Toyota Europe president lobbying for Fiesta ST rival
Euro president demands Yaris hot hatch and questions the point of motorsport if you don't have a hot hatch to sellToyota is facing new calls for a performance hatch based on its Yaris from its own European president after he announced that his company must link road cars to Toyota’s huge investment in WRC.
Speaking to Brit mag Auto Express, Johan van Zyl said: “It's no use doing motorsport if you can't reflect it in your product. What you'll see is that we want to totally integrate it into our offering. From the European side we would like to do something to bring something to market that will reflect our participation in WRC."
According to Auto Express, even if Toyota in Japan relents and produces a hot version of its Yaris supermini, that car won't arrive until 2018 as such an investment in a performance model could only be made on the next-generation version of the Yaris.
Tying in with the motorsport investment, van Zyl hopes such a hot hatch could be created in cooperation with Toyota's Gazoo racing sub-brand.
"We want to create a global feel for motorsport and Gazoo stands for us wanting to learn from motorsport and for developing excitement around cars.
“If you love cars, they shouldn’t just be for getting from A to B," Toyota's Euro boss told Auto Express.
It's not just in Europe there's support for a hotter Yaris.
Last year Toyota’s chief engineer for sports vehicle management, Tetsuya Tada, told motoring.com.au he too thought the world’s largest car-maker needs a bona-fide hot hatch.
“We need a real hot hatch for the brand, because we are returning to WRC in 2017. What do you think of the Yaris?” he asked.
It's thought that if a fast Yaris is approved it will almost certainly be based on the Yaris turbo available in Japan and come equipped with a far more powerful version of its current 112kW/206Nm 1.5-litre turbo engine.
Expected to mimic the Yaris WRC's look, a hot hatch based on the supermini would also come with bigger brakes, wider bodywork and a bespoke suspension tune -- but not all-wheel drive.
When we spoke to Tada last year he confirmed that both the Ford Fiesta ST and Volkswagen Polo GTI were the benchmark hot hatches to beat.
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