Talk about the right place at the right time. Toyota's Yaris three-door hatchnack– excuse me, three-door liftback— and four-door sedan have been taking numbers and kicking names in the American new car market. Well, duh. First, Yari are fuel-efficient wee beasties (34/40 or fight). Second, despite a whole bunch of piggish SUVs, Toyota is still the small-car manufacturer of the moment. And third, they are cheap ($11,350 and up). So it makes sense that ToMoCo would bring the five-door Yaris– already on sale in Canada and most of the rest of the world– to the US. Americans certainly seem to have warmed-up to hatchbacks. As the basic Yaris is already America-compliant in terms of crash testing and emissions, it's a no brainer. If only the D2.8 were so smart. Lucky? Well-prepared? Prescient? Your choice.
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5 door hatches are insanely practical vehicles. Good move, Toyota.
Malibu-Maxx may have been fugly, but useful.
Mazda6 hatch- dead
Is Saab still in the sorority girl hatch business anymore?
I’d _LOVE_ to see the 5 door hatch.
My wife hates the look of the 3 door hatch and I don’t like the sedan w/o the hatch.
For this reason we haven’t seriously looked at it….
Finally…
Why didn’t they bring the 5-door in the first place?
Yeaaa! Hopefully it’ll be available with a manual as well. There may be a silver liner to the $5 a gallon gas price stormcloud. =:-)
Why didn’t they bring the 5-door in the first place?
Becuase it’s Scion clone is already sold in US.
at least it isnt being called a shooting brake
I wasn’t aware they didn’t sell these in the US. The five-door has been available (and best-selling, compared to the three-door and sedan) in Canada since this iteration showed up.
Seriously, who buys three-door hatches? If you have two rows of seats, you want two doors, especially in a practical vehicle. Plunking in a child seat/unhappy toddler or shoehorning friends into a three door is just no fun.
Great decision. I think they will sell a good bunch of them.
I guess Toyota didn’t send them here because we got the Scion xA & xB (which Canada did not).
Now that those models have morphed into the (bigger) xD and (way too big) xB v.2, US Toyota dealers need this model – even if it’s a few years late.
Is it worth pointing out that Ford and GM do have decent 5 door hatches to compete with the Yaris? They just can’t afford to sell them in the US.
hal :
It’s worth mentioning if only to reinforce the “WTF” factor with regard to the domestics current situation.
It’s about time. The Yaris is one that we wouldn’t be looking at due to the lack of a 5-door model.
Why didn’t they bring the 5-door in the first place? Becuase it’s Scion clone is already sold in US.
It sorta would be stepping on the Matrix as well (and yea, I realize they are different sized and priced animals, but as a shopper in those segments I’d be looking at both).
About time. What about ESC?
The smaller the car, the more doors and hatches I want on it. Yeah, the small hatchbacks have always been really, really useful despite what the big 2.8 want us to believe (who prefer to supply us tiny sedans with limited utility).
What??? you didn’t have the 5 door version? LOL
And I thought Toyota was smart… well, obviously not so
I hope they were THAT cheap here. I’d buy a 3dr version for daily driver purposes.
By the way, do you get the 1.3lts or 1.5lts engine? I don’t want to go through your toyota website
Great car, love the styling. I’d still buy a Fit for many reasons, a primary one being that the speedometer & tach are behind the steering wheel. I’d pay the extra per unit costs of engineering a car to cater to the left and right hand drive markets, to not have to turn my head to see the instruments. How many dollars per car does this save? I’d gladly pay $300 to have the instruments front and center. I’d bet the savings is more like $20 per car if that much.
@Stingray: 1.5L
The five-door Yaris looks a lot better than the four-door, which has weird proportions. (The four-door does, however, make a better case for itself than the Corolla — not surprising, given how similar the Yaris sedan is to previous-generation Corollas.)
I’d still take a Fit. My only objections to the Fit are (a) lack of a temperature gauge (WTF?), (b) drum brakes in back, and (c) it could really use variable-rate rear springs, or even something like the old Air Lift leveling system. You can cram an amazing amount of stuff in the Fit, but if you get carried away, you can bottom the rear suspension.
Oh, you didn’t have the five-door down there? I believe we’ve had it up here in Canada all along. I wonder how many other efficient small cars are currently Canada-only that could be easily added to the American line-up now that gas prices are rising.
If Toyota were really smart, they’d give us the Aygo and the Aygo Crazy. I like cars that have the instrument cluster over the steering wheel instead of over the stereo.
So Toyota is willing to cannibalize Scion sales in order to boost the Yaris? Interesting.
The 5-door Yaris has been a Toyota staple in many parts of the worlds for many, many moons. It has been proven time and time again that Americans no longer harbor the recalcitrant dislike for small hatchbacks as witnessed by the overwhelming success of the MINI Cooper in this country.
It seems to me Toyota doesn’t fully understand the lower end of the market spectrum in the US. Honda brought over the Fit, Nissan the Versa, yet Toyota only offered the 3 door hatchback and neglected the potential market for the 5 door model.
Personally, Toyota should re-evaluate Scion. Their current lineup is made up of cars aimed at hairdressers and black sock/bermuda short wearer set. Their product mix is lackluster and offers nothing that you can not get in any other Toyota product (Matrix comes to mind).
ttacgreg: the center-mount instrumentation has nothing to do with cost savings. The instrument panel is still a handed assembly. It is merely a gimic, much the same as the MINI’s speedo. And really, how often are you looking at the gauges?
argentla: if you really think that discs vs. drums on a little wee car like the Fit is that big of a deal, then you should be driving something else anyway!
I was in the market for the 3-door:
The xD (clone) is a few hundred pounds heavier, yet not really that much roomier. It also has a horrible turning radius for such a small car, and especially compared to it’s Yaris counterpart (I’m sure the bigger engine gets in the way). The Yaris was also more comfortable, while offering more “slingability” vs. the heavy xD.
The bigger engine is probably helpful to move the extra bulk of the xD, but what makes it so much heavier? Will the 5-door Yaris be as heavy as the xD? If so, I can’t see it achieving the 34/40 that the 3-door and (slightly lighter) sedan achieve.
I do like the 5-door looks a lot more than the xD, though – the xD headlights REALLY throw the car off; just OK from the front, but the bulging bug-eyes from the side are hideous.
Just please keep the 5-door lightweight… or offer the 3-door with the 1.8L and a 6-speed ;)
Hatchbacks and wagon ho! Hurray!
argentla :
(b) drum brakes in back…
You don’t need rear discs in a car this light. Drums are fine for the rears, and have the added bonus of being less susceptible to debris damage or warping. They last longer, too.
dean :
ttacgreg: the center-mount instrumentation has nothing to do with cost savings. The instrument panel is still a handed assembly. It is merely a gimic, much the same as the MINI’s speedo. And really, how often are you looking at the gauges?
In the Yaris’ case, it has everything to do with cost savings. Transplanting the instrument cluster costs margin dollars, and the margins are razor-thin on cars like the Yaris. It’s cheaper to design the car (column routing, wiring), tooling and parts if all you’re doing is rotating the cluster. Even if it’s pennies, on a small-margin, high-volume car (Toyota sells a lot of these), those pennies add up fast.
In the Mini, though, it’s a gimmick. Notice that the Yaris’ (and Ion, and Nissan X-Trail) gauges are high-mount and away from the driver: you don’t take your eyes far off the road to look at them (the stat for the Echo/1G Yaris was, I think, 11 degrees away from the road, vs 22 in a traditional IP-behind-wheel car). In the Mini, you have to look down–way down–and refocus: the cluster is centre-mount, lower than normal and close to the driver.
The Yaris is form-follows-function; the Mini is form-results-in-bad-ergonomics.
offroadinfrontier :
The bigger engine is probably helpful to move the extra bulk of the xD, but what makes it so much heavier? Will the 5-door Yaris be as heavy as the xD?
No, not even close. Go to http://toyota.ca; the three- and five-door cars are only a couple pounds off each other, and the the five-door is much lighter than the US-Spec xD.
That’s great to read! I would much rather the 5-door.. Our xA gets 30 city and 33 highway (I drive too fast), and I’m hoping to get better highway out of the 5-speed yaris.. with such a low weight penalty for the 5 doors, there’s not really a reason to get the 3-door, unless you want to scream “don’t ask me for a ride!!”
like others have said:
good idea.
A good idea, but too late; we just bought a Fit.
Seriously, who buys three-door hatches?
People like me that rarely use the backseat for anything other than carrying groceries, tools, etc. I think that I can count on two hands the number of times that I’ve had three or more people in my current car. With these tiny subcompacts, a “three door” hatch typically looks better, the Mazda2 being a prime example. If you don’t have to worry about a baby seat, a 3 door could very well be more appealing than a five door.
My late ’80s Mazda 626 5 door hatchback was a great vehicle. I never understood why the domestics bailed on the concept. Oh yea, I traded it in on a Explorer.
A right-sized, right-doored Toyota at a great price point?!
PLEASE tell me this means I no longer have to look at the Chevwoo Aveo any more!
UniversalSpectator :
If Toyota has any brains, they’d take a look at the RWD sports car that they’re developing with Subaru and sell it as a Scion in the US. The Toyota version apparently won’t make it here, though. I haven’t lusted after a Toyota since the MKIV Supra was discontinued here ten years ago…
This is great news! It is about time they stopped worrying about cannibalization of Scion XD’s and brought these North of the border. They sold Echo hatchbacks for quite some time in the land of the maple leaf as well. Not everyone wants an ugly box with poor sightlines.
“Seriously, who buys three-door hatches?”
People have sat in the rear seat of my car on one occasion, and they were not my friends, so I could care less about their ease of getting in the car. Even if they were… anyone sitting in my back seat is in no situation to complain.
I’d rather have 2 doors and hatch.
Seriously, who buys three-door hatches?
Back in the day (20 or so years ago), there were those who bought three-door hatches because:
1) Some felt two less doors made for better proportions
2) Some argue that it makes for a more rigid body
3) Two less doors to rattle and cause wind leaks
4) Most back seats were too small to benefit from the additional doors
5) Some parents felt safer with kids in a back seat without doors that could be opened
6) Fewer doors meant a lower price
That being said, I don’t necessarily dispute the point. Aside from a couple of sports cars I’ve had as second (or third) vehicles, I haven’t owned anything with less than four doors since the 80s, including one pickup. And it’s not due to family obligations, since I’ve never married and have no kids.
bout time. Hope I can still get a stripper, you know—crank windows and no radio, OTD @$12000? that would be awesome.
drifter: “Becuase it’s Scion clone is already sold in US.”Not exactly. It’s the same platform but the Scion xD has a 1.8L engine while the Yaris has a 1.5L.
psarhijinian- 3 door hatches look better
hitman1970- did sorority girls drive Saabs?
universalspectator- the black sock/bermuda short crowd is a HUGE market. Won’t hurt to cater to them.
I prefer my center IP. It’s easier to see because all I have to do is turn my head. I don’t have to move my head and refocus. I can actually see the speedo position with peripheral vision so for the most part I don’t even have to move my head.