Twenty-20 was a strange year for all of us (with no guarantees and nothing but feelings of optimism of 2021 being better); and it also would happen to be the year we moved back to Japan after 4 years in Vietnam (in just 72 hours’ notice as opposed to a planned departure/move in June). Upon our arrival we went through 5 weeks of self-imposed quarantine due to various internal moves…anyway…enough about that.
As much as we love the Corolla wagon, it was apparent that the car was neither efficient nor safe. As fun as the car is, you can really feel the car’s fragility doing 100+ kmph on the freeway. Thus ensued the hunt for an economical, safe, family friendly hatchback.
The two main contenders were the Yaris and the new Fit. Both are really nice cars and the Fit had a nice feel to its drive but felt a bit too restrained and grandfather-ish compared to the Yaris which was more youthful. Fuel economy wise both offer attractive figures and are quite good in the safety department with active safety features such as 6+ airbags being standard along with driver assist tech like lane depature warning, blind spot monitoring, rear cross traffic alert as standard.
Some might wonder why none of the offerings from Nissan were considered..and why not even the safe Aqua. Well...my view was that at the time of us looking for a car, both the Aqua and eNote (and the March) were very dated cars. the platforms and tech was old..and they looked old.
Thus, a 1.5L Manual transmission Yaris was on the table (sadly there wasn’t a single manual test drive car anywhere in the prefecture thus could drive only a Hybrid CVT). I could not take a photo of the exact car we test drove…but it was a Z grade 1.5L Hybrid CVT much like the one in the following pic but in, might I say rather attractive, Avant-garde bronze metallic.
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