Costs & verdict
Everyday costs, plus how reliable and safe it is
As a cash purchase, the entry-level Toyota Yaris Cross Icon comes in at about the same price as the Ford Puma in entry-level Titanium trim. That makes it more expensive than a similarly powerful Skoda Kamiq SE 1.0 TSI 110, but cheaper than a Volkswagen T-Roc Active.
The Yaris Cross promises to be much cheaper to run than those rivals, though, particularly for company car drivers. The hybrid system keeps CO2 emissions as low as 100g/km, reducing the benefit-in-kind (BIK) car tax rate.
If you want to spend a little extra, stepping up to Design trim nets you some genuinely useful features such as LED headlights, roof rails and 40/20/40 split rear seatbacks, while mid-level Excel gets luxuries such as heated front seats, a heated steering wheel and dual-zone climate control. Dynamic and Premiere Edition cars get even more goodies but are too expensive to recommend.
The Yaris Cross is too new to have featured in our 2021 What Car? Reliability Survey but Toyota placed an impressive joint fifth out of 30 manufacturers in the brand table. That’s above Skoda, which finished 12th, and way ahead of Volkswagen and Ford, which came 20th and joint 27th respectively.
You also get a three-year manufacturer warranty, which can be extended with regular servicing at a Toyota dealer. Every Toyota service includes a 12 months warranty, up to 100,000 miles or 10 years, whichever comes first.
In terms of safety, you get the Safety Sense package as standard on all trim levels. It includes driver assistance systems such as automatic city braking technology (AEB), adaptive cruise control, automatic high-beam assist, lane-keeping assistance and road sign display.
Blind-spot monitoring and rear cross-traffic alert are optional on the Dynamic and Premiere Edition trims (part of the City Pack) and standard on Excel.
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