Test drive: 2007 Toyota Yaris
Thursday January 5, 2006
I'm pretty familiar with the Toyota Echo. A friend of mine has one and insisted I go for a ride in it while he showed me how great it was. Oh, he went on and on. He would say stuff like, "Do you know how good gas mileage it gets?" "No," I'd say. And, I'm not making this up, he repeat, "Do you know how good gas mileage it gets?" "Sigh, no, John, I don't. Can you just pull over? I'll get out here," I'd say. Anyway, John really likes the Echo. Not a whole lot of other people did, though. It wasn't a huge seller for Toyota. Well, here we have the 2007 Toyota Yaris. Colin Hefferon actually wrote, "By the time I returned the car to Toyota at the end of the test week, I had made up my mind that this is the car I will buy for myself if – God forbid – I should ever lose this gig and actually have to put down my own money on a set of wheels." Whoa! He Who Clinches Nickels would actually buy a car? I feel faint! I think I'll get out here.–Bob Schulties
I have owned both a 01 and 03 Echo.I put 85k on each of them during that 4 years. I am now 10k into my 07 Yaris 3door that I literally bought off the truck in Kenosha Wisconsin in late March. The Yaris does EVERYTHING better than the Echo. The problem of “freeway drift“ is gone. The hatch is so much nicer than the Echo trunk that was decently sized but with a micro opening that rendered it useless. Sadly for the USA the Yaris is everything the Ford Focus SHOULD be but isn`t. Maybe Bill Ford should drive my black Yaris with automatic for several weeks. (?) Order the Yaris and wait. It`s worth it.