A Pedantic Criticism of the GR Corolla

How could the GR Corolla not be great? It’s a widebody hatchback housing a 300-hp inline-three that's paired to an advanced all-wheel-drive system. It's the sort of raucous car we’ve yearned for since the WRX STI hatch went out of production. More hot hatches are always good, and one like this — backed by heavy investment from Toyota — is truly wonderful.

There’s just one problem: this isn’t the Toyota hot hatch we’ve been lusting after. The rest of the world gets the GR Yaris, a supermini homologation special designed to allow Toyota to run a tiny three-door hatch in the World Rally Championship. The homologation Yaris shares essentially nothing but badging with the five-door Yaris, one of the best-selling small cars in the world.

The initial outpouring of desire for the GR Yaris from the US community was huge. When the car was announced, petitions immediately popped up to tell Toyota there was a market for the GR Yaris in America. Granted, petitions like this are largely meaningless. Wanting something is one thing, actually writing a check for it when it arrives is another. Toyota could’ve ignored it and been just fine. Yet the company took it seriously, announcing that it would indeed bring a GR-branded hot hatch to the US. Just not the Yaris.

Of course, B-segment vehicles – the class of small cars that the Yaris is a part of – aren’t all that popular in the United States. The last Yaris we got stateside was a rebadged Mazda2, a car totally different from the Yaris available in the rest of the world. Most other cars in that segment, like the Ford Fiesta, Honda Fit, Chevy Sonic, and the Mazda2 itself, have all long departed our market for a lack of sales. That means we don’t get the wonderful Fiesta ST anymore, and it also means the GR Yaris was never a lock to come to the US.

Yet, in an interview with R&T, Jack Hollis, senior vice president of automotive operations at Toyota Motor North America said “When you say ‘Did we consider [the GR Yaris]?’ we consider anything. It was just that we knew that GR Corolla fit our market... Doesn’t mean the GR Yaris couldn’t come here either, it's just that GR Corolla is what we made a commitment to."

Emphasis mine. While the Yaris was never a lock to come to America, Toyota could have brought the car all of us small hatch nutjobs petitioned for. But Toyota committed to the Corolla instead. We’re missing out on something.