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The Toyota Yaris iA is a well-designed little sedan that is fun to drive. The iA has a solid cadre of commuter assists and safe features, has loftier reliabity scores, and reasonable cockpit room for iv or five passengers given its 172-inch length. It only lacks the suite of higher-grade driver assists Toyota calls TSS (Toyota Safety Sense). It's also simple to purchase: Choose the outside color and decide if you want the six-speed manual or the six-speed automated. With the automatic manual, you'll pay about $eighteen,000 for a Yaris iA.

Other than the Toyota proper name badge, the Yaris iA is unrelated to the Toyota Yaris hatchback (or liftback). The iA is designed and fabricated for Toyota by Mazda, while Toyota/Scion created the Yaris hatch. The iA is essentially the sedan version of the Mazda2 hatchback (that is sold outside the United states of america); it was sold as the Scion iA earlier the Scion make was ended in 2022. It now has a Toyate-way big grille, too.

Punching To a higher place Its Weight Class

Step inside the Yaris iA and you'll be impressed by what the motorcar offers. At that place'due south a fill-in camera, Bluetooth, 2 USB ports, and a seven-inch colour LCD atop the middle stack. If yous desire navigation, Toyota says the iA is ready: Just social club the navi SD Card from the dealer. (Too wait online, where you'll detect cards for $75-$125.) In that location'southward Hd radio, just no satellite radio. You control infotainment from the touch screen or the rotary wheel on the console; three function buttons adjacent to the controller take yous directly to the home screen, audio, or navigation.

You lot'll too be impressed by the fit and end of the interior. Much of the trim that you impact or rest an elbow on is padded. The black seat fabric has bonny blue inserts. The center armrest is a dealer accessory ($195 plus installation); that'due south well-nigh the only place where it felt as if Toyota cutting corners.

The body has a capacity of 13.5 cubic feet, more in line with what yous'd await in a compact sedan. (The Toyota Corolla compact sedan has 13.0 cubic feet.) Demand more? Fold downward 1 or both rear seat backs.

A Dull Auto Y'all'll Want to Bulldoze Fast

Toyota-designed Yaris hatchback (almost no relation to Yaris iA).

With a low weight of 2,385-2,416 pounds for the iA, the 105-hp four-cylinder engine is upwards to the task of launching the car, and you'll get to lx mph in about 9 seconds. The iA is forepart-drive just. Mazda in general tunes its suspensions to create cars that are more fun on twisty roads than at the drag strip. An engine that small relative to auto weight means adept fuel economy: 32 mpg city, 40 mpg highway, 35 mpg combined for the automatic, and most 1 mpg less for the manual transmission version.

Subcompact cars are nobody'due south offset choice for long highway drives, since short wheelbases make pocket-size cars a piddling boisterous on expansion strips and other artifacts from imperfect roads. Simply the Yaris iA does as well as whatsoever machine this brusk manages.

Information technology'southward on the highway where you may observe the Yaris iA doesn't offer the trio of highway driver safety assists that Toyota and Honda offer on most trim lines of its bigger cars: adaptive cruise control, lane departure alarm, and blind spot detection. Toyota calls it Toyota Safe Sense; Honda, Honda Sensing. This isn't a competitive disadvantage, because it's not that mutual among subcompacts. Information technology may push buyers toward larger vehicles if the possessor is a driver of developing, declining, or permanently minor driving skill.

In city driving, the iA offers depression-speed forward-collision alarm, with automatic braking. It's uncommon on subcompact cars. This is a large plus.

Biggest change from the original Mazda2: a bigger, more agressive grille that is role of the current Toyota design language.

Should You Buy?

The competition to the Toyota Yaris iA comprises the other subcompact sedans and hatchbacks. That grouping of eight includes in order of sales: the Nissan Versa (sales most twice that of the Accent), Hyundai Accent, Honda Fit, Ford Fiesta, Toyota Yaris iA and Yaris hatchback, Chevrolet Sonic, and Kia Rio. As a group, sales were downward 20 percent to 353,000; only the Yaris was up. (The subcompact crossover marketplace is bigger, with 700,000 sales last year, a 2 percent increase. The top five at that place were the Kia Soul, Subaru Crosstrek, Jeep Renegade, Honda HR-V, and Buick Encore.)

Amongst the sedan/hatchback vehicles, the Fit is even more than ingenious in providing passenger or cargo space, and the Fiesta is quicker. The Versa offers a lot of value for the money. Among crossovers, look at the Subaru Crosstrek, the Honda HR-V, and the Mazda CX-three (somewhat like a crossover version of the Mazda3) at the least. Providing extra cargo space in vehicles less than 180 inches long improves their versatility.

The other competition for the Yaris is the 2- to 4-year-onetime used compact motorcar. Look in that location; particularly amid the 2022s and 2022s, you may notice the ACC-LDW-BSD holy trinity of safety integrated. Just notation that there are stiff discounts on subcompact sedans and hatchbacks, since US buyers are turning their backs on the sedan in full general. As of late Jan 2022, you could score a $2,000 cash discount, or financing or 1.9 per centum downward to 0 percent, on the Yaris.