GR Yaris (Gen 2) GR Yaris Mk2 (MY2024->)

Dave9202 said:
Although I’m one of the few on the waiting list still it is reassuring to know they’re trying to look after the ones that believed in the idea.
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The waiting list was either 5,000 or 10,000 strong I can’t remember which one. I’ve been saying 5 but think it’s 10.
 
Dave9202 said:
Initially the GRY were being sold at a production loss which is clearly not stainable if they want to fill demand.
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This narrative really needs to be put to rest. I don't buy for a moment that the MK1 was produced at a loss. It seems more like a marketing myth concocted by someone close to Toyota, and everyone just went along with it.

I haven't encountered a single undeniable piece of evidence proving that the MK1 was sold at a loss. Without solid proof, this claim holds no water. The GR Yaris isn't the LFA. And even the story about the LFA being sold at a loss is questionable.

There ought to be a pinned post on the forum clarifying that the GR Yaris has not been proven to be sold at a loss, because, as it stands, such a claim is unsubstantiated. Sadly, most people regard it as fact.
 
Ecsrobin said:
The waiting list was either 5,000 or 10,000 strong I can’t remember which one. I’ve been saying 5 but think it’s 10.
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I should have probably added few remaining seeing as it was soooo long ago and I suspect many have moved on from the idea.
 
6mt said:
This narrative really needs to be put to rest. I don't buy for a moment that the MK1 was produced at a loss. It seems more like a marketing myth concocted by someone close to Toyota, and everyone just went along with it.

I haven't encountered a single undeniable piece of evidence proving that the MK1 was sold at a loss. Without solid proof, this claim holds no water. The GR Yaris isn't the LFA. And even the story about the LFA being sold at a loss is questionable.

There ought to be a pinned post on the forum clarifying that the GR Yaris has not been proven to be sold at a loss, because, as it stands, such a claim is unsubstantiated. Sadly, most people regard it as fact.
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Agreed. However if they stuck to the original number which was required as a homologation which was the initial idea just to use the base in rallying they needed to jump through the hoop more than it being a decisive money making business decision then it might be plausible but as we know the more you sell the more profit will be gained as each one becomes less expensive to make plus the price went up from the original release with nothing new.
 
6mt said:
This narrative really needs to be put to rest. I don't buy for a moment that the MK1 was produced at a loss. It seems more like a marketing myth concocted by someone close to Toyota, and everyone just went along with it.

I haven't encountered a single undeniable piece of evidence proving that the MK1 was sold at a loss. Without solid proof, this claim holds no water. The GR Yaris isn't the LFA. And even the story about the LFA being sold at a loss is questionable.

There ought to be a pinned post on the forum clarifying that the GR Yaris has not been proven to be sold at a loss, because, as it stands, such a claim is unsubstantiated. Sadly, most people regard it as fact.
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The MK1 was the Halo-car for Toyota, it's not uncommon to not take a lot of margin on these. But "a little margin" still is a profit and not a loss.
I think this rumour started because of Youtube reviews stating this exact thing, "it's hard to believe they make any money on this". That's not the same as saying they sell at a loss.
I also don't think the LFA sold at a loss (at first). After a while, when it turned out nobody bought them, some might have been sold at a loss but pretty sure the advertised price was with a profit.

In case of the Yaris, you don't have to take the development-cost for the WRC car into account. yes, the Yaris was built for this, but the sales-price of the Yaris is not influenced by the development cost of a WRC programme.
 
Torque said:
Toyota UK Website: ‘the 2024 allocation of New GR Yaris will be available exclusively through a ballot. Existing GR Yaris customers and those who joined the official UK waiting list prior to it closing in May 2022 will be contacted to enter the draw in May’.

Toyota UK Press Release: ‘The company will be contacting existing GR Yaris owners and those who joined the waiting list for the car before its closure in May 2022. These customers will have the chance to enter a ballot for the opportunity to purchase a new GR Yaris from the UK’s 2024 allocation’.

SOME CLARIFICATION OF THE ABOVE IS REQUIRED:

The UK website states a ballot and a draw, the press release just refers to a ballot. Given that a ballot is ‘a system of voting secretly and in writing on a particular issue’, how will that work?

If it’s a draw which is ‘an act of selecting names randomly to decide winners in a lottery’ that process is regulated in the UK with very specific rules.

Additional questions:

Toyota UK website/Press release: ‘existing GR Yaris owners/customers’

Are these one or all of the following, current first owners, subsequent (second+) owners and/or former owners?

Toyota UK website/Press release: ‘Those who joined the official UK waiting list prior to it closing in May 2022’.

How many people are still waiting now that we are nearly 2 years on from May 2022? And how many of them have given up, moved on, or died since May 2022?

We can only hope that clarification and answers to the above are provided in order to check the process is fair ;)
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From memory on 31 May 2022 they sent an email to everyone on the waiting list saying the orders were now closed. There were two buttons to reply if you wished to stay on the wait list or come off it
 
cc3 said:
Interesting

www.carmagazine.co.uk

How the EU is blocking Japanese sports cars

CAR magazine reports on the squeeze and cost rises being faced by UK and European car enthusiasts regarding Japanese sports cars from Honda and Toyota
www.carmagazine.co.uk
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I love how it says EU is blocking the sports car, and then start of with EU and UK citizens. Brexit didn't change anything apparently :D
 
cc3 said:
Interesting

www.carmagazine.co.uk

How the EU is blocking Japanese sports cars

CAR magazine reports on the squeeze and cost rises being faced by UK and European car enthusiasts regarding Japanese sports cars from Honda and Toyota
www.carmagazine.co.uk
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Pretty confusing article, I'd say.
Why does it mention only Japanese cars? All cars that produce heavy emissions are penalised, without targeting a specific country of origin.
And from what I read on Japanese magazine, Japanese manufacturers are adding ISA and other "EU-style" ADAS as standard in most of new cars, included those for local market.
It mentions also Euro 7 regulation when it looks like EU backpedaled quickly to make it very similar to Euro 6.
I've never liked CAR magazine very much actually, just a personal opinion.
 
sandervdw said:
And another review that litteraly says "it's remarkable how much you feel the difference with the old one"
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I heard something even more important at the end. This car is more fun with less grip. Having implemented this, I can say I play around with the balance almost every time I drive it and still loving it. For more fun balance I just added a lot of negative camber in front. There are more elegant ways which the mk2 seems to have done, but for the premium to change cars, I'd rather give it a shot myself, further upgrading other aspects in the process. But I'm happy you're chuffed at getting an mk2, it is very valuable to have an improved set-up from factory for sure. In my book we're all winners.
 
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markku said:
Pretty confusing article, I'd say.
Why does it mention only Japanese cars? All cars that produce heavy emissions are penalised, without targeting a specific country of origin.
And from what I read on Japanese magazine, Japanese manufacturers are adding ISA and other "EU-style" ADAS as standard in most of new cars, included those for local market.
It mentions also Euro 7 regulation when it looks like EU backpedaled quickly to make it very similar to Euro 6.
I've never liked CAR magazine very much actually, just a personal opinion.
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Because Japanese cars are suppose to be much cheaper than their luxurious German counterparts. But as we’re seeing with the £45k 🫣 Yaris, not so much nowadays!
 
6mt said:
This narrative really needs to be put to rest. I don't buy for a moment that the MK1 was produced at a loss. It seems more like a marketing myth concocted by someone close to Toyota, and everyone just went along with it.

I haven't encountered a single undeniable piece of evidence proving that the MK1 was sold at a loss. Without solid proof, this claim holds no water. The GR Yaris isn't the LFA. And even the story about the LFA being sold at a loss is questionable.

There ought to be a pinned post on the forum clarifying that the GR Yaris has not been proven to be sold at a loss, because, as it stands, such a claim is unsubstantiated. Sadly, most people regard it as fact.
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100% correct. They have always made a profit with the GR Yaris, no matter what some YouTuber “reviewer” says. £33k (when mk1 was released) is no chump change for building a car, especially for the largest car manufacturer in the world and particularly when many parts are already taken from other mass produced vehicles from the line up (Corolla and CHR). On top of that, consider also that these are sold directly by Toyota and not via the dealer network, saving £*000’s. Oh, and the small detail that these sell for around £26k in Japan. Who are they kidding telling us Toyota are making a loss? Please!
 
I think the loss leading idea came about due to the huge development cost that the GR Yaris has had, but this was for the WRC program, which are always at a loss on paper. What is harder to quantify is the extra sales gained from the motorsport brand building.

Anyway, I don’t think there was a huge amount of profit on each car, the OTR price that we pay is not what Toyota get for each car, they’re getting around £20k, so £500M for the whole run of Mk 1 GR Yaris. With an annual turnover of £300B I’m not sure it would matter too much to their share price if they gave all 25,000 away in a raffle.
 
6mt said:
This narrative really needs to be put to rest. I don't buy for a moment that the MK1 was produced at a loss. It seems more like a marketing myth concocted by someone close to Toyota, and everyone just went along with it.

I haven't encountered a single undeniable piece of evidence proving that the MK1 was sold at a loss. Without solid proof, this claim holds no water. The GR Yaris isn't the LFA. And even the story about the LFA being sold at a loss is questionable.

There ought to be a pinned post on the forum clarifying that the GR Yaris has not been proven to be sold at a loss, because, as it stands, such a claim is unsubstantiated. Sadly, most people regard it as fact.
Click to expand...
While it's always impossible to 100% prove it, sometimes it happens that a product could be initially sold at a loss for some plausible reason.
Maybe to open a new market sector (or re-open it, like it could be the case for the GRY), or because you need to sell a minimum number of cars at any cost.
It happened at the Group-A era in Rallies, where manufacturers had to sell a minimum number of standard cars to get the homologation of the Group-A rally cars.
I remember in 2020 that while there were great expectations about the Mk1 from a (minority) part of the market, at the same time there also were many doubts about its actual success potential, and about how it would age through the years.
Before the Rally1 regulations came suddenly in force, Toyota had to respect the 25000 minimum threshold of GRYs produced, and in the era of sustainability and increasing push to low emissions, I guess that Toyota wasn't so confident about selling all of them in a reasonable time.
So in that scenario I think that it's not so unlikely that Toyota could have decided to sell it at a very tiny profit, if not at a cost.
I've heard of a total GRY project cost (included tests, research, and every thing) of around $4billions, and if you multiply 25000 cars by an average of, say, $40000, you get a total of $1billion, with a loss of $3billions.
These are the figures that Toyota declared, so we won't ever have a definite proof about them.
But the same Toyota stated that the "dragging effect" caused by the motorsport successes, and by the market success and enthusiastic reviews of the Mk1, gave a huge marketing and brand return that, once translated in real money, was by far larger than the initial loss on the project.
But of course we won't ever know if these figures are true, exaggerated, or simply untrue.
What gave me some hints about the Mk1 being a great bargain are simple and verifiable things, like the forged wheels, for instance.
They came included with the Circuit version of the Mk1, and when I heard the after-market price of them, I was left literally speechless 😳
Hence it doesn't come as a surprise that for the Mk2 they are now offered only as an expensive optional on most of the markets.
 
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