Toyota Yaris 1.6 Turbo GR

Factory fresh! Plenty of car enthusiasts know that phrase from a certain motoring programme presenter with a knack for the dramatic. Call it borrowed, just for this one car. Remember when Toyota only built cars that lasted forever and that could bore you to sleep right there in the showroom? The Corolla, the Avensis, the Prius.

Solid, indestructible, and about as thrilling as a pension plan. For decades that was the image, and let us be honest, if you wanted a car that would still start on a freezing Monday morning after 300,000 kilometres, Toyota was exactly where you needed to be.

And then something happened. Somewhere behind the scenes in Japan, someone at Gazoo Racing was apparently given permission to go completely wild. Not to build a slightly faster Yaris with a little spoiler and red stitching, but to create a genuine homologation special. A car built for the rally championship, with engineering you would normally only find in cars of twice the calibre.

A 1.6 litre three cylinder with a turbo, which in this form sends a full 260 bhp to all four wheels via the GR-FOUR all-wheel drive system. Manual gearbox, because of course it is...

Jeremy Clarkson, the messiah himself, simply called it one of the most fun cars he has ever driven. And that means something, coming from a man who usually only starts smiling at twelve cylinders. You see, the GR Yaris is not a car you buy for the commute. It is a car that only truly comes alive the moment you go hunting for the limit on a wet B-road or an Austrian mountain pass and realise that this little hooligan does exactly what you ask of it.

The bodywork is partly aluminium, the roof has been lowered, and everything about this thing screams that Toyota meant business this time.

I have watched plenty of cars come and go at Zandvoort, and most of today's hot hatches are really glorified family cars with too much power on the front wheels. You put your foot down and mostly feel the front tyres protesting. Not this one. That all-wheel drive changes the whole story. You can go flat out into the Tarzan corner, and instead of the understandable resistance, that GR simply digs in and catapults you out.

Right, back to the GR Yaris on offer here. Sixteen whole kilometres, let me say it again, factory fresh! Walk around it and you sense a certain tension, the tension of a predator ready to stretch its legs for the very first time. It stands here in Pure White. A solid paint, and that actually suits the honest character of the car perfectly.

White is, after all, the colour of rallying. The upholstery is leather, it is manual as it should be, and it has four seats. Four, because the fifth seat was sacrificed to this thing's serious ambition. That is not a shortcoming, that is a statement.

What makes this GR Yaris so special is simple: they are no longer built in this form, and they are already coveted by a crowd who knows exactly what they are holding. A homologation special you can simply drive every day, to the supermarket, to work, and then thrash like a lunatic over a mountain pass at the weekend. The car does not pretend. It is exactly what it promises to be, and in these times of virtual noises and simulated sounds, that is rarer than you think.

Admittedly, it is not for everyone. If you want a car to slouch comfortably in on your way to the local bridge club, you need to look elsewhere. This is a car with a clear opinion, and that opinion is that driving should be fun. Hard, direct, and without excuses. The sort of car your children will boast about to their friends in ten years' time, telling them their parent once owned one.

And that is precisely the point. The GR Yaris is already a classic in the making. In a few years people will realise what Toyota did here. By then they will probably no longer be available to order new, and the good examples will have long since vanished into the heated garages of enthusiasts who understood just how special this was.

Toyota finally made a car that does not send you to sleep in the showroom. In fact, it keeps you awake at night.

Special features:

• Mileage: 16 km
• 1.6 Turbo three cylinder with 260 bhp
• GR-FOUR all-wheel drive
• Manual gearbox
• Pure White solid paint
• Leather upholstery
• Partly aluminium bodywork, lowered roof
• Developed by Gazoo Racing for rallying
• Instant modern classic