Toyota Is Officially Making A Hot Yaris To Give The Fiesta ST A Good Kicking

The Japanese brand will inject some much needed spice into the Yaris range, by making a WRC-inspired hot hatch

13 Dec 2016

Toyota Is Officially Making A Hot Yaris To Give The Fiesta ST A Good Kicking

Despite the addition of a Lexus-inspired ‘Predator face’ during its last facelift, the Toyota Yaris is probably the least exciting small hatchback you can buy. The Ford Fiesta is the fun one da yoof will happily buy, whereas the Yaris is something you’d expect to see on your grandparents’ driveway.

However, the Yaris range is about to get a lot more exciting, thanks to a new Fiesta ST-rivaling hot hatchback which the Japanese company has just announced, teased with the sketch above. Now you’re talking, Toyota!

Although Toyota doesn’t really do much in the way of sporty cars - GT86 and F cars from luxury subsidiary Lexus aside - this isn’t as much of a surprise as you might think. In 2017 Toyota will enter the World Rally Championship using the spectacularly angry Yaris you can see above, which packs a 375bhp 1.6-litre turbocharged four-pot. In other words, fast and noisy things are firmly on the agenda. Toyota plans to distill this WRC lunacy into a road-going Yaris via motorsport team Gazoo, resulting in quite a potent little package.

Other than that, Toyota hasn’t revealed any substantial details. But, we can expect a similarly sized turbo four-pot under the bonnet, putting out somewhere in the region of 200bhp.

Would you have a hot Yaris over a hot Fiesta?

Comments

Now all we need is a “Hot” version of the Vios

Damn right! Mine cost too much to make it as sexy as it is!

Fiesta ST fun with Toyota reliability? Sign me up.

Seeing as how I was running only two hundred horse five years ago reliably them saying that this release will be only two hundred is a bit of a let down. They could easily do 225-240 reliably and safely. The stock chassis and suspension can handle the 375 without upgrades. Sure, brakes would be smart, but the rest is solid enough.

And they need to make it sharp looking too ;-)

YES

If they simply dropped the same 2.4L engine as the Scion tC (Camry Coupe) it would be plenty fun enough :D

ehhhhhh, that’d add a lot of weight to the front and only get you 180hp (correct me if I’m wrong). Where as a smaller engine with a turbo would get you more torque at low end (which is what makes a little hot hatch fun to drive) and not add that much weight.