The Yaris: The newest cheap and efficient car By John Clayton  Friday, February 9, 2007

You want a new car – and one with a trustworthy badge on the hood would be preferred.

You also want great fuel economy because saving money on the back end of the buy would be a great bonus.

Problem is, you’re on a tight budget and new cars whose makers have a long history of reliability and solid re-sale values normally don’t come cheap.

There are some solid entries in the ultra-economy class from Korea and even the U.S. But Kia doesn’t inspire confidence and neither does Hyundai, despite some pretty great warranty offers.

What’s the solution?

In year’s past, there really wasn’t one. But Toyota introduced the Yaris for 2007, a 3-door liftback that seemingly has limits on everything except saving money.

Saving money is at the crux of all things considered by any potential Yaris buyer. A little comfort and a lot of metal will be sacrificed for the sake of saving dollars.

The Yaris, as tested, came in with a base sticker price of $11,850 – Toyota’s cheapest entry by far – but before all was said and done, that price climbed to just over $14,000 thanks to anti-lock brakes ($300), a stereo upgrade ($630), side airbags ($650), as well as the dreaded $635 delivery charge.

Except for the aforementioned additions, the base Yaris was functional, but not too much of anything. It was comfortable enough. It was certainly maneuverable enough. It had just enough get-up-and-go with its standard 14-inch wheels. The 106-horsepower, 1.5-liter 4-cylinder engine was a hard worker, but I initially mistook it for the one that used to run my grandmother’s sewing machine.

But what is the trade off for an engine that’s so tiny and greeted with a wink and a nod? Try this: 34 mpg in the city and 39 mpg on the highway. I drove the Yaris all week. Three trips that easily totaled more than 200 miles left me with about half a tank of gas. Not bad for an 11.1-gallon tank.

The test vehicle came with a four-speed automatic transmission that I would easily have traded for a 5-speed manual, especially when faced with highway driving.

But that is truly my only complaint.

I expected the interior to be rather spartan and wasn’t completely shocked to find manual windows and door locks.

The Yaris had a little bit of that VW Beetle personality when you looked at it from the front, but it probably more closely resembled those electric "It" cars you see driving around "Eureka" on the Sci-Fi channel.

Maybe it is something of a "car of tomorrow," a precursor to a fossil-fuel-free get-about.

But for the budget-conscious, the Yaris could work very well as the car of today.

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