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The Yaris from Toyota is an attractive, fuel-efficient perky little subcompact sedan or liftback, with either three, four or five doors.
My tester was the five-door model, in a fiery hue called Carmine Red Metallic. It is also available in Meteorite Metallic, Blazing Blue, Bayou Blue Pearl and Black Sand Pearl, to name a few. The Yaris is rounded in the front with a short hood, and higher in the back with a blunt rear end. I thought it had a cute, froggy appearance, especially with the large almost round multi-reflector halogen headlights. I took the twins for a ride, and one of them remarked, "This car goes pretty fast." But Grandma wasn’t really driving fast, just checking the acceleration from zero to driving speed as I pulled out from our country lane to a road with a higher speed limit. I wasn’t disappointed. The 1.5-liter, DOHC four-cylinder engine, connected to a smooth-shifting four-speed automatic transmission, made the car jump like a frog. The Yaris also has front wheel drive, which helps with traction, especially on a quick take off. On the return trip, I passed our lane and turned around in a driveway just up the road a bit and found that the Yaris has a nice tight turning radius (one big advantage of being short), making it easy to change direction quickly and safely. The twins ('tweens, five feet tall) were comfortable in the rear, but a third person in the middle seat would have been pushing it a little, as the seat was really small. There were three-point seatbelts, easy to raise/lower headrests and lower LATCH and top tether anchors for child seats in all rear positions. The rear bench seat folded, reclined and slid in a 60/40 configuration, which increased the cargo area considerably. Storage behind the rear seat was limited, probably only enough for a few groceries or a couple of small pieces of luggage. There was a donut spare under the cargo floor, along with two tool-storage compartments, within easy reach and easy to remove. The Yaris has not been rated for safety in frontal or side crashes, but has a four star rating in the rollover crash test. Yaris is equipped with advanced front air bags and seat-mounted side air bags in both front-seat positions, as well as front and rear side-curtain air bags, which give all passengers more head and body protection in a side-impact collision. I liked the simple, clean interior with easy to understand controls. The door panels were fabric on the upper half and molded plastic on the armrest and lower half. The window buttons and door locks were located on a slight slope up from the front of the armrest, where they couldn’t be accidentally pushed when reaching for the door handle or leaning on the door. There was a large bottle holder in the map pocket molded into the lower part of the lower door panel and a nice large cupholder to the left of the steering wheel, where it would be easy to reach without having to look down or grope around in an awkward position to retrieve a drink. (Flimsy drink cups tend to collapse and spill when lifted by the top — another story altogether.)
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