• Five doors-only since 2017
• Not the most spacious of superminis
• Adequate storage facilities

Not that it gained anything in practicality terms as a result, but from the 2017 facelift – save for the performance-focused GRMN model, three-door derivatives were discontinued from sale. Almost every manufacturer of small cars has dropped its three-door versions in recent years, so this hasn’t put the Yaris at a disadvantage.

The Yaris does perform well for passenger space, in spite of its diminutive dimensions. It’s taller than most superminis, meaning space in the rear is actually quite good as passenger sit more upright. On a long journey there might not be enough kneeroom for taller adults, but it’s perfectly adequate. One of the key points here is the completely flat floor across the rear, meaning a rear-seat passenger won’t have their knees up around their ears, but it’s narrow when travelling three abreast.

Acceptable bootspace 

Small cars have small boots, right? Well, they do but at 286 litres the practicality of the Toyota Yaris is limited compared with a number of admittedly larger rivals.

Fold the 60:40 split rear seat over – usefully the floor is virtually flat when you do – and the capacity expands to 768 litres. Again, it’s not the roomiest of superminis, but then most people don’t buy a small hatch to run it as a makeshift van. However, the space offered by the Yaris is square and usable, and the rear seats are easy to fold from the back of the car. There’s just nothing particularly clever about the load space, with no false floor for extra space or extra pockets dotted about.

What you won’t find inside the Toyota are any novel storage solutions or especially clever ideas that don’t appear in rivals. Sure, there are places for your takeaway coffees, decently roomy door bins for placing items in, a sensibly-sized glovebox and a handful of dashboard nooks for slotting coins, cards and smartphones, but that’s about it.

Still, its smallness, combined with fairly flat body sides and plenty of glass, mean it’s very easy to manoeuvre in tight parking spaces, with excellent all-round visibility.

That means you shoudn’t struggle whether you’re in the supermarket car park or squeezing it into the garage. Those large mirrors that create quite a bit of road noise help with visibility too, as does the reversing camera, where fitted.

Safety a Yaris hallmark

• Full five-star rating from Euro NCAP
• Improved safety kit from 2017 facelift
• Autonomous emergency braking standard

When crash-tested by the independent car safety experts from Euro NCAP, the Toyota Yaris was awarded a five-star rating.

Since then, things have improved further, not least with the standardisation of the Toyota Safety Sense package from the 2017 facelift – when the Yaris was re-assessed at the end of that year it maintained its five-star status in spite of the test being more rigorous.

This means that every car is equipped with an active safety suite featuring a pre-collision system with autonomous emergency braking, lane-departure warning, automatic main beam and, on selected models, traffic sign recognition.

The pre-collision system uses a front-mounted sensor to monitor the road ahead, warning the driver of an imminent collision risk and preparing the brakes to operate with maximum efficiency the moment the pedal is pressed. If the driver fails to respond to the warning, the system will trigger autonomous emergency braking to slow the car and reduce the severity of the impact.

Lane-departure alert notifies the driver with visual and audible warnings if the Yaris begins to deviate from its lane without activation of the indicators. Traffic sign assist recognises signs such as speed limits and no overtaking restrictions, presenting them on the multi-function display in the driver’s instrument binnacle, activating a warning light and buzzer if the speed limit is exceeded.

On board safety has also been improved from 2017. Rear seatbelts now feature pre-tensioners and force limiters. The head restraints have been redesigned to provide better protection against whiplash injury, and the shape of the curtain airbags has been revised. Child seat installation has also been made easier with adjustments to the Isofix anchoring system on the rear bench.

Watch: Toyota Yaris Euro NCAP crash test video