Shed of the week Toyota Yaris Sr

Just like the original Debutantes-Posh Society Lassies that had the reputation to be a bit fleeting, SOTW First-Timers nowadays thick and fast. Today we are in Toyota Yaris Country for the first time. Also not just an old Yaris, but a gene – two sr – ooo!

This is an example of April 2007, which means that it will be one of the very first SRs. And one of the few SRs too, because not many were bought. Why? Well, it would take another 13 years before GR Pixie Dust would be sprinkled over the Yaris (with the GRMN a little earlier as a teaser). In 2007, and afterwards, the Yaris was just a faceless runaround again.

The SR could have been a competition, but did reality realize the exciting letters? It had the look, with 8 mm lower suspension and 17-inch alloys. In addition, stiffer dampers and ARBs, stability and traction control, a body kit, climate control and LED coordiners were. It also had 12 percent faster electrical control, but let’s not hold on to it: EPS was a big thing at the time. Nobody knew it would take years to make up for the perspective of a driver.

So far, so ok-like, but, as Shed whispered to his partner when Mrs. Shed entered the village force with her mother, here comes the big buts. The SR was not a performance machine. The 1.8 VVT-I engine postponed only 131 hp at 6000 rpm and 128LB FT at 4,400 rpm. The time of 0-60 MPH was therefore disappointing on average at 9 sec. A few minutes after it reached the 60 MPH marking, the Speedo would crawl around 120 mph about before it called for a day.

The best indication with regard to the position of the SR in the driving hinterland was in its prices. It was £ 12,995 for the three-door or £ 13,495 for the (presumably very rare indeed) 5-door. Those prizes made the £ 2,600 cheaper than the Corsa VXR and Three Grand less than the Renaultsport Clio 197, neither of them came somewhere near dynamic rival. It was built to be cheap to run and insure and to do the Toyota line on sustainability. Eighteen years later it seems to have done that. You pay hard to include a lot of differences between our barn and what it looked like in the showroom in 2007. Funny to think about how we once beat Japanese cars for their tiness.

At the beginning of 2008, Toyota upgraded the Specification of the SR in an attempt to move more units, causing ‘motorsport’ alloys, lower reduced suspension, a roof spoiler, various trim tart-ups and some segment-first SA-nav in it. Unfortunately, no changes were made to the Mech -Spec, and therefore despite the male efforts of the British PR team of Toyota who assured us that it was a ‘winning recipe’, people still did not get the SR framework and continued to empty it. Towards the end of 2008, the model had quietly fallen from the Toyota GB series after a Mayfly lifference of more than two years.

Looking at now, the naturally extracted 1.8 VVT-i engine was clearly urgently needed unnatural aspiration. Toyota had formed in that department. The Corolla T-Sport compressor came with a supercharger to take the power of the non-supported Corolla T-Sport from 189 hp to 215 hp. For some reason you had to do the Knackers of the compressor of the compressor to get it going. Full capacity did not arrive up to 8,200 rpm, 4,000 rpm after the torque had peaked.

The question is, was the 131 hp of the Yaris SR 1.8 VVTI the same engine as the earlier non-compressed Corolla T-Sport’s 189HP 1.8 VVTI, or was it a cowardly milquetoast imitation? Unfortunately, Shed’s research budget does not allow him to answer that question. The only thing he knows is that Toyota said during the launch in 2007 that the SR had a ‘completely new Dual VVT-i’ engine that gave ‘pleasant driving performance, refinement and fuel consumption’. I am not sure whether the soft gear or 39.2 MPG combined figures of fuel consumption qualified for the word pleasant, and the refinement on the highway was not as good as it could have been thanks to a five -speed gearbox instead of a six -speed gearbox, but YMMV intended.

What is good? The SRs VED for British users should be £ 305 or so on and our shed is not an expensive car to buy for £ 1,395. The next MOT test is due this Sunday. For most other brands that would be a red flag, but as you would expect from Toyota, the test history has so far reasons of boring, with service and use only so far. The mysterious ‘product’ that traditionally retains plastic headlamp lenses and that does not occur anywhere else in nature, was the only advice on the exam sheet of last September.

This SR may not have the performance, but it seems that it might be, and perhaps that is all you need on today’s heavily monitored roads where you can and will be punished on speed. And it could have been worse: there was a 1.3 Sr with 86 hp.