The little hatch can hustle.
The Toyota GR Yaris , one of those cars Americans are already waiting for 25 years to import, is the Toyota GR Yaris . One of Toyota’s worst vehicles is not available in the US. Toyota designed the hopped-up Yaris to homologate the WRC race car. It shares nothing with the Yaris. A YouTube video shows the car’s racing heritage in action, with the hatch setting an impressive Nurburgring lap.
With the Toyota’s 8.93 seconds lap time, the GR Yaris can also count the 2011 BMW 1 Series M Coupe as well as the 2016 Honda Civic Type R. This lap is far from the fastest on the track, as times can fall well below six minutes. It also kisses the track’s electronically limited top speed, which is 230 km/h (143 mi/h).
Once you get past the familiar name, the GR Yaris can be quite a wild machine. It features a Frankenstein chassis from several Toyota platforms, all-wheel-drive, and a powerful turbocharged three-cylinder engine. The 1.6-liter engine generates 257 horsepower (192 Kilowatts) as well as 265 pound-feet (362 Newton-meters), of torque, which is sent to a 6-speed manual gearbox. The hatch weighs in at 2,822 lbs (1,280 kg).
No matter how fast you are at the Nurburgring, this iconic track is an excellent place to test your cars. It is a standard that measures how fast cars can go around the Nurburgring. It creates a level playing field, which puts cars through a rigorous test of physics. Although the Toyota GR Yaris may not be the fastest track, it is still impressive for a compact hot-hatch.