There is a Yaris that the rest of the world gets, while the U.S. market is given a re-badged Mazda 2. That means we are left wanting for a Yaris-based hot hatch. In those more fun markets it looks like Toyota is going to offer an all-wheel-drive model inspired by its WRC victories (including Ott Tanak’s amazing 2019 championship victory) with three doors and a huge injection of kickass. It’ll make its official debut on January 10th ahead of the Tokyo Auto Salon.
It was apparently supposed to debut in November at Rally Australia, but that round was cancelled thanks to a massive bush fire.
We don’t yet know all of the specs, but it’s pretty obvious that the car will have four driven wheels based on the launch in this video at about 17 seconds in. In the video it’s fitted with proper rally tires, which would be hellaciously loud and not great to drive on the street. It’s also properly hot-hatch loud.
The old Yaris was available in a GRMN version with 210 horsepower. Every manufacturer is addicted to power and one-upsmanship, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see this all-wheel-driven model with a few stables full of extra ponies. 250? 300? We’ll have to wait until January to find out.
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