Remember sometime in the late 19th century and early 20th, there existed a car called the Toyota Tazz?

It was far from aspirational, and it was (and this is the truth) named after a flippant comment by one of the bosses in charge at the time.
A product that should’ve been a harder sell than convincing a lawyer to do pro bono work. And yet it wasn’t.

The Toyota Tazz was more popular than heroine in San Francisco, and for the same reasons too: it was cheap and it got the job done.

When Toyota took it off the market in 2006, they were also removing from the public market one of their most popular sellers. But now it’s back, and the first words out of Toyota’s mouth on the launch were “this is a volume car. We’re going to sell a lot them”

And they are.

OK, so it’s not entirely a Toyota Tazz, but you get the idea. Firstly it’s called an Etios, and looks a lot more modern, and it comes in both a sedan version and a hatch.

Toyota aren’t just throwing another one of their hats into the ever-engorging Sub-B segment car market, they’re also throwing a very cheap, very spacious and very quick car.

The Etios take top honours in the first two categories, and boasts 7 bottle holders and a 13-litre cubby-hole in the front.
As for the newly developed 1.5-litre, 66kw petrol engine, let’s just say that parents will sleep well at night knowing their kids can’t hit too high a speed while the kids at least won’t have to hide their heads at a robot drag-race.

Tech specs are impressive considering. 0-100 in 11.3 seconds and top speed of 165km/h. Consumption is also impressive, but then it should be, right? 5.9-6 L/100km.

Not much else to say really, except for the negatives. The steering is incredibly light on the Etios. Welcome on a trip down to the shops, but on a roadtrip, see if dad will lend you the Merc for the weekend.

The ride also isn’t tremendously comfortable, nor the interior well made or premium-looking. They’ve place the speedo in the centre of the dash, making it cheaper and easier to convert to a left-hand drive when the market demands it for example.
But when you consider what you’re paying for it, are you really that surprised.

They’re going to sell thousands of these.

Etios 1.5 HB Xi            –           R115 800;

Etios 1.5 HB Xs           –           R120 900;

Etios 1.5 SD Xi            –           R121 800;

Etios 1.5 SD Xs           –           R126 600.