The Stuff Top Car for 2020 is the Toyota Yaris
To be brutally honest, no one here thought we would ever be writing the words “The Stuff Top Car for 2020 is the Toyota Yaris”, but that just adds to all the other stuff we never thought we would see, hear or say, but did in 2020.
Yep, that’s right – the Toyota Yaris is our pick for the best car we drove in 2020.
But it’s not only that – the Yaris also took out the Top Compact/Small Car category and the Top Hybrid category for good measure.
And it thoroughly deserves the titles as well. All-new from the ground up, the Yaris is now based on the same excellent TNGA (Toyota Next Generation Architecture) platform as the likes of the Prius, Corolla and last year’s Top Car titleholder, the RAV4.
The TNGA platform brings the same surprisingly engaging feel to the Yaris that it endowed the Corolla and RAV4 with, but the Yaris takes it even further by being lighter and packing a thoroughly brilliant 1.5-litre three-cylinder engine that is both charmingly growly and brutally fuel efficient, even in non-hybrid form.
But that hybrid is where you want to look if you want truly serious fuel sipping, particularly buzzing around in an urban environment. You see the Yaris hybrid if something that hybrids have been long-promised to be (and EVs actually are) in that it is more fuel efficient at urban speeds than open road speeds – our first experience with a Yaris saw us register a frankly remarkable average consumption of just 2.8l/100km during a week urban pottering.
It wasn’t just the supreme frugality of the hybrid that swung the Top Cars needle the Yaris’ way either – the level of equipment and technology you get for your investment in a Yaris is deeply impressive too, with every model – yes, even the rental special base model GX – coming with Toyota’s Safety Sense package of driver aids and assists that consists of adaptive cruise control, a pre-collision system with autonomous emergency braking, pedestrian and cyclist detection and intersection turn assist, as well as automatic high beams, lane keep assist and even road sign assist that detects and displays the speed limit.
