Toyota Yaris - Practicality, comfort and boot space

The Toyota Yaris comes as a five-door model only and offers solid practicality for urban drivers. There are plenty of storage spaces and cubby holes for assorted items, along with cupholders, useful seatback pockets and two rear coat hooks.

The driving position and overall visibility are good, with the driver benefiting from a height-adjustable seat. Passenger seat height adjustment is fitted to the Excel trim. The steering wheel moves for reach and rake, helping to improve comfort over longer drives. Anyone looking for lumbar support must look at the Toyota Yaris Cross SUV, which gets electric lumbar adjustment from Design trim onwards.

Toyota has provided other useful touches as standard – all Yaris versions include a central armrest, automatic headlights and wipers and power-adjustable heated door mirrors. The rear seats also split-fold in a 60:40 configuration, which helps improve storage space.

Brighter LED headlights come with the mid-range Design trim to aid night driving, and all models come with a reversing camera to help with parking. Front and rear parking sensors are an option on Design models, and come as standard on Excel.

Size

The Yaris is slightly smaller than its predecessor, although Toyota has cleverly managed to increase the wheelbase by 50mm. Overall length is now 3,940mm, width 1,745mm and height 1,500mm. In comparison, the Honda Jazz is longer at 4,044mm, stands taller at 1,526mm, but its 1,694mm width makes it a little slimmer.

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Leg room, head room & passenger space

Room for the driver and front passenger in the latest Yaris is acceptable, and the Japanese supermini's tall roof means headroom for rear-seat passengers is fine. However, knee room isn't as generous as rivals such as the Skoda Fabia. 

Two ISOFIX mounting points are provided on the rear bench's outer positions, but parents may want to try a Yaris before they buy, because the rear door opening is very small, which could make installing the seat and putting a child in the back difficult.

Boot space

Boot space for the Yaris stands at 286 litres, which is just about acceptable when judged against rivals. If you plan on carrying more luggage, you may want to take a closer look at some of the Yaris' rivals: the Honda Jazz provides a decent 304 litres, or 380 litres provided in the more generous Skoda Fabia. You can’t get an adjustable height boot floor, meaning there’s a sizable lip you need to lift heavier items over when loading up the boot.

Folding the rear seats flat in the Yaris increases overall capacity to a reasonable 947 litres, but the Jazz is much more useful in this regard because its seats fold flat into the floor, and leave a larger 1,205 litre chasm.