Photo: X-Tomi Design
The GR Yaris is amazing, epic, easily the most exciting hot hatch of 2020. Toyota hasn't made another AWD turbocharged performance car since the days of the iconic Celica GT-Four. But it's also kind of weird.
By pushing the technology to its extremes, the company has made a car very few of us will even get to see and even fewer will drive. It's just a homologation special built to go rallying and give Toyota an edge over its competitors.
Toyota could have just used a regular 2020 Yaris 5-door in the WRC. But the GR Yaris is a much better starting block for racing. It's got a much lower roof, a 3-door body and visibly wider hips that will be put to good use by the aerodynamics team.
But if you look at it as just a 3-door small hatchback, you'll instantly think back to hatchbacks from a few decades ago. Most of them were small with token rear seats that were rarely used. For a bit of diversity, automakers also developed dainty little convertibles. The Nissan Micra C+C was by far the most famous, followed perhaps by the Peugeot 206 CC. But Toyota also toyed with this idea. Not many people know this, but in 2000 they built a working prototype, and the Scion iQ was also supposed to have an open-top version, just like the smart.
Obviously, a GR Yaris Convertible, like the one rendered by X-Tomi Design, is just for the laughs. Not only would a 272 horsepower AWD 2-seat convertible be boring... wait... it wouldn't; it would be the exact opposite of boring. But anyway, people just don't buy convertibles, especially small ones that look girly. They want crossovers, so much so that Volkswagen saw fit to make a convertible crossover despite killing its topless Golf and Beetle.
The good news is the GR Yaris is the start of a whole new Toyota, one that wants to recapture lost glory. And with a multitude of icons to pick between it's only a matter of time before a convertible sports car arrives.
Toyota could have just used a regular 2020 Yaris 5-door in the WRC. But the GR Yaris is a much better starting block for racing. It's got a much lower roof, a 3-door body and visibly wider hips that will be put to good use by the aerodynamics team.
But if you look at it as just a 3-door small hatchback, you'll instantly think back to hatchbacks from a few decades ago. Most of them were small with token rear seats that were rarely used. For a bit of diversity, automakers also developed dainty little convertibles. The Nissan Micra C+C was by far the most famous, followed perhaps by the Peugeot 206 CC. But Toyota also toyed with this idea. Not many people know this, but in 2000 they built a working prototype, and the Scion iQ was also supposed to have an open-top version, just like the smart.
Obviously, a GR Yaris Convertible, like the one rendered by X-Tomi Design, is just for the laughs. Not only would a 272 horsepower AWD 2-seat convertible be boring... wait... it wouldn't; it would be the exact opposite of boring. But anyway, people just don't buy convertibles, especially small ones that look girly. They want crossovers, so much so that Volkswagen saw fit to make a convertible crossover despite killing its topless Golf and Beetle.
The good news is the GR Yaris is the start of a whole new Toyota, one that wants to recapture lost glory. And with a multitude of icons to pick between it's only a matter of time before a convertible sports car arrives.
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