(4yo) Toyota yaris mini-review

Yes and yes. Charlie loves them. I thought the interior, well, appalling.

Hmm. It may be firing on two then. Okay no ball of fire, but peppy in a revvy way. Compared to anything else with 1.0 litres or less at least.

Hmm. Maybe it was knackered?

Some of the functional interior design was very good - well thought out and nicely engineered, but the general quality and finish was pants.

I'm pretty sure it was running fine. It was smooth and happy enough to rev, with no flatspots, just horribly gutless. The sheer volume of sewing-machine-alike whine when you rev it might fool some folks into thinking they were making good progress, I suppose. :)

Made my 205TD (which supposedly only has 11BHp more and very similar weight) feel like a rocket - it pulls better in 4th than the yaris does in 2nd. It's quieter, more comfy, better built, goes round corners, gets better economy and would cost about a 6th as much to buy. Clearly only insane people buy Yarises. I hate to think who buy Suzuki Altos and similar...

Possibly, although it's had one doting female owner(1), and been fully serviced, whereas my pug had one sensible owner for the first 30k and one ruthless nutjob for the last 90k, but even at 3 times the age and 4 times the mileage it's hanging together much better.

Based on the accepted wisdom, I was expecting to be impressed, but if this is the best small car you can buy today, I reckon things have gone backwards in the last 15 years. I'd take a 205, a mkII golf or a mkI clio in preference, anyday.

(1) yeah, yeah. Maybe it is knackered. Both brake-light bulbs were dead, anyway :D

Albert T Cone wrote in news:55t84tF26jmnoU1 @mid.individual.net:

Last one I had a shot in was pretty nippy. You do have to use lots of revs though, in a very un-diesel like way. Drive it like a bike and you are getting there. :-) I found the seat squabs too short though, and the floaty instrument panel thing in the middle of the dash was a bit wierd.

Agree totally, my mum had one and it was the harshest riding thing I've ever driven, skateboards have a smoother ride.

Just as you would expect, though. That TD produces more torque - thus power - lower down.

No. Absolutely not.

Who says so? It isn't the best small car. It's well suited for some people. The interior is very Ikea-friendly.

You also forget the 205's tendency to skid into a hedge backwards if the driver is slightly too keen then gets chicken on a wet roundabout or bend.

I know, but the difference is startling - by it nature you tend to rev the petrol lump more, so it *should* even out a bit.

Heh. OK, maybe some are just ignorant... :-P

Well, maybe. When someone says "I'm looking for a small economical car...", the stock answers from the Newsgroup Illuminati seem to be "Yaris" or "Micra", with the majority favouring the Yaris.

No, I don't. It's one of the myths which is reinforced over time by repetition. I have one, and have driven quite a few, and whilst you can (and I do) get it to happen, you have to provoke it quite deliberately - you have to be sliding (or on the verge of..) when you lift off, AND be in a low gear at high engine revs for there to be enough engine braking to induce it. They are quite sensitive to tyre pressures, however, and I wonder how many of the reported cases were caused by underinflated rear tyres.

:)

I'd say it's not quite a myth because there's an element of truth to it.

Hmmm...

In the dry, you're spot on but I have had the diesel one feel more than a tad wayward on a wet roundabout.

Personally I think it would add to the fun :) but then I consider Charlie's roundabout technique, that was (when we were changing from the Mondeo) gung-ho in, off the power, give it some lock, brake then once she'd made the turn, back on the power... :-/

I didn't want her trying this in the wet you see.

Yeah that could be it. I'd increase the Ka's rear pressures for the same effect, sort of.

Agreed, this is a poor comparison. One of the cars has a turbocharger and a much bigger engine than the other, produces torque and power in an entirely different part of the rev range, is more powerful (11bhp is a fair bit more than 10% in the cars we're talking) and is from an age before carbon dioxide was the sole pollutant in the entire known universe.

Heh.

Name me a car that doesn't crash if someone who doesn't know how to drive overcooks it.

The 205 was still about a million times more comfortable than any small car of that era and the entertaining handling was a bonus IMO. I owned a NA Diesel 205 for a few weeks. It was ace. It's demise was sudden, entirely down to me being crap at driving but most certainly not backwards through a hedge.

I'd buy whatever car I liked and teach her to drive ;).

I'd buy whatever car I liked and teach her to drive ;).

I've managed to get the fuel consumption average in a Yaris to 13.8 mpg :-) Average speed was, um, illegal...

That's one of the reasons I like my Mk2 GTi.

I spun my last 205 GTi on a damp corner - mainly because a taxi wandered into my lane.. I was doing about 45 in third and I lifted off... then spun... and spun... and spun. That was a 205 GTi 1.9 on cold Yokahamas in the damp. The last thing I was doing was provoking the bloody thing. The Golf wouldn't have misbehaved at all if I'd have done the same.

Mustard Mitt though, normally 205s are ace little things, and it never once threatened to do it again, even under quite a bit of provocation.

The other way around, really, 'cos she was used to her 5.0 Mustang.

Hehehe.

I'm saying that the difference isn't in the how to drive, but the way the

Million?

Hmm. Not always. Base model seats were iffy at best and the smaller petrol cars were noisy at speed. The mark three Fiesta - a poorer car in most if not all other respects - had better seats and was a little quieter...

:)