Toyota Yaris Hybrid: Efficient, good looking and updated inside - a real winner

If you take a look down the list of winners of the European Car of the Year Award – possibly the most important motoring gong of its type worldwide – you will find there are very few dogs in there.

Hindsight might allow us think that some past winners – such as, say, the Fiat 127 were not much cop really, but back in 1972 when the car was launched, the 127 was actually quite a thing.

OK it might have rusted to its axles at the mere sight of water and depreciation was comparable to that of Zimbabwean dollar, but it was – truly – the world’s first supermini and with over 80% of the floor space available for passengers and luggage, it was a design tour de force of its’ era.

The winning of the Euro COTY for the Fiat was hugely significant thing and underlined the significance of the supermini as a real thing going forward, especially as it pointed the way forward for so many other manufacturers.

Were it not for the 127 we would not have had such cars as the Ford Fiesta, the Renault Clio, the VW Polo, the Opel Corsa and so many others.

Winning the ECOTY once, was – and is – an amazing achievement, but winning it twice, well, that’s something else altogether and only a few cars have achieved that particular feat. The Renault Clio did it in 1991 and 2006, the VW Golf did it in 1992 and 2013 and the Opel Astra won it in 1985 and 2016.

The only other car to win twice has been the Toyota Yaris which took top prize back in 2000 and it repeated the feat this year, fighting off the likes of the Land Rover Defender, the VW ID.3 and the new Skoda Octavia in the process, all very admirable machines.

It was no shock to any observer that the Yaris was the winner on either occasion. Back in 2000, it was the neatest and best driving supermini we’d seen in years and although it was not exactly a style icon, it was the sort of car you turned to when you wanted to buy a worry-free car imbued with bombproof reliability.

This time around, not only was it a stand-out looker, but it also finally fused the previously ungainly world of hybrids and small car production. Previous post-petrol/diesel Yaris models that came with hybrid power were not at all appealing to drive and looked fairly boring too.

When the new one was unveiled last year, it was stunning looking and, upon seeing it in the flesh first we were impressed – but with reservations. 

The main concern being that while the looks might match Toyota boss Akio Toyoda’s ‘no more boring cars’ mantra, it would still be powered by a screechy and insipid hybrid engine.

When it was voted as the European COTY winner, thoughts immediately centred on whether they’d rectified the obvious questions that faced the car. If they had, the prize was obviously well-deserved; if not, someone had pulled a fast one.

But, there was nothing untoward going on at all and Toyota has – as it transpires – had addressed all the obvious Yaris questions and turned out a car truly deserving of this high accolade. We know that now because we’ve driven it and come to the same conclusion as those on the voting jury: this Yaris is a winner.

Now, I have very consistent views on things over time; one is that we love small cars in general; and, two, we have not been big fans of hybrids.

Having now driven the new Yaris I have only underlined my passion for the supermini and, amazingly, we have also finally found a hybrid we can live with.

We all know by now that for hybrid driving, you have to throw pretty much everything you know – or knew – about driving techniques out the window. These machines require nothing of the just-get-in-and-drive philosophy that you might be used to.

Rather, they need a lot more concentration and a lot more driver input than you might think. To extract the maximum from them, you have to have the brain in gear at all times and be capable of thinking around things that should otherwise come naturally.

Therefore, stuff like taking off from a standing start, overtaking and practically every other aspect of driving require a different take. These are cars you have to learn to drive.

For a lot of them however, all that effort was hardly worth the effort of such a mammoth task. Most are not what might be termed ‘drivers’ cars’ and garnering any pleasure from the process was a tough ask. Throw in their screechy tendencies and general joylessness and there was not much there for your average petrolhead.

Although the Yaris hybrid is still fitted with the unloved CVT transmission, Toyota has gone a long way to making the car more sophisticated in NVH terms and making it a nicer thing to drive for pleasure. 

The company has, of course, invested heavily in the whole hybrid genre, but the surprise is that the Yaris is now the best of them.

The engine offering on the Premier Hybrid version we tried was a three-pot 1.5 litre engine, which is supplemented by a 59-kW electric motor and the combination of these provides some 116 bhp, a 0-100 km/h time of 9.7 seconds and a top speed of 175 km/h.

None of those figures presage a particularly salty performance from the car, but my experience showed it to have sufficient grunt to cover most driver’s demands and while the car can get a little loud under heavy acceleration, it is never the aural nightmare of those which preceded it.

The real upside though for many people is that this Yaris is capable of an officially claimed consumption rate of 4.1 l/100 km (68.2 mpg), although the best I could manage was 5.2 l/100 km (53.8 mpg). As an admittedly heavy-footed driver, this was hardly a surprise, but the lighter-toed among you will see worthwhile results.

The handling is good rather than great – but perfectly acceptable at that – and the ride tends to be a little crashy on all but billiard-table surfaces. Overall, though, the car will perform as well on the road as anything else in the class apart maybe from the Ford Fiesta.

Tech on this Premium model extends to an excellent 8” touchscreen multimedia system with a lot of stuff not normally found at this level of motoring, including pre-crash protection, pedestrian warning and much more. 

Interior space is good, especially in front, although three thick-set adults in the back might be a push. Boot space is pretty class-standard, but the split-fold rear seats do add to potential spaciousness.

The Yaris turned out to be an energetic drive, and the revised steering and stiffer chassis certainly contribute to a more enjoyable driving experience than was previously the case. That means you can actually enjoy yourself while also having that smug feeling of helping to save the planet as well.

A deserved two-time European COTY winner, then? Most definitely.