Sitting in the still, dim light of a Munich hotel parking lot at dawn, it doesn’t look like much. Brush past the chunky, boxed fenders and the sinister 10-spoke wheels and there’s little that explains to my bleary-eyed friend Fabi why this pipsqueak hatch is the most-discussed new car within Road & Track. That I’d overstay my stint in Germany, arrange this from abroad, and wake her up long before first light for this surely serves as proof positive of my growing insanity. It’s only the anxious energy in my hurried step that betrays the excitement of the mission.
Truth be told, I never thought I’d get this far. The natural catastrophizing of my busy mind has never been so convincing. In a year when every plan gets marked, torn, or screwed up in the final moments, that pessimistic part of me feels validated. Offer it a multi-part plan like this and it damn near implodes at the sheer possibilities. There was the Munich auto show; surely that would be canceled. Travel restrictions; bound to change. My Covid test; certainly destined to be positive. The inevitable kerfuffle at the Delta counter. The press event with the confirmed case. The necessary but unobtainable approvals from three automakers, not to mention my employer. Every imaginable snag, perhaps unlikely, yet entirely capable of bringing down my elaborate plan. Yet one by one, they passed without complication.
Leading to now. Where it’s all come together. In the car, with my friend kindly summoning enthusiasm, myself awake and alert, ready to set off in one of the world’s best cars toward one of the world’s best roads. The result of hours of emails and phones and masked-up time on international aircraft. With the press of a button, the world’s most potent three-cylinder production engine grumbles into operation. We’re away.
I stall it almost immediately. Whether from the excitement or the haze or the total disinterest this powertrain has for low-end torque, I’m already being humbled. Yet fumbling onto the deserted streets of wee-hour Munich on a Saturday, the Yaris feels fully awake. An unavoidable eagerness lives in the best hot hatches, a nearly palpable tug on your right foot always pulling you toward the foolish ends of the tachometer. It’s the antonym of the distant competency of a V-8 Mercedes, the antithesis of all perfectly composed and utterly uninterested grand tourers. A constant reminder that this car is here for something more.
That’s certainly true of the GR Yaris. Mundane ambitions are far down its list of priorities, more focused as it is than even a Fiesta ST or Veloster N. It’s a different thing. Different, too, than your Megane RSes or Seat Cupra Rs, desirable yet recognizable variations on themes available stateside. This Yaris, with its silly flares and carbon fiber and trick all-wheel drive system, represents a category long banished from U.S. showrooms: the homologation special.
See, the looks, the familiar interior, the badge; they’re all part of an elaborate ruse, a subversion of appearances designed to make this Yaris seem quite normal. It’s anything but. The whole thing has been thoroughly reworked into a true rally-bred performance car, designed to homologate Toyota entry in the World Rally Championship. On the outside, only the headlights, taillights, and the radio antenna are re-used from the standard Yaris. The inside looks similar to the European-market Yaris, but jostle the doors and you notice they’ve been siphoned of their sound deadening and cast from aluminum rather than steel. There’s a beefy, short, precise manual shifter, a button for auto rev-matching, and a knob for engaging sport and track modes. Total defeat of stability control sits within reach of the shifter. These are your clues that something sinister sits underneath.
It starts with the Frankensteinian patchwork platform underpinning the Yaris. The front end of the standard Yaris’ TNGA GA-B could cope with the GR models’ WRC ambitions, but the rear couldn’t fit the all-wheel-drive systems’s heavy-duty clutch pack and limited-slip diff. Toyota grafted on the posterior of the GA-C platform that underpins the Prius, then added hundreds of extra spot welds and globs of adhesive to make the whole thing stiffer than a compact hatch has any right to be. These additions were offset by lightweight components like the carbon fiber roof, resulting in a 2,822-lb curb weight, a low center of gravity, and very little flex.
That leaves the final product braced to handle the grunt of the 268-hp 1.6-liter turbocharged G16E-GTS engine. Don’t mistake it for a typical micro-sized turbo mill. There’s no clever twin-scroll trickery imitating a naturally aspirated engine. Just 266 lb-ft of torque that arrives with the subtlety of a meteor impact at 3000 rpm. Torque fades past 4600 rpm, but you won’t find peak power until you wind the Yaris out to 6500 rpm. Few cars in recent memory have a powerband like this, a graphed curve plucked straight from the Eighties.
Such a character limits its success as a daily driver. Rolling into the power on the autobahn on-ramp, I can feel the buzzy, feisty energy of the engine like faint radio static in my bones. The feeling is joined by an ever present roar from the road. A natural result of the systematic elimination of excess weight, the cabin of the fixed-roof Yaris makes noises like a Miata with the top up. The well-damped Yaris does a decent job of coping with whatever bumps I can find on the pristine German pavement, yet the short wheelbase ensures that the ride never fully settles down.
Forgiveness comes as soon as I spot a circle with five lines slashing through. With that the speed limit disappears, prompting a quick downshift into the meaty part of the Yaris’ tach. The exhaust erupts into an infectious burble, the car surges forward, and the fizzy engine delivers a sensation of speed far more dramatic than the readouts would suggest. Fluttering along at 110 mph, each truck in the left lane comes as a blessing, a chance to ease off the throttle and then restart the run on up the speedometer. A break in traffic gives the Yaris a chance to charge all the way to its 143 mph fuel cutoff point. Few cars feel this awake in a straight line.
Already the charm is coming on strong. But it’s off the highway where the GR proves its mettle. As we flow steady toward the Southern border, the Alps rise from the farmland and swallow us whole. Flat wandering byways give way to nestled valley highways, with nothing but the occasional tractor or truck to disrupt the serene stillness of a late summer Saturday morning.
Sometime during my childlike gawking at the ever-more stunning scenery, the signs marking each town change from yellow to white, delayed notification that we’ve entered Austria. Still the road climbs, the Yaris traversing the constant high speed sweepers with enough grace that Fabi zonked out in the passenger seat.
Until we come to the last checkpoint. There, perplexed by a sprawling toll plaza and a group of motorcyclists in high-visibility gear, I rouse my friend/unpaid German-speaking safety net.
“I don’t know where to go, but I think we’re here,” I tell her. Straight through appears to be the path. In exchange for €37.50, we’re granted access to the Grossglockner High Alpine Road.
Forty-three American dollars for a toll road sounds like literal highway robbery. But this is no normal road; the Grossglockner’s 29.7 miles of tarmac rises to 8215 feet through a series of technical hairpins, long-radius curves, and quick switchbacks. Some say it’s the best road in the world.
We pull through the toll booth at 8:38 a.m. and by 8:45 I’m all but convinced. Under full throttle the delicacy and restraint the Yaris displays over country roads gives way to rowdy playfulness out in these parts. A firm pedal and serious stopping power inspires confidence as I shed speed into the first hairpin, slotting down to second and feeling the engine leap eagerly up the tach as I blip the throttle. The auto rev-match button is inches away, but with pedals this nicely spaced and a powertrain this predictable, there’s little use in touching it.
The nose is quick with its reflexes and impressive in its grip, thanks to the Michelin Pilot Sport 4S tires that Toyota includes with the Circuit Pack. Steering is likewise quick, and dripping with feel, giving you the confidence to feed in power early and trust that there’s still grip for the front tires in reserve.
Any courage you can muster in that regard is rewarded exponentially in hairpins, because this engine is old-school boosty. Come looking for torque before 3000 rpm and you’ll find no one home. Keeping the engine speed up is crucial to pace here, so you’ll want to stockpile momentum and feed in power as early as you can. Get it right and you feel boost slam you into the seat a quarter-second before the nose gets locked in on the straight and true, giving you a microdose of rear-end rotation before it locks up and claws toward the horizon.
How stupid you want to get is up to you. The Toyota’s all-wheel-drive system does not conceal its behavior behind a series of data-driven parameters. It gives you the choice. Normal mode gives the rear end 40 percent of the power to play with, good for efficiency. Sport mode brings that number to 70 percent, good for sliding absurdity and pseudo-rear-wheel-drive shenanigans. Track mode backs it down to an even 50:50, ideal for Sebastian Loeb roleplay and gut-warping pace.
That’s where I kept it. Left there, the Yaris is more predictable than any other all-wheel-drive car I’ve driven, more balanced than any front-wheel-drive car you’ll find on this earth, and more planted than anything motivated purely from the rear. The pace was staggering from the start. But the more you trust it, the better it gets. I started squeezing on power earlier and earlier, then earlier still. Trust the diff and in lower-speed corners you can feed in power basically as you apex, often crossing 3000 rpm on corner exit and savoring the intoxicating rush to redline as the Yaris begs you to keep going. Forget the Supra, forget the Fiesta, forget the Veloster; the GR Yaris’ ability to ignite your senses is matched only by cars with Porsche, Lotus, and McLaren badges.
Not ten minutes passed before I pulled off in a turnout. Mostly just to laugh. When I turned around, I started laughing harder. All the stress and the planning, the shoebox hotel room and the three-hour dawn drive, led here. Where, legs stretched outside the humming car, I looked out on one of the greatest vistas a man can imagine. The road behind tripped over itself and fell into an endless, wavy blue-green sea of forested mountains. Ahead lay a smoothed-over staircase to the sun, tarmac drizzled right over the ridge of the mountain just tempting us to chase it down. Down in the valley you could see the snaking gulley of glacial runoff from the white-capped mountains on the other side. Motion was confined to the tail twitch of the staid Alpine cows and the slow waft of pristine clouds lingering at eye level.
Fabi and I couldn’t stop grinning. The effortless silence, the cold, full air of the mountains, the endless expanse ahead and behind. The kind of thing you never really expect to see, even when you know it’s coming. We snap a few photos, share a few comments about the absurdity of it all, then plunk back into the Yaris. The climb continues, at first intoxicating and then peaceful, the planted Toyota and the perfect roads pushing me into a serene state of flow.
Progress up the road comes in staccato bursts. Driving bliss interrupted by a scenic turnout, yes, just one more, yes we have to stop; hold on, let me get the camera. Every moment stamping itself into the gray matter with an industrial-grade press. The adrenaline of the cliffside streaking by. The vantage point at the foot of the steep section. The effortless slide on corner exit. The slow advance of the clouds through the alps, their unstoppable pure mass devouring the natural defense of the mountain range. The mechanical thunk as I grab fourth. The wetness in the air, thick as a Savannah summer but crisp as a Wyoming winter.
The goodness just bubbles up from my feet until I’m drowning in it. There’s peace and there’s adrenaline, excitement and total contentment, pride and gratitude. The drive earned and designed but possible only through cosmic luck and sheer happenstance. The friendship, familiar but thousands of miles outside of its comfort zone, the adventure itself a new way of doing an old thing. I’m about to go dizzy from drinking in every angle until the curtain closes. A lumbering gray cloud seeps up the mountain and wraps us into a monochrome haze. Suddenly there’s nothing here. A screen so thick and uniform it looks fake, cutting off my Alpine paradise. Until all I can see is the car.
Which doesn’t look like much. But on this perfect road, on this perfect day, this perfect car is everything.
Arguably the most fickle member of the Road & Track staff, Reviews Editor Mack Hogan is likely the only person to ever cross shop an ND Miata with an Isuzu Vehicross. He founded the automotive reviews section of CNBC during his sophomore year of college and has been writing about cars ever since.
