Don’t brake-test anyone in a Yaris; you’ll probably lose. That’s not what you want to hear when you’ve just forked out for an XR6 … but it’s true. Yaris’s first leg-up the WASP dynamics ladder was its overwhelmingly brilliant emergency stop from 100km/h. It was the only vehicle to smash the 40-metre barrier (including the XR6 benchmark car), pulling up in 38.7 metres. That gave it a massive edge over Corolla in second, at 40.3 metres, and Mazda 3 in third at 40.8 metres – and, of course, daylight separated it from the Territory, at 44.3 metres.

A credible third in max-G saw Yaris trade just 0.3 points off the 20 on offer to the winning Mazda 3, while a fourth in the slalom meant paring just 0.51 points away from the maximum possible 20. Even a fifth in the high-speed lane change saw only 1.65 points fall, with Yaris 10km/h down on the Focus’s best successful entry speed of 121km/h. (Yaris also tied with Commodore here, incredibly.)



A sixth in the hot lap with Yaris on 28.8 seconds was still in close-ish proximity to Mazda 3, which won on 27.6 seconds. Yaris lost just 0.22 points as a result.
Overtaking? Not flash. Twelfth ranking placed it 1.1 seconds ahead of its only direct marketplace competitor, Getz (13th), in the sprint from 60-100km/h, with the result seeing Yaris spending 68 additional metres more on the wrong side than Aurion in first place. Yaris kissed 4.5 points goodbye from the 10 on offer as a result.



Of the six dynamic tests alone, Yaris came home in third place overall. But a strong finish in reversing vision – third, just half a metre behind Astra in first – saw Yaris trading off just 1.2 points out of five in a field that stretched all the way back to RAV4 almost five metres behind the winner.

Toyota’s most diminutive offering certainly doesn’t scrimp on crash-avoidance capability, and proves that small and affordable is absolutely not the same thing as cheap.