S 4dr Sedan
2008 Toyota Yaris

2008 Toyota Yaris – Click above for high-res image gallery Read a few car reviews and it's easy to walk away with the impression that we're a jaded lot; only interested in performance, luxury, and price. Any vehicle that doesn't have stupendous amounts of the first two for the tiniest pile of the latter gets kicked to the curb. It's true, driving cars that don't belong to us facilitates a certain view into how the other half lives that could definitely ruin one on lesser vehicles. On the other hand, there's an entirely different type of enjoyment to be extracted from cars that forego ostentation without ratcheting up the crap factor. Toyota's Yaris will never be mistaken for a Lexus, but it's neither the absolute nadir, nor ultimate zenith of autodom, meaning it has a shot. %Gallery-24434% Photos Copyright ©2008 Dan Roth / Weblogs, Inc. We're not exactly sure what to make of the little three door Yaris. It wears Toyota badging, yet the design is deliberately weird enough to wear Scion indicia. Indeed, Toyota's supposedly hipper sub-brand offers the xD, a five-door on the same architecture as the three and four-door Yaris models. You'd think that Toyota could get away with more conservative styling. Once upon a time, Tercels wore lines cribbed from E36 BMWs, while the Yaris team apparently looked toward the Elgin Pelican for inspiration. The S version tries a little harder visually with Toyota's half-awkward bodykit and a red "S" on the liftgate denoting nothing at all. If the three-door shared the nose of the sedan, it wouldn't be so bad. As it is, Nunez nails it when pointing out the Yaris belongs in the PokeDex. Someone, somewhere, will undoubtedly love the looks, so let's just say that we think the true beauty (if yould call it that) of the Yaris lies inside. While stubby on the outside, the interior is surprisingly accommodating both front and rear. Six-footers might not be pleased getting stuck in the back seat, but fill the Yaris with a quartet of mid-five-footers and nobody can honestly gripe. All four seats even slide fore/aft. Cargo capacity behind the rear seat is limited for loads of pea stone, but holding the carpool's laptop bags won't be a problem. Hatches are excellent at packing big functionality into small footprints, and when piloted solo, folding the rear seats ups the usefulness tremendously. For the way many folks use their cars, a 3 door Yaris is more than enough. Attentive interior design is what lends the Yaris a bigger feel inside than its tinytastic dimensions initially suggest. Driver and passenger cupholders cleverly fold out of the dashboard, and the slender center stack with its vertically arrayed HVAC controls stays well clear of kneecaps. There's even storage cubbies on either side of the center stack, as well as two covered bins in the top of the dashboard and a conventional glovebox on the passenger side. Those dual bins are made possible by the centrally located gauge …
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