Toyota’s Epic Homologation Special GR Yaris Just Got Even Better

Just as American car enthusiasts will pay a premium for JDM car parts, some Japanese car enthusiasts will pay a premium for American car parts. The desire to want what we can’t have is universal, and the Toyota GR Yaris sits near the tippy-top of the want list. It’s a three-door, all-wheel-drive, genuinely rally-derived hot hatch that just got even better, thanks to an extensive facelift that debuted at this year’s Tokyo Auto Salon.

The GR Yaris will always be a historically important car because it’s a homologation special, a genre of car that doesn’t really exist anymore. See, the World Rally Championship rules say that if you want to enter a purpose-built rally car, you had to sell 2,500 roadgoing examples to the public in a given year. Toyota, believing that a special three-door model would make them more competitive, obliged.

Let’s start with the most important attribute of any hot hatch — handling. The GR Yaris was already highly acclaimed, but Toyota’s taken this new one over the top. The engineers tripled the number of bolts holding the dampers to the monocoque, which should keep a tighter handle on alignment while on the go. Greater rigidity in this area should manifest itself in better steering and improved stability, positive things for any performance car. In addition, Toyota touts 13 percent more spot welds and 24 percent more structural adhesive throughout the body structure, which should improve overall rigidity and let the suspension perform even better. Salivating yet?

Maintaining momentum is great, but what about building it? Well, strengthened pistons, new exhaust valves, higher fuel pressure, and a new air pressure sensor have found their way under the hood of the GR Yaris, allowing this new car to make 300 horsepower and 295 lb.-ft. of torque, gains of 32 horsepower and 22 lb.-ft. of torque as shown in the chart below. The bump in output can be experienced everywhere above 3,000 rpm, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the pistons are the exact same ones found in the GR Corolla. Oh, and for those who’ll be hitting up trackdays, Toyota’s offering a new cooling package that includes an intercooler water sprayer, an additional radiator, and a special intake. Yep, that’s an option box worth ticking.

For the first time, the GR Yaris is available with a two-pedal option, Toyota’s new eight-speed Gazoo Racing Direct Automatic Transmission. Toyota claims this torque converter unit offers “world-class gear-shifting speeds,” and while we can’t be the judge of that without a turn behind the wheel, some of the details here seem promising for those who, for whatever reason, can’t or don’t want to drive manual. For starters, the optional Torsen limited-slip differential package also appears in the automatic, and Toyota claims that shifts are fastest in manual mode.

In addition, the manumatic gate on the shifter is now oriented in the correct manner. In most Toyotas, you pull back to downshift and push forward to upshift, which just isn’t conducive to performance driving because you’re working against forces of acceleration and deceleration. In the GR Yaris with the automatic transmission, it’s pull back to upshift, push forward to downshift, just as it should be.

Of course, if you stick with the manual, you can unlock some extra perks, including a vertically-oriented handbrake that I’m sure will be used in a law-abiding manner. Right? As with before, automatic rev-matching comes bundled with the manual, but you can kill that at the press of a button should you want to rev-match your own downshifts to hone your driving skills.

Speaking of performance driving, the most important vehicular components when it comes to pushing a car are seating position and visibility. With those in mind, Toyota has dropped the seat rails in the GR Yaris by 25 mm and adjusted steering column tilt to match, raised the rear-view mirror to the top of the windscreen, and given the car an entirely new driver-centric dashboard that sits two inches lower than the top of the infotainment screen in the old car. Sure, the blocky new dashboard design takes some getting used to, but it’s neat how it’s vaguely reminiscent of the dashboard in the original Toyota Matrix.

Helping shrink that dashboard height is a new digital instrument cluster with several configurations dependent on drive mode. While the standard drive mode comes with a skeuomorph of an analog tachometer, switching things into sport mode brings up a motorsports-inspired horizontal tachometer. Bringing up sport mode also adds readouts for oil temperature and oil pressure, vital stats for trackday stuff. In addition, there’s a display mode with massive shift lights front and center on automatic models, which makes sense as it’s difficult to money shift an automatic.

Moving to the outside, the GR Yaris also gets some functional styling tweaks. The entire lower edge of the front bumper is a multi-piece design for easier repair should a small animal run across your path. Also, how neat is this? The lower grille mesh is actually made of metal now. You don’t see that on a whole lot of new cars. Toyota’s also thought of tuners, since the third brake light has been moved to below the rear window, making it easier for owners to swap spoilers. It’s all part of a consolidated rear lighting strategy that’s meant to minimize cost of damage on rally stages. Speaking of the rear end, the old car’s faux diffuser gets swapped out for air-exhausting mesh that looks positively tuner-iffic. I just made that word up, but you know what I mean. It all comes together to create a GR Yaris that’s a bit meaner, a bit more purposeful, a bit more racecar-looking than before.

Unfortunately, the new GR Yaris won’t be making to America, but it will be sold in most other markets. Japan gets the full-whack 300-horsepower version, while Europeans will have to make due with 280 horsepower but will get the Torsen diff package and the intercooler water sprayer as standard. However, before we get too sad, it’s worth noting that we get a 300-horsepower all-wheel-drive Toyota of our own in the form of the GR Corolla. Is it as good as the GR Yaris? While I can’t say for certain, I can definitely say that Toyota Chairman and head of Gazoo Racing Akio Toyoda recently had a GR Corolla on stage during his recent Tokyo Auto Salon address and not a GR Yaris. Interpret that how you will.

(Photo credits: Toyota)

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