2011 Toyota Yaris Reviews

Toyota Yaris

Inside, the Toyota Yaris has a very unconventional look, with a center-mounted gauge cluster and Lift back models offering large storage areas behind a slim center stack of controls. While the steering is nicely weighted, the Toyota Yaris leans and feels overwhelmed on tight, curvy roads.

The Toyota Yaris has exceptionally short front-seat cushions, which gives little support for taller occupants, and there's little or no side support for curvy roads. The Yaris Lift back models ride on a very short, 96.9-inch wheelbase and are among the shortest new vehicles; at about 150 inches long, it can get pitchy or bouncy on certain types of roads. The Toyota Yaris is a simple car with a simple lineup—and a single model offered for each body style and transmission.

The 2011 Toyota Yaris is a subcompact economy car that is available as a three-door hatchback, five-door hatchback and four-door sedan. The Convenience package adds 60/40-split rear seats (slide/recline for the hatchbacks), 15-inch wheels, a rear-window wiper for hatchback models and a CD/MP3 player with auxiliary audio jack and satellite radio. The front-wheel-drive 2011 Toyota Yaris is powered by a 1.5-liter inline-4 engine with an output of 106 hp and 103 pound-feet of torque. The superb fuel economy of the Toyota Yaris is one of its strongest selling points. At an EPA-estimated 29 mpg city/36 mpg highway and 32 mpg combined, the manual-equipped Toyota Yaris sips less gas than most of the competition.

In government testing, the Toyota Yaris sedan scored four out of five stars for frontal- and side-impact protection for all occupants. Both 2011 Toyota Yaris hatchbacks feature cramped rear seats, but the optional slide/recline function adds a bit more comfort to compensate. Styling differs slightly between the sedan and the hatchbacks, with the sedan being more sedate.

Every Toyota Yaris model features a center-mounted instrument panel. Other negatives include the lack of a telescoping steering wheel and the fact that hatchback models don't offer driver seat height adjustment.

Relative to sedan models, Toyota Yaris hatchbacks offer certain advantages when it comes to design and storage capacity. The sedan offers 12.9 cubic feet of luggage capacity less than competing sedans like the Ford Focus, Nissan Versa and Suzuki SX4.

Among all three body styles, the Toyota Yaris four-door sedan still stands as the more family-friendly model, mostly because it has a longer wheelbase than the hatchbacks. That longer wheelbase not only establishes a little more rear legroom and a surprisingly roomy trunk; it also helps smooth out the Yaris's highway ride, which can be a little choppy and busy on the highway.

That said, the Toyota Yaris does decently in crash-tests, with an 'acceptable' roof-strength score the only serious blemish.