As Britain basks in the warm glow of post-Olympic bliss, reclining as a nation under a downy duvet of deliverance and sparking up a smooth smoke of success, we must now face up to the absence of Ennis and the banishment of Bolt from our television screens and seek to extract entertainment from other avenues. Some may seek solace in cinema or amusement in booze but I have chosen the bonny embrace of my old buddy blacktop.
So it is that on this muggy Monday I am spearing across the badlands of the East Midlands in a streak of white lightning, the purity of its paint at odds with the on paper promise that this may be some unholy hybrid. Destination: Kettering.
More eager readers may have noticed an etymological elephant in the room of that last sentence. That’s right – someone just dropped the H-bomb. Yet the machine that has received this duopoly of drivetrains is not some lenient Lexus or pious Prius though it comes from the same hybrid henchmen for today I am pedalling Toyota’s tiniest two-motor tech to date. Welcome to the Yaris Hybrid.
First impressions when I popped the locks this a.m. were of nothing notable beyond the familiar face of this, the third gen of Toyota’s tiddler. Yet sparking the motor surrounds you in a suspicious silence that continues when you suggest the spindly shifter shakes hands with Mr D. Employing the instantaneous urge that only electrical motivation can bestow, the Yar-Hyb romps from rest with a silky smoothness that is literally all torque. You have only the merest moment to think about this pertinent push in the solar plexus before the petrol powered portion of the powertrain licks into life, as smooth and seamless as one of Des Lynam’s links.
So this baby’s got the balls to shift on the straights, but how does it rhumba on a black snake of bends? The Hybraris has an appointment with a particularly thorough examination. Dr Apex will see you now.
As the pace rises the reigned-in ride refuses to run out of answers whilst the CVT shift system keeps pouring on the power in an orgy of organisation that’s always on hand to dole out more drive. Caress it into a corner and you can feel the springs soak up the situation like kinetic kitchen paper whilst the handy helm never flinches from its focus. On one especially nuggety switchback I piled in at eleven-tenths and slammed shut the gas at the corner’s crescendo. The pert posterior attempted to step wide, I simply caught it with a dab of oppo and I was away.
The Toyota Yaris Hybrid T-Spirit is a bitch. And I spanked it.
Troy Queef is Executive Associate Editor-At-Large for DAB OF OPPO magazine
