I should be so over it now but I STILL can't quite believe Citroen powered Sebastien Loeb to nine consecutive WRC titles and never thought to give us a celebratory road car worthy of his name or achievements. And, no, the C2 and C4 'by Loeb' don't count. Meanwhile after just two outings back in the WRC - the first a podium and the second a victory - Toyota last week revealed a
proper hot hatch version of the Yaris, complete with a 205hp supercharged engine, Sachs dampers and a limited-slip diff.
Yep, this really did happen!
It's a little early in the season to say whether this car will gain signature Latvala or Hanninen editions to follow in the great tradition of the McRae, Burns and Solberg Imprezas, the Sainz Celica GT-Four or Evo VI Makinen, but it's great to see Toyota getting in there quickly with a road car that celebrates motorsport success. The GRMN badge (Gazoo Racing Meister of the Nurburgring, in case you hadn't heard) is a welcome and wacky new addition to the hot hatch lexicon too - I hope it gains the romantic mystique we all associate with badges like Type R, RS, Rallye, Cupra and - of course - GTI.
From the outside it seems like such a simple exercise too - take one supermini, sling a load of motorsport-inspired bits at it, give it a power boost, put some stickers on it and reap the rewards. That it's come from Toyota of all people is perhaps the surprise.
After all, Ford never quite went full RS with the Fiesta ST, leaving it instead to M-Sport to do pretty much what GRMN has done to the Yaris. Justifiably it perhaps thought enough STs were flying out of the showrooms as was (or with a little boost from Mountune) not to have to trouble itself.
It's good, but it could be better...
With the honourable exception of Peugeot and its old-school diff'n'turbo enhanced
By Peugeot Sport 208 and
308 GTIs it's the French who really seem to have missed a trick here. Citroen hasn't given us a proper hot hatch since the AX GT or hot Saxos while Renault Sport teased us with a manual gearbox and diff equipped Clio, only to pull the plug. The
220 Trophy Matt drove recently is a cracking hot hatch with more to recommend than most people might assume. But with the shadow of the R.S.16 looming over it there will always be a sense of what might have been. That Renault had such an enduring winning streak across three generations of hot Clios and created a huge fanbase off the back of it just makes it even the more frustrating. Sure, they'll say more Renault Sports than ever are selling and to a wider range of customers than before. But why alienate the hardcore fans in the process? I'll defend the Clio as misunderstood and underrated - because it is both. But it'll never quite inspire me like the Williams, my old 172 Cup, the 182 Trophy, or the 197 I ran as a long-termer a few years back.
OK, we haven't driven the Yaris GRMN yet. But on paper the ingredients are there for exactly the kind of enthusiast-focused hot hatch - complete with some motorsport provenance - that can inspire a future generation of fanboys.
And I never thought I'd ever say that about a Yaris.
