The Toyota Yaris Hybrid-R Was The GR Yaris In An Alternative Timeline

A high-performance, all-wheel drive Toyota Yaris. Where have we heard that one before?
Toyota Yaris Hybrid-R - front
Toyota Yaris Hybrid-R - front

Ah, the Toyota GR Yaris, a car that we have quite literally run out of praise for. After all, what more can you say after giving it a Car of the Year award just as we did last year?

When it was first revealed in 2020, it quite frankly blew our minds. A 1.6-litre, all-wheel drive, almost 300bhp Toyota Yaris was seemingly unthinkable at that point, given your only choice was a perfectly fine but utterly mundane hybrid. Or was it?

Toyota Yaris Hybrid-R - side
Toyota Yaris Hybrid-R - side

You see, although it took WRC regulations for Toyota to build the GR Yaris, it had toyed with the idea of a 300bhp version of the hatchback before. Let’s take a moment to look back at the 2013 Frankfurt Motor Show.

It was there when the Toyota Yaris Hybrid-R was revealed, designed as a way of bringing together its road cars and its then still-fresh return to endurance racing with its hybrid Le Mans Prototype. The Yaris was seemingly a strange choice then, but the specs left a lot to behold.

Toyota Yaris Hybrid-R - front
Toyota Yaris Hybrid-R - front

Powering this Yaris was a 1.6-litre turbocharged four-cylinder engine, exclusively driving the front wheels. That on its own could produce 296bhp, which at the time would’ve been a mind-boggling amount anyway.

Yet, it’s the ‘Hybrid-R’ bit of the Yaris that really took things up a level. On the rear axle sat two electric motors combining to push the total system output of the hatchback to 414bhp. Utterly, utterly bonkers.

Toyota Yaris Hybrid-R - side
Toyota Yaris Hybrid-R - side

The madness doesn’t even end there. Rather than drawing power from a traditional battery, the Hybrid-R used a supercapacitor – similar to the one seen in the much later Lamborghini Sian – which could store power regenerated by the motors under braking. That would then be deployed via a third electric motor positioned between the rear axle and six-speed sequential gearbox.

Naturally, it got a sportier look over the pretty bland base Yaris. Those include a more aggressive bodykit, blue accents to match the Hybrid branding and flare wheel arches housing 18-inch alloy wheels sourced from TRD. Inside, Alcantara got plastered everywhere while a set of Recaro buckets were dropped in.

Toyota Yaris Hybrid-R - rear
Toyota Yaris Hybrid-R - rear

So what happened to it? Well, truthfully, there was never an expectation that the Toyota Yaris Hybrid-R would go into production. Rather, it was a showcase of what the Japanese firm could do with the tech. Instead, it’d take another seven years and the formation of Gazoo Racing’s road car division for a proper Yaris hot hatch. We’ll be the first to say that wait was worth it.

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