I purchased a new Daihatsu Applause in 1993 and without a doubt it was the best car I've ever owned from the perspectives of comfort, reliability, practicality and performance. Nothing ever went wrong with it while I've driven 330,000 kilometres (206,000 miles approx) in it and I've only spent money on parts that are expected to require replacement such as brakes, clutch, exhaust, CV joints etc.  Toyota bought the Daihatsu company and one of its stated objectives was to acquire the Daihatsu small car building expertise.

As Toyota is a large and respected motor vehicle manufacurer I trusted that the Yaris would be a good replacement for my much loved but aging Applause. The Yaris has near identical specs to my Applause ie 1.5 litres and 80kw for the Yaris against 1.6 litres and 77kw for the Applause so I didn't bother to give it an extended test drive where I could test its performance. As a result of this misplaced trust I feel I've purchased a complete lemon. The Yaris has woeful performance. Its sluggish on take off and even my wife who is no petrol head has commented on its lack of performance. The Applause will easily spin its wheels and would run away from the Yaris in a traffic light drag and hide. The Applause will quite easily take off in 2nd gear and in the Yaris 2nd gear feels as though you are in 3rd. From stationary the Yaris can barely spin its wheels for more than a few seconds even with the wildest abuse of the clutch and accelerator. Should you wish to overtake a slow moving vehicle smartly at low speed it will require changing down more than one gear.

Other reviewers on this site have rated the performance of the Yaris as adequate which serves to demonstrate that expectations are based on previous experience of cars owned or lack of experience in the case of novice drivers. If they had previously driven the Applause or a Suzuki Swift or 1.6 litre Nissan Pulsar their opinion of the Yaris would be very different.  

My view that the Yaris is sluggish is supported by motoring journalists from "Wheels" magazine in Australia who stated that the Yaris needs a lot of input from the driver to keep it up with the traffic flow.

Unlike the Mazda 2 it has no stability protection which I was aware of but I needed a small vehicle with plenty of luggage carrying capacity and as the Mazda is only produced in hatch form I was pretty much forced to buy the Yaris sedan.

I had to wait 4 weeks to take delivery of the vehicle as the reversing sensor wasn't available. It worries me that if my car was damaged I might need to wait a similar time for replacement parts.

My recommendation is that you don't blindly trust the Toyota reputation as I did. Hire a version of any car you might contemplate so that you can give it a much more extensive road test before making your decision. If you need a measure of tractability at low speed with reasonable passing performance you'll discover that the Yaris doesn't measure up too well.

If you cant do that then simply avoid the Yaris 
Amount Paid (US$): 16330
Condition: New
Model Year: 2008
Model and Options: YRS