CAR magazine UK compares the latest Toyota GR Yaris with the Honda Civic Type R in a twin test review
Toyota’s given its sensational GR Yaris lower seats, more power and a suspension tune. Honda’s evolved the Civic Type R into a £50k tour de force. Fight!Because we’d long since given up on driving anything like a Mitsubishi Evo or Lancia Delta Integrale ever again. While those cars left no one in any doubt that rally cars make exceptional high-performance road cars, apparently they just weren’t what people wanted.
Just what is it that I’m trying to say? Well, essentially that the Civic Type R is very obviously a car about which many very smart people have sweated, and upon which a level of care and attention to detail far beyond the norm has evidently been lavished. The last car I drove that felt this crafted, this polished, was the Porsche 911’s anniversary special, the S/T .
To slingshot through a corner in the right gear, nuzzling up to the front Michelins’ limits with testing flexes of your right ankle, and to then time your move to wide open just as the tyres are ready to take it on corner exit, the engine north of 5000rpm and pulling like an express elevator, is one of the purest moments of joy I can ever recall experiencing.
You’ll pay £1500 more for the new automatic version, though our advice would be not to. It’s an eight-speed torque-converter auto, not a twin-clutcher. It’s good, taking the Toyota’s startling straight-line speed up a notch. But there are only two types of use in which it would really be preferable to the manual. One is trackdays, where the rally-developed auto might have an advantage over the manual, which now has a dual-mass flywheel and weightier clutch, and doesn’t like to the hurried.
The stiffer front end means you can be pretty cavalier, coming off the brakes and simply hurling the Toyota into corners, smearing into the first part of the corner just under the limits of the Michelin Pilot 4 S rubber. Now take that right foot of yours and, counter-intuitively get it working the accelerator pedal hard.
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