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Toyota GR Yaris takes top spot at 2021 UK Car of the Year Awards

Published 08 March 2021

The Toyota GR Yaris fought off challenges from the British-built Land Rover Defender, the popular Ford Puma crossover and Volkswagen’s electric ID.3 to claim the title of UK Car of the Year 2021.

Toyota's little hot hatch was heralded as the Best Performance car on 1 March when the 12 category winners were announced. After those results, it went head-to-head with the other 11 finalists for the overall honour.

The GR Yaris dominated its category and won the votes of many members of the 29-strong UK Car of the Year Awards jury in the final round.

“Raw, aggressive, rapid – the Yaris GR is the hot hatch done properly. Get these thrills while you can,” said UK Car of the Year Awards judge Alisdair Suttie.

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Toyota GB's president and managing director, Augustin Martin, said: “Our sincere thanks go to the UK Car of the Year judges for giving this prestigious award to GR Yaris. This unique car perfectly expresses Toyota’s focus on the pure joys of driving and how we are drawing directly on our motorsport activities to create ever-better cars for the road."

Launched in 2014, the UK Car of the Year Awards are judged by 29 of Britain’s leading motoring journalists. In 2021, each judge used their expertise to pick out the top performer in nine vehicle categories, before deciding the overall winner from their favourites in each class.

Full list of UK Car of the Year Awards 2021 category winners:

Best City Car – Honda e
Best Supermini – Toyota Yaris
Best Small Hatch – Volkswagen ID.3
Best Family – Skoda Octavia
Best Luxury – Mercedes-Benz S-Class
Best Estate – Skoda Octavia Estate
Best Small Crossover – Ford Puma
Best Medium Crossover – Ford Kuga
Best Large Crossover – Land Rover Defender
Best Coupe – BMW 4 Series
Best Open Top – Lexus LC Convertible
Best Performance – Toyota GR Yaris

Comments

on 9 March 2021

Whoops! Bit of an error there with 'fighting off the British Built Land Rover Defender!!!
I think if you check, the Defender is built in Slovakia in a new factory also building the Discovery 5.
The decision to site manufacturing outside the UK brought massive and strident complaints from the 'old guard' supporters of the previous Defender and its direct forebears which were all Solihull. These supporters vowed never to by one as they are not British built - probably an academic claim, as they also stated they would never buy one because of the over-inflated price............

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