Toyota Yaris Master Thread (Sedan & Hatch Discontinued for USA)

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carguy420

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I'm posting this here since the Yaris is competing in WRC. These recent years, WRC's organizers kept talking about the number views going down and from my observation the main reason it's going down is because the kind of cars they are running right now aren't based on road cars, yet all they are doing is adjusting the length of the events, mainly shortening the length of the events and making the rallies become less challenging, which is the opposite of what rallying is about. Just my opinion, but they seem to be very out of touch with what rallying fans want.
 
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carguy420 said:
I'm posting this here since the Yaris is competing in WRC. These recent years, WRC's organizers kept talking about the number views going down and from my observation the main reason it's going down is because the kind of cars they are running right now aren't based on road cars, yet all they are doing is adjusting the length of the events, mainly shortening the length of the events and making the rallies become less challenging, which is the opposite of what rallying is about. Just my opinion, but they seem to be very out of touch with what rallying fans want.
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I have followed WRC since around 2001. Became a huge Subaru fan during that time but have only half heartedly followed it since the great recession.

Problems:
  • The race cars have almost nothing to do with the road cars. I completely get why they've gone to spec drivetrains and tube frame chassis. Those are practical moves to increase safety and reduce cost. But that comes with a cost. What are manufacturers getting out of this anyway? Which leads to the 2nd point...
  • There are only 2.5 manufacturers. We used to have Subaru, Mitsubishi, Ford, Toyota, Citroen, Peugeot, and Skoda on the "grid" back at the turn of the century. Going back further we had amazing homologation cars like the EVO, STI, and GT-four that could really stake a claim that they were tied to the rally cars. I was a broke college kid driving a 1993 Impreza with a measly 110hp, but that car was closer to the Group A Impreza that Colin McCrash drove than my fire breathing 300hp GR Corolla is to the Yaris WRC. They honestly may as well be driving Dakar style rally raid cars now with how little the cars are related.
  • Overly dominant drivers and overly reliable cars have taken some of the wild card element out of it. Sure, it sucks when the best driver doesn't win the championship because of bad luck, but it keeps things interesting. The Sebs and now Kalle have basically left the end of season result a certainty because the reliable cars driven by reliable drivers deliver a reliable number of points.
  • In an age of increasingly involved overseas spectators, WRC hasn't figured out how to make those spectators wake up early or dedicate their weekend to being attached to a screen. F1 manages this despite being absolute trash as far as competition on the leaderboard. WRC really needs to lean in with data or somehow making you feel like you are more than a spectator. Let me see live overlays of who is gaining speed and where just like my ghost in Gran Turismo does. Give me some way to experience the drive. A 360 camera with VR capability so I can ride along. Integrate with playstation so I can download stages to my playstation see exactly what they are doing. They somehow need to get people to watch it live (or nearly live) versus just catching the highlights at the end of the day or the weekend. Dive deep into the tech side of it. Something.
 
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spwolf said:
more manfacturers is what both WRC and WEC needs, and one of the ways is to lower the costs of course.
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Well, WEC is booming and is hitting that sports car renaissance that we all desired. People are dying to join the series.

WRC is the opposite. Toyota has said they'll help support a Subaru entry so it can pose as a "third" manufacturer given that M-Sport Ford is highly likely to leave for the next season or the season after.

And both series have Toyota dominating, so it isn't the Toyota dominance that is killing WRC.
 
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F1 Silver Arrows said:
Well, WEC is booming and is hitting that sports car renaissance that we all desired. People are dying to join the series.

WRC is the opposite. Toyota has said they'll help support a Subaru entry so it can pose as a "third" manufacturer given that M-Sport Ford is highly likely to leave for the next season or the season after.

And both series have Toyota dominating, so it isn't the Toyota dominance that is killing WRC.
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WEC was in same position 3 years ago. I am sure they are trying and that Toyota is being involved.
 
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qtb007 said:
I have followed WRC since around 2001. Became a huge Subaru fan during that time but have only half heartedly followed it since the great recession.

Problems:
  • The race cars have almost nothing to do with the road cars. I completely get why they've gone to spec drivetrains and tube frame chassis. Those are practical moves to increase safety and reduce cost. But that comes with a cost. What are manufacturers getting out of this anyway? Which leads to the 2nd point...
  • There are only 2.5 manufacturers. We used to have Subaru, Mitsubishi, Ford, Toyota, Citroen, Peugeot, and Skoda on the "grid" back at the turn of the century. Going back further we had amazing homologation cars like the EVO, STI, and GT-four that could really stake a claim that they were tied to the rally cars. I was a broke college kid driving a 1993 Impreza with a measly 110hp, but that car was closer to the Group A Impreza that Colin McCrash drove than my fire breathing 300hp GR Corolla is to the Yaris WRC. They honestly may as well be driving Dakar style rally raid cars now with how little the cars are related.
  • Overly dominant drivers and overly reliable cars have taken some of the wild card element out of it. Sure, it sucks when the best driver doesn't win the championship because of bad luck, but it keeps things interesting. The Sebs and now Kalle have basically left the end of season result a certainty because the reliable cars driven by reliable drivers deliver a reliable number of points.
  • In an age of increasingly involved overseas spectators, WRC hasn't figured out how to make those spectators wake up early or dedicate their weekend to being attached to a screen. F1 manages this despite being absolute trash as far as competition on the leaderboard. WRC really needs to lean in with data or somehow making you feel like you are more than a spectator. Let me see live overlays of who is gaining speed and where just like my ghost in Gran Turismo does. Give me some way to experience the drive. A 360 camera with VR capability so I can ride along. Integrate with playstation so I can download stages to my playstation see exactly what they are doing. They somehow need to get people to watch it live (or nearly live) versus just catching the highlights at the end of the day or the weekend. Dive deep into the tech side of it. Something.
Click to expand...
One problem they have if they want to branch out to normal people is WRC's coverage worldwide isn't great, in certain parts of the world your only reliable option is a paid subscription for WRC+, and how many normal people are going to go out of their way to pay a subscription fee for just one program, and apparently WRC+ isn't all that rosy either.

I wonder if rallying might be too niche of a motorsport to gain views from non-car people. Basically, if the hardcore rallying fans aren't happy with the way WRC is today and don't want to watch it, we can forget about bringing in non-car people to watch it. IMO F1 today is more like a show than a sport and the drivers are as much as celebrities as they are racers, I mean they even call themselves a travelling circus lol. But WRC and rallying in general has never really become like that.

To me, I only see 2 options for WRC, either continue to drag out this mess they have right now or do the things that made them popular and attractive in the first place.
 
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spwolf said:
WEC was in same position 3 years ago. I am sure they are trying and that Toyota is being involved.
Click to expand...

Well the reason why it got popular again is because they introduced new regulations that would be attractive to other potential OEMs.
 
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The fact that the ONLY demerit was them saying "the automatic is faster than the manual" shows that they absolutely knocked this car out of the park.
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And GRMNs all get upgrade kits to the Evo spec. Those owners truly got their money's worth. Usually this kind of service is only available on extremely exclusive track-only prototypes or customer racing cars costing millions.
 
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ssun30 said:
And GRMNs all get upgrade kits to the Evo spec. Those owners truly got their money's worth. Usually this kind of service is only available on extremely exclusive track-only prototypes or customer racing cars costing millions.
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I hope Toyota does this for the GR Corolla, and brings more Morizo editions to North America. That short ratio gearing is something I want really bad.
 
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www.motorsport.com

Analysis: WRC teams weigh in on Rally2 replacing Rally1 debate

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I'd take upgraded Rally2 cars to be the new Rally1 cars over the current Rally1 cars in a heartbeat.

Of course, Toyota is open to all sorts of ideas.

Meanwhile Hyundai is being very wishy-washy and sounding kinda butthurt that their investment in current Rally1 hasn't given them they results that they've expected, they say that while seemingly ignoring that their efforts are half-hearted at best when compared to Toyota, especially reliability and durability.

And M-Sport seems to be pretty against this proposal, even though they didn't outright say anything. it's probably because their dear Furd no longer makes a small hatchback, which means if WRC went back to production car based rules, M-Sport would have to use the production Puma, a crossover as their rally car if they want to keep participating.
 
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GR86 costs 90k. Lotus Emira costs 140k. Sporty cars all died in France. Used one’s price goes up because no new ones are sold.
 
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F1 Silver Arrows said:
Well the reason why it got popular again is because they introduced new regulations that would be attractive to other potential OEMs.
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WEC was at it's peak with LMP1 when those cars were faster in corners than F1 cars but VW group shot the manufacturing costs up in the space and completely ruined it for everybody as FIA/ACO was scared to do anything about it. Toyota's budget was 50 million while the budget for whole VW group with its two "manufacturers" was between 200-300 million depending on the season.

LMP1 specs were the right way to go but again FIA/ACO didn't know how to position themselves as flagship racing series and co-exist with F1. They were threatened through FIA by F1 executives on regular basis as active F1 drivers were showing more and more interest in LMP1. Bottom line is FIA/ACO didn't know what to do with it, instead of looking at how SuperGT dealt with it's GT world dominance as the fastest series in the world they backtracked on the performance citing cost reasons.

Today WEC is GT marketing fad unfortunately just like how F1 was manufacturer marketing fad in early 2000s, believe me. As soon as that fad goes away manufacturers will be pulling out one by one and within two seasons there would be no one on the grid. As soon as one tiny screw goes loose the whole thing will implode and that tiny screw could be relationship between FIA and ACO.

Look at it this way, they still haven't done their homework. They let Nissan do some stupid reverse concept in LMP1 era instead letting them know they can't play like that and that they have to play like others. Today they have wingless Peugeot which is the exact same thing Nissan did a decade ago. They haven't warned Peugeot they can't do that, instead they let them roll with their flawed concept which obviously doesn't work and Peugeot will be the first one to pull out. WEC is gambling on Toyota and Ferrari long term, lets see if it works out.

WRC on the other hand is euro-trash carnival. People who attend these events go there to get wasted, do some forest bbq, get into fights and all other manly things. It's like NASCAR crowd but worse. FIA has been trying to repackage that into something fancy and 30 years later they still haven't. Only the cars got smaller and smaller, at this point they better race go-carts instead.
 
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