Top Car for fun: Toyota GR Yaris
Tuesday, 4 January 2022
While the standard Yaris took out our overall Top Car title last year (as well as a few other categories), the hot GR variant arrived too late to make it into consideration for 2020.
Which is kind of unlucky for the other potential winners in 2021, because the GR Yaris is so damn good that there wasn’t much discussion about it being the overall best for fun.
It’s arguably the last true hot hatch - and a homologation special, at that - combining a brilliant engine and chassis with an economy car shell. But it’s also much more than just a hot hatch, it’s basically Gazoo Racing’s WRC car (that was eventually abandoned, making the GR even more special in our eyes) with road-legal additions like lights and door handles.
In fact, those road-legal bits are about the only things linking the GR Yaris with its econo siblings. And the name and design cues, of course.
**READ MORE:
* Top Car for commuters: MG HS PHEV
* Top Car for spoiling yourself: Porsche 911 Turbo
* Top Car for families: Toyota Highlander
**
We really liked the fact that Toyota didn’t give the GR Yaris a bunch of digital screens – the instruments behind the wheel are as pleasingly neutral as the exterior seems at first glance, and it’s a great example of Toyota going “just because we made a car that will outdrive most of the people that buy one doesn’t mean we have to shout about it.”
And looking at it from the outside says much the same. The only indications this is a GR are the square, grumpy grille, fat wheel arches and the lack of rear doors. Everything else looks pretty standard Yaris. But for those that know…
The GR gets a 1.6-litre turbo charged three-cylinder engine making a full 200kW, feeding all four wheels through a good old six-speed manual. And it’s fast. Like, seriously fast. Toyota reckons a 0-100kmh time of 5.2 seconds but the butt-based stopwatch suggests that’s a rather conservative time.
Throw it into a corner, and you’ve got more mechanical grip than you know what to do with. You can adjust it too, by telling the AWD system to feed more power to the rear, or balance it 50:50. It’s simply brilliant.
Consider all that specialness and coolness, and then consider it only costs less than $60,000 new.
Runner up: Ford Mustang Mach 1
The Ford Mustang Mach 1 is pretty much the perfect Mustang. It uses the high-output 345kW/556Nm version of the 5.0-litre V8 paired with the same six-speed manual as in the Bullitt special edition, and adds special cosmetic upgrades for a gorgeous exterior look.
Sure, it doesn’t get active cruise control or anything like that to boost its rather tragic safety rating, and it is increasingly hard to justify the big engine these days, but it’s so much freaking fun we had to commend it.
That anti-polar-bear engine sounds phenomenal through a new intake and exhaust system, while the standard MagneRide suspension has been specially tuned to work with stiffer front springs and anti-roll bars. The GT350 and GT500 also donate their subframes and toe-link components – Ford says this gives the Mach 1 the “sharpest Mustang steering responses yet in New Zealand”.
Other contenders
It’s hard to go through a “best car for fun” list and not mention a 911. The Turbo was 2021’s 911 of choice (and our choice for spoiling yourself), and is absolutely incredible, as you might expect.
We also drove the new BMW M3 and M4 twins this year, and while they were extremely fast and hugely fun to drive (BMW’s sports traction control is incredible), a few bugs in the infotainment systems that resulted in the audio dropping out, and a faulty radar system in the M4 dropped them down the rankings.
A late entry came in the form of the Lotus Elise, which actually came very close to beating the GR Yaris for sheer fun, but it’s just not quite as good at doing other things, like comfort, practicality, the whole entry/exit thing… or pretty much anything a car should really do…