Sorry for misrepresenting my previous posts by calling them minireviews and then using lots of words. I just can't help myself. Spot the bored unemployed person! Don't worry I had three job interviews last week and got offered all three so I'll be quiet again soon, I'm just writing these to procrastinate making a decision about which one to go for.
We hired the Yaris to take us from Alice Springs to Ayres Rock (or Uluru for the Politically Challenged) and back again because the VW wasn't running right since we had a new piston, barrel and head fitted up in Darwin (we learned that aircooled cars don't like being flogged over corrugated dirt roads when it's 50 degrees in the shade). By the way it was simply that the mechanic hadn't tightened the idle jet on the right-hand carby.
To be fair to the Yaris, it probably wasn't designed to carry four people and their stuff more than 1000km in two days through dusty, unforgiving outback and searing heat. The aircon wasn't really up to the job. It really struggled to keep the temperature in the cabin down and I could feel the sun hammering me through the only-slightly-tinted windows. I think the disadvantage to that raked windscreen was that the sun was able to beat down on the front seat occupants. In the VW we were sat well behind the windscreen rather than under it like you do in the Yaris, so we were relatively shaded from the sun. The VW didn't have aircon though!
Back to the Yaris... it was impossible to sit in the seats for more than an hour without getting a seriously numb bum.
The interior was terribly plasticky and very cheap feeling. To compound this, the build quality wasn't any better than a 90's Citroen.
The MK1 Yaris really impressed me, I don't know how Toyota got the MK2 so wrong. It's a lot bigger, too. Probably to make way for the Aygo. The engine was quite good and nippy but I have no idea which one it had as there were no badges anywhere to say, but it wasn't even that economical. I doubt it was the 1.0 because Australians would never buy a 1 litre car, it's taken them until recently to realise that the minimum number of cylinders in an internal combustion engine can be less than six.
In conclusion, I'd NEVER buy a MK2 Yaris but definitely be tempted by a MK1.