All generations and engines together · 323,618 MOT tests in the 2025 data · typical mileage at age 7: 45k
Better than most superminis, by age and by mileage. Watch brakes and suspension. A solid used buy, provided its MOT history has no repeating brakes advisories.
Split by first-registration year. Cars registered in a changeover year can belong to either generation.
Owner folklore from forums and the motoring press, with how well each report stands up. Most of it never shows up in an MOT, which is why this section exists at all.
Some early Mk3 Yaris 1.33 Dual VVT-i (1NR-FE) engines use oil far faster than they should, sometimes needing a litre topped up every 1,000 miles instead of every few thousand. It shows up as a burning smell or a puff of blue smoke on cold start, mostly from around 40,000-60,000 miles on cars built before roughly 2013. Toyota's fix is updated piston rings under a technical bulletin; where that was never carried out, a full ring replacement runs to several hundred pounds.
The Hybrid's small 12V battery, separate from the main hybrid pack, can go flat or fail early, especially on cars doing lots of short trips or left standing for a week or more. The symptom is a car that won't wake up or start even though the hybrid drive battery is fine, and it's the single most reported hybrid fault in owner surveys. A replacement is cheap, usually under £200, and Toyota has covered part of the cost as goodwill on some out-of-warranty cars, but there's no formal TSB or recall for it.
On the 1.4 D-4D diesel, the EGR valve and intake clog with soot and oily deposits on cars used mainly for short runs, causing rough idle, hesitation, or a flat spot under acceleration. Where a DPF is fitted, the same short-trip pattern stops it regenerating properly, which can trigger a blocked-filter warning. Symptoms tend to surface from 60,000-80,000 miles on town-only cars; a clean or forced regen is cheap, but a neglected filter can mean a replacement running into four figures. Does not apply to petrol or Hybrid Yaris.
CVT automatic Yaris models can hesitate, jerk or shudder when pulling away from a stop, with the engine revving before the car catches up. It's reported most on cars that have missed a CVT fluid change, which Toyota doesn't list as a routine service item but which independent gearbox specialists recommend by 60,000-70,000 miles. Left unaddressed it can wear the belt and pulleys, turning a fluid change into a transmission rebuild costing well over a thousand pounds. Manual cars are unaffected.
Owners report bubbling or flaking paint around the sills, rear wheel arches and door seams, sometimes on cars still under ten years old. It splits opinion: some blame thin factory underseal and stone-chip protection, others say it's no worse than any small car that's done several winters on salted roads. No manufacturer acknowledgment or recall exists, so treat it as a viewing check rather than a confirmed fault, and look harder at cars from coastal or heavily gritted areas.
Owners have long reported rear brakes sticking or squealing, often traced to a caliper slide pin seizing up or a brake hose collapsing internally and trapping pressure, so the pad keeps dragging on the disc. Brakes are the measured MOT failure signature for this class of supermini, and this sticking-caliper pattern is a plausible real-world driver of that: it wears pads and discs faster than normal use would, and a driver may not notice until the car pulls to one side or a wheel runs hot after a drive. A caliper or hose replacement runs to roughly £80-200 a side.
Ranked from this model’s own MOT record, then from what owners report.
Saveable checklistThe physical checks its own defect data says are worth your time, most telling first.
These judge the seller’s upkeep rather than the model, and they are where the haggling money is.
The physical checks its own defect data says are worth your time, most telling first.
These judge the seller’s upkeep rather than the model, and they are where the haggling money is.
The physical checks its own defect data says are worth your time, most telling first.
These judge the seller’s upkeep rather than the model, and they are where the haggling money is.
The physical checks its own defect data says are worth your time, most telling first.
These judge the seller’s upkeep rather than the model, and they are where the haggling money is.
Drawn from the reports above rather than the MOT data. These are the model-specific ones.
Computed from DVSA MOT results, all of Great Britain, 2025. Nothing here is opinion.
Share of tests where each item was recorded. The dark tick is the class average across all tracked models; bars are scaled within each group.
The rows that judge the model rather than its keeper. 110,775 tests in this band.
Tyres, pads and stone chips say more about how the car was driven and maintained than about how it was built.
Same segment (Superminis), best MOT record first. Compare before you shortlist.
Head to head with the other popular cars in its class on reliability and common faults.