Yaris vs MR2 Spyder

[Tamago]

Originally Posted by Morgan

I loved the way the MR2 felt at autocross. Nothing you can ever do to the yaris will make it as fast around a track as a well preped spyder. The yaris can handle great (for what it is) with a few inexpensive mods, but what I think you need to do is ask yourself a few questions:

1.) is it worth it - tearing down your brand new car and tracking it,
2.) what are you goals - autocross once a month/week, track days, drag strip - what do you want to do with the car
3.) realistic expectations, yes the yaris lots of weight up high and up front, has crappy rear suspension and less than impressive front suspension vs the spyder low center of gravity, balanced closer to 50/50 with independent all the way around but it is +30 on the yaris

My only complaint with the spyder was that I was never comfortable in it, ever. The seating position is so track driven that you never feel relaxed. However the midengine, torque, light weight car was the best thing when we had our autocross events, it kept up with s2000's, street prepared miatas and cars with twice the hp while having blown shocks... then again its all relevant, I was keeping up with mazdaspeed3's, wrx's and civic si's in my yaris.

If you want to keep the yaris and try to make it a little faster around the corners, there is a handling primer written by Tamago which is pretty complete - best bang for the dollar, get some TRD springs, shocks, rear antisway bar and decent tires and you can have some fun at local events and shake things up in a 108hp fwd :)

good luck in whichever you decide

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