WLTP figure, but it’s still impressive given how much of my time with the car so far has been spent at 70mph. In fact, a quick trip through the archive tells me its tracking to be the most economical car I’ve run on the Business Car fleet since I joined the title nearly seven years ago.
There’s also a bigger car feel when it comes to the Yaris’s interior technology. With our Premiere Edition test car, you get a 12.3in driver display, a 10.5in infotainment touchscreen, and also a head-up display, which as well as looking impressive usefully integrates sat-nav instructions (including those provided via Apple Carplay) into the driver’s eyeline. Yet despite all the screens, separate climate controls remain, meaning no distracting trips into the touchscreen are needed to adjust the temperature. In fact, perhaps the only downside of all this big car tech is that it comes with a big car price, since for the near-£29k P11D of our test car, a range of attractive, larger C-segment hatchbacks – or indeed B- and even C-segment SUVs – would be available.
| Model | Toyota Yaris Premiere Edition 129bhp |
| P11D price | £28,715 |
| As tested | £28,715 |
| Official consumption | 67.2mpg |
| Our average consumption | 64.2mpg |
| Mileage | 2,173 |
1st Report: Time for a rematch
There’s always a sense of anticipation when a new car joins our long-term fleet, and this Toyota Yaris is no exception. However, your correspondent’s personal feelings about the coming few months are a little mixed, for reasons we’ll get into shortly.
First, the context. The Yaris has long been established as a strong small car contender, and received a facelift earlier this year. Updates included a new, more powerful 130hp powertrain option, which sits alongside the existing 116hp version in the range, and perhaps more significantly than the horsepower figure, also offers a 30% increase in torque. The Yaris also gained a new infotainment set-up, with a 12.3in driver display and a 10.5in central infotainment touchscreen, as well as updates to its package of safety systems.
So, why the mixed reaction to this Yaris’s arrival? Well, on the plus side, having spent the past 18 months apologising for very rarely charging various plug-in hybrid long-termers, it’s something of a relief that the Yaris has no plug. Instead, it’s a conventional hybrid – the new and more powerful of the two options listed above, pairing a 91hp petrol engine with a 62kW electric motor. This means that it should be a lot more realistic for my on-test fuel consumption to get close to the official figure – something which has been borne out on some initial drives, with figures over 70mpg having been glimpsed on the trip computer. Toyota has been the car industry’s biggest advocate for conventional hybrids over the past few years, highlighting their benefits to those such as myself without access to home charging, and so far findings are indeed positive – I wouldn’t anticipate being able to achieve such impressive economy with either a conventional petrol or diesel car, or a non-plugged-in PHEV as I ran previously.
As for my reservations about the Yaris, these basically fall into two areas. Firstly, I noted often with my previous long-termer how difficult it seemed to be for people to accept a Vauxhall Astra that cost over £40,000. Well, now we have a proposition that’s probably at least as tough if not more so – a Toyota Yaris that costs nearly £29,000. Admittedly, this is the range-topping Premiere Edition model, which comes with goodies such as an eight-speaker JBL premium audio system, a head-up display, and a smart bi-tone metallic paint finish. But there’s no getting around it, this is an expensive small car.
My other cause for concern is that when I reviewed the updated Yaris at its launch a few months ago, there were quite a few niggles. These included an annoying speed limit warning system which was too slow to react when limits changed, and what I considered unsuccessful efforts by Toyota to remove the droning engine note associated with CVT gearboxes, which instead seemed to deliver a loud rumbling engine note when accelerating, like a bad impression of a 1960s muscle car. I also thought the ride was firmer than it should have been for a non-hot hatch, although in fairness I haven’t noticed this so much in my initial drives with our long-termer – the Toyota perhaps benefitting by comparison with the sporty Vauxhall Astra GSE I drove previously. I did also note on that previous test that the Yaris was easy to drive around town, and in some ways, I felt like I enjoyed my time at the wheel more than I was expecting to, without being able to put my finger exactly on why. Of course, this is just the sort of puzzle that my extended time with the Yaris over the next few months should help with solving.
| Model | Toyota Yaris Premiere Edition 129bhp |
| P11D price | £28,715 |
| As tested | £28,715 |
| Official consumption | 67.2mpg |
| Our average consumption | N/A |
| Mileage | 1,357 |
Standard equipment: LED headlights, DRLs, fog lights, rear lights, and indicators, acoustic windscreen, rear privacy glass, rear diffuser, auto-dimming rear view mirror, power adjustable heated and auto retracting door mirrors, leather gear lever and steering wheel trim with red stitching, front sports seats, 12.3in driver display, 10.5in infotainment touchscreen, cloud-based sat-nav, voice control, eight-speaker JBL premium audio system, Toyota Safety Sense package, reversing camera, front and rear parking sensors, intelligent clearance sonar with automatic braking, lane departure assist, blind spot monitor and safe exit assist.
