GR Yaris’s $40K+ Price Tag Called ‘Too Expensive’ — 5ch Floods Thread With Alternatives

Background and Key Points

GR Yaris is Toyota’s homologation-style hot hatch, built to satisfy WRC rally regulations rather than as a trim of the everyday Yaris/Vitz — hence the thread’s repeated point that it shares only cosmetic bits (headlights) with the regular model while using a Corolla-derived rear structure and a 1.6L G16E-GTS three-cylinder turbo making around 300 horsepower with standard all-wheel drive and front/rear limited-slip differentials. In Japan it’s sold in three grades — RC (base, ~3.6 million yen), RZ, and RZ “High Performance” — after the cheaper RS trim, which used the ordinary Yaris’s engine, was discontinued for poor sales. At roughly 6 million yen (about $40,000) for the top grade, it sits well above what buyers expect from a car wearing a compact-hatchback nameplate, which is the entire premise of the thread’s title.

The actual split isn’t over whether the car is “worth it” in the abstract — nobody disputes its rally pedigree or performance — but over where the value line sits within Toyota’s own range. Posters converged on the RC as the sweet spot (adding the ¥130,000 climate-control upgrade), arguing it delivers 300+ horsepower for around 4 million yen, while dismissing the RS as not a “real” GR Yaris at all despite carrying the badge.

What outside readers likely miss: the “used Supra” and “Swift Sport” comparisons only make sense within Japan’s used-car and kei-adjacent pricing norms, where a 7-year-old A90 Supra fetching 7 million yen reads as absurd, and where 6-month factory-order waits for made-to-order grades are a normal, unremarked feature of buying a Toyota performance model rather than a supply problem.