It is not a JDM exclusive, yet the GR Yaris has managed to win over petrolheads on every continent it has been sold in. No wonder, when it covers ground the way the Imprezas and Evos of the early 2000s used to. The punchiness is a big part of that. So is the underdog appeal of something this capable wearing a Toyota badge on a supermini body.
This little Yaris is not as lairy as a BMW M4 or Porsche GT3 but it will get down a British B road considerably quicker than either. There are very few cars at any price as capable across the sort of surfaces we actually drive on in this country, and that is entirely down to where it came from. For the money you get a track car, a rally car, a B road basher and a grocery getter, all wrapped up in an aggressively wide Toyota nugget.
Gen 2 allocations were tightly controlled by Toyota, so finding one in the UK is hard work and the few that come up sit well over £40k. That is where we come in. These cars appear regularly at Japanese auction, so we can source one for you and usually save you money doing it.
How WRC Development Shaped the GR Yaris
The GR Yaris exists because Toyota Gazoo Racing wanted to go rallying properly. It was not a warm hatch that got a body kit and a badge after the fact. The three door shell, the wide track, the four wheel drive system and the whole engineering brief came from the requirements of a World Rally Championship programme, which is why the road car feels so unlike anything else in the class.
The homologation special had been a dead concept for the best part of two decades before this car arrived in late 2020. To bring it back Toyota engineered a bespoke three door bodyshell, used carbon fibre reinforced plastic and aluminium where it mattered, developed suspension that appears on no other Yaris and built an entirely new 1.6 litre three cylinder turbo and four wheel drive system to go with it. That is an enormous amount of money spent to satisfy a rulebook.
Then the FIA changed the rulebook. The regulations moved on, Toyota's homologation effort was effectively made redundant before the car had properly landed. Toyota carried on regardless, launched it anyway and later had it homologated. We are all better off for this because the GR Yaris has turned out to be one of the performance car highlights of the last five years.
The results speak for themselves. Toyota took consecutive WRC manufacturers' titles from 2021 through to 2025, while Kalle Rovanperä took drivers' championships in 2022 and 2023 and became the youngest champion in the history of the sport in the process. Very few road cars can point at a motorsport record that current.
What matters for a UK buyer is what rallying demands of a car. A rally car has to work on tarmac, on gravel, in the wet, and over surfaces that change every few hundred metres. That is a brief that translates unusually well to a British back road in February. Most performance cars are developed to be fast on a smooth circuit and then softened slightly for the road. The GR Yaris was developed the other way around.
The clever bit is GR-Four and its adjustable torque split. On the first generation car you get three fixed settings. Normal runs a 60:40 front to rear split, Track locks it to 50:50 and Sport sends 70 percent of the drive rearwards on a 30:70 bias. The 2024 second generation car keeps the dial but retunes what sits behind it. Normal stays at 60:40, a new Gravel mode sends 47 percent rearwards and Track is now constantly variable, shuffling anywhere between 40 and 70 percent to the rear axle depending on what is needed.
Elsewhere there is a 1.6 litre three cylinder turbo that was the most power dense engine of its type in production when it launched, a carbon composite roof, aluminium panels to keep weight down and Torsen limited slip differentials front and rear. The second generation car also gained a 13 percent increase in spot welds and 24 percent more structural adhesive, along with stiffer springs, a thicker front anti roll bar and a driving position dropped by 25mm.
Why Import a Toyota GR Yaris from Japan
Importing a GR Yaris from Japan makes sense for three reasons: the cars can be cheaper, they are usually in better condition and Japan gets exclusive special editions that the rest of the world only reads about.
The examples coming through Japanese auction tend to be low mileage and completely standard, which is getting harder to say about the UK used market unless you pick one up from Toyota themselves. In Japan they are still plentiful.
Japan gets more of the Aero Performance Package, additional spec options such as the cold weather pack and the rally style handbrake option, and it gets the limited editions that never reach a UK showroom in any meaningful number. If you want the interesting version of this car rather than the standard one, Japan is where you will find it.
The GR Yaris is a modern car rather than a twenty five year old one, so bringing it in involves a different set of approvals to a classic JDM import. Torque GT runs an all encompassing service, so auction sourcing, inspection, shipping, customs, approval, registration and prep are all handled as one job.
Special Editions
The 2024 Sebastien Ogier and Kalle Rovanperä Editions launched together at that year's WRC opener, each in its driver's national colours with a commemorative plaque and bespoke drive modes. The Rovanperä gets a DONUT mode, because Toyota built a car with a dedicated donut button and we respect that enormously.
The 2026 cars go further still and are limited to 200 units each. The Morizo RR runs the eight speed automatic developed at the Nürburgring with carbon aero, Gravel Khaki paint, retuned suspension and Akio Toyoda's signature on the windscreen, while the Sebastien Ogier 9x World Champion Edition is built on the Aero Performance Package car with a 40:60 SEB drive mode and a numbered plate. None of them reach a UK showroom in any real number.
What the GR Yaris Is Like to Drive
The punchy nature of the GR Yaris is addictive. The car actively encourages being driven quickly and it is very easy to imagine that these things are troublemakers by design. Throw any road and any bend at it and it will get round and out the other side faster than almost anything else. It may not be able to keep up with the big hitters on a faster circuit, but in the real world there is simply not a car that does this job as well.
The torque vectoring is what lets you find your own way of driving it. You adjust to the surface, you adjust to your own style and the car meets you where you are. Track mode on a first generation car is where it is at. That old school 50:50 split with a bit of late braking into a bend and the Yaris pivots around itself with the rotation of a go kart, pulled round and back out by the differentials and the vectoring, at which point you will be quietly convinced you are the next Sebastien Ogier.
The auto blip function helps that illusion considerably. However good we all like to think we are at heel and toe, the system removes the human error from the equation and lets you concentrate entirely on braking and turning. Sport mode changes it to a 30:70 rear bias, sharpening the rotation and letting the back of the car loosen up when you want it to. On the second generation car Track mode does that thinking for you, moving continuously between 40 and 70 percent rearwards as the corner develops.
The Looks
The styling splits opinions. For us it sits on exactly the right line, wide enough to make its intentions obvious yet subtle enough that it does not shout at everyone in the car park. That suits the humble character of the thing, particularly when it is busy leaving big boy German metal for dust.
There is function in most of it. Air ducts and vents feed cooling where the car needs it and the huge lower grille exists to put the intercooler in clean air. The rear arches flare out dramatically to cover the wider track and the four wheel drive hardware underneath, and the carbon composite roof tapers sharply towards the back to give it a three door coupe silhouette that the standard Yaris could never manage. It looks like what it is, which is the highest compliment you can pay a homologation car.
Is the Toyota GR Yaris a Future Classic?
The GR Yaris is already behaving like a future classic and the parallels with the Evo era are hard to ignore. It is a revival of the thing we loved about the Imprezas and Evos of the 1990s and 2000s, which is a car you can use every single day that was designed and built to survive one of the harshest motorsports on the planet.
The special editions push it further. Limited run cars named after championship winning drivers, built in small numbers and sold through ballots, is the Tommi Mäkinen Edition playbook running again twenty five years later. The Rovanperä, Ogier or even the Aero pack cars could be the ones people talk about in decades to come for precisely the same reasons.
It will never be as raw as an old Impreza or an Evo and we are not going to pretend it is. Give the industry another twenty five years of whatever is coming next though, and a hand assembled three cylinder homologation special with a manual gearbox and an incredible four wheel drive system is going to look like something from another planet. Plenty of people are going to be sat there thinking they wish they had kept their GR.
Want One?
The GR Yaris is a salesman's dream because it does the work itself. All it takes is one test drive and the convincing is over. Whether you are into track days, rallying or simply enjoying a good road on a Sunday morning, it does not really matter, because the Yaris covers all of it and suits almost any kind of owner. Get in one, then get your own while you still can.
If you want one sourced from Japan to your own specification, get in touch. We run a personal import service that covers everything from auction sourcing through to UK registration and delivery, and we know exactly which cars to pursue and which to leave alone.
This is exactly what Torque GT does. We find cars like this. The ones with genuine character and real driving DNA. We handle everything from the Japanese auction right through to your driveway. No stress. No guesswork. Just your dream JDM import done properly.
