Toyota Yaris Cross 2023 long-term test

Why we’re running it:  To see why people are scrambling for this latest hybrid crossover offering

Month 1 - Specs

Life with a Toyota Yaris Cross: Month 1

Welcoming the Yaris Cross to the fleet - 15 February 2022

If ever there were a sign of these times, it’s how many superminis are becoming crossovers. The Ford Puma has supplanted the Fiesta, Volkswagen offers both the T-Cross and Taigo beside the Polo, the Hyundai i20 has grown into the Bayon, the Citroën C3 comes as an Aircross… Need I go on? Yes, I do, because I’ve just taken delivery of a new Toyota Yaris Cross, a jacked-up version of the Yaris.

Toyota sold some 22,000 examples of the Yaris in this country last year, off the back of the brand’s famed reliability and 10-year warranty and the hatchback’s strong on-road qualities, incredibly frugal, bang-on-trend hybrid powertrain and increasingly rare value for money.

All of these things surely have been translated into the Yaris Cross, and this plus the more in-demand bodystyle should make it leap ahead soon despite being unfamiliar to the public. Oh, would you look at that: Toyota has just published the figures and it scored 1280 sales to its little sibling’s 1926 in January.

So good is the Yaris’s hybrid powertrain that it has been carried over wholesale here: a naturally aspirated 1.5-litre three-cylinder petrol engine, running on the efficiency-boosting Atkinson cycle, is assisted by an electric motor with a 1.5kWh battery for a total output of 116bhp. It drives either the front axle or both of them through an e-CVT and is the sole engine choice.

I’ve always disliked continually variable transmissions, so fingers crossed that the ‘e’ here prevents that ear-splitting revving every time I touch the accelerator.

The key statistics are efficiency of up to 64.2mpg and as little as 100g/km of CO2, which are both impressive, no doubt helped by the relatively low kerb weight of 1175kg. If you go for a front-wheel-drive car, that is, which I have, because I live in the city and rarely go off-road.

I’ve also gone for Design trim, the second of four, which adds LED lights, bigger (18in) wheels and a wider driver’s information display, among various detail changes. I’ve added the £500 Tech Pack, too, in order to get a 9.0in infotainment touchscreen with wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, rather than an 8.0in one with neither.