Ford Fiesta ST v Toyota GR Yaris v Mercedes-AMG A45 S | BP Driver's Car | Drive Car of the Year 2021

barely a day passes in the motoring world where we don't hear words like autonomous this or driver assistance that and you could be forgiven for thinking that your or my role as the driver may very soon become redundant however today i am very happy to say that that is most certainly not the case so we've come here to the driver education centre of australia with the team from bp the official fuel supplier of the supercars championship to crown the drive 2021 driver's car of the year in order to find the best driver's car on sale in australia the drive team presented you with our top six the ford fiesta st the mercedes amg a45s the mini jcw gp the porsche 718 cayman gt4 the toyota gr yaris and the volkswagen golf gti tcr well the votes are in and here are your top three the ford fiesta st is a hot hatch in the purest sense it's light nimble affordable front wheel drive and manual it's priced from 32 290 dollars before on-road costs the toyota gr yaris is a road-going homologated rally car it's all-wheel drive turbocharged and about as far from your nana's yaris as you can get it's priced from 49 500 before on-road costs and the mercedes amg a45s it's a fire-breathing all-wheel drive two-liter turbo charged techno rocket ship and it's priced from 94 100 before on-road costs so what's the plan well we're here at the skidpan with the three finalists that you voted for to find out not only which one's the fastest but also which one provides the most amount of driver engagement and overall thrill but of course we can't do all of this by ourselves so we're joined here today by not only the official bp ultimate supercars championship safety car but also team dewalt racing driver scott pye so scott as a professional driver what do you look for in a driver's car well i mean it's subjective but for me having grown up through karting and everything like that we're looking for something you can really feel through the city of pants everything that that we're putting into the car we want to feel back straight away so often with modern cars everything's desensitized to what we feel the car seems to do a lot of the work but for me i i struggle to beat still an old-school rear-wheel drive dumb and fun it's just uh something that i can feel with my feet and manipulate the car well it's funny you actually mention that because our control car is a rear-wheel drive but none of our finalists are yeah well i mean it's certainly something i'm more familiar with uh but i'm excited to get in and try the other three out and see uh what they're what they're about i think the toyota's going to be possibly my favorite i think my prediction is that that and the little fiesta are probably going to give me that feel that i'm looking through through the through the seat but the merc obviously i mean the price range that it's in it's got a lot more creature comforts in it and but i think on a track like this it's a small small run i think it might just want to stretch its legs a little bit more than what we're capable of doing here today yeah they're three very different beasts all hatchbacks but uh none really the same so why don't you jump in the mustang and set a control time let's do it our challenge course here at the decker skidpan starts with a slalom that puts the car's weight transfer to the test it then heads around a cone through a gate and around another cone in a reef knot style maneuver that challenges the car's tendency to understeer oversteer or both then there's a final high-speed run through a couple of tight left-right gates to stop at the finish pair that with a slick surface and some changing weather and we have a true test of both car and driver so how did scott go in the mustang well he set a benchmark time of 37 seconds not bad for the rear drive muscle car on our challenging course well now we've seen how the mustang performs let's take a look at our first contender the other ford the fiesta st now this is what we like to refer to as a traditional hot hatch it's got a six-speed manual transmission and is front-wheel drive but that doesn't mean it hasn't got a few tricks up its sleeve under here is an electronically actuated front locking differential what that means is it can distribute power evenly between left and right wheel under heavy acceleration which gives the car optimal performance when powering out of a corner let's see how it goes being a little front-wheel drive hatch what you get is lift-off oversteer around some of these things and you find that the car becomes really really maneuverable around this quite tight horse especially through the final chicane so here we go we're coming around and i lift off and the back end of the car a pivots now we are in racetrack mode which gives us the most freedom and into the box that was a pretty good time but now let's set an actually good time by getting scott behind the wheel we are in the fiesta st which has been a great little car especially through this slalom section we're going to beat the ultimate kind drag it back um it just had a little bit too much understeer for my liking it didn't feel as racy as the others but uh yeah still a fantastic car just because you're able to get that rear of the car around a little bit more and have some more fun in it so this is when i like my job this is always good fun no matter what car we're in you can't not enjoy yourself oh i know i've shut the box scott's average time in the fiesta matched that of the mustang 37 seconds well not bad at all especially considering how affordable the fiesta is now let's look at the toyota the gr yaris is a bit of a latecomer to this scene arriving in australia only in december 2020 and it came with an awful lot of hype and an awful lot of expectation and i have to say so far it hasn't let us down unlike the ford the gr yaris is all-wheel drive it has a track mode which allows fifty percent of the power to be distributed front to rear but it also has a sport mode which puts seventy percent of power to the rear wheels also the hand brake has a direct cut to drive on the rear wheels what that means especially on a slick surface like this is the tail will start to get out the yaris will get pretty loose and we might be able to see this thing dance around and put a smile on everyone's face now we are in the yaris sport mode which has got the most amount of rear drive and you can hear and you can probably see that we are oh it understands there we go we've got so much ability to move this thing around pretty impressively i don't know if that was a very good time however [Music] the gr yaris is just hilariously good fun so what did our professional driver think [Music] we're in the toyota we're in sport mode now which should be 70 of the power going the rear axle which will allow me to use the right foot to get some of the turning done it turns on a dime this thing's so much fun to drive fantastic value the only thing is in low rpm you've got a clutch kicker just to keep that motor running which on the road it's not going to be an issue but out here a little bit annoying but other than that this thing is fantastic but if our course wasn't challenging enough mother nature turned on the waterworks turning our already slippery surface into an underwater one [Music] it's a fantastic little color in the wet this thing is a blast fan's gonna dime in the way there we go oh that extra power to the rear wheels helped the yaris on our course bettering the ford in the dry by a whole second but how do our two first contenders go up against a competitor that costs more than the fiesta and the yaris combined the mercedes amg a45s provides supercar performance in a hatchback now like the yaris this too is all-wheel drive but it goes a step further it has variable torque split between front and rear so it depends on the driving situation and what you're doing it will also put power left and right as it needs under braking and acceleration which means it basically figures out what it needs to do and gives you the optimal amount of power for the situation plus the mercedes engineers have added a feature called drift mode which pushes as much power as the car can to the rear of the car allowing it to slide around like a rear wheel drive now you might be able to tell just how much quicker off the mark this thing is than our other two and you can see that around that loop we just stab it in and you get the back end spinning around really quite nicely so the drift mode on this surface is actually a bit better for it but the car's got so much pace and it tries to move that back around through that far chicane at the end oh you can get a bit out of shape but i tell you what that was a quick time and this thing is a lot of fun scott thought so too perhaps because it has two-thirds the power of his race cap i love that with just a little bit of throttle it drives all the grunts in the rear and gets the turning done for you so like the uh like the mustang you can actually drive this thing very much on the on the throttle normally if it was a front wheel drive car say it would kill it that wouldn't be half as much fun now it's worth mentioning that if you think the little mercedes is a hooligan in the dry you should see it in the wet [Music] so to be honest in the wet i think this is actually probably one of my favorite cars to drive this might even trump the uh the toyota in the way now it might cost more but boy can you see where it goes the ballistic amg managed a lightning average time of just 32 seconds a whole four seconds in front of the yaris [Music] all right well we've learned a little bit we've had a hell of a lot of fun let's go through the final standings yeah i mean as much fun as i had in the fiesta st it didn't have as much turn as i would like especially on a little circuit like this yep the merc i mean it was a beast but like we said in our predictions i just don't think that we can really fix it on the track this morning so for me personal favorite here was the the toyota yaris it's a beast i mean for what it's what it's uh what it costs i mean if you're tossing up between the two for 50 grand just buy two of them invite friend along and you'll have a blast but for me from a driver's perspective that was a good little fun car to drive yeah that's it i think the the gr yaris in in its pint-sized uh sort of homologated rally car sort of way you're getting all-wheel drive you're getting a unique body style you're getting a special little car that's kind of affordable and almost livable the merc as you say it it really it needs a bigger track to really stretch his legs it's so quick off the mark and that drift mode is a lot of fun it's a 90 grand car right so exactly you get you get so many creature comforts in that thing and it is a beast the drift mode we tried that out had a lot of fun with that um but you you're getting what you pay for so i think that realistically uh this car offers a lot of fun it's uh you know from the driver's perspective as well it's very rural you can still feel what it's doing you put the input in and you're getting that feedback uh through the wheel and through the pedals as well uh so yeah i mean from my perspective i think it's a great little car right well we've had wet we've had dry we've had hot we've had cold but we have found what i think we all consider to be a worthy winner for the drive 2021 driver's car of the year the toyota gr yaris certainly a good little fun car as always don't forget to hit subscribe to stay up to date with all of our latest videos hit the bell icon too so you receive a notification every time a new video is published and let us know in the comments do you agree with the outcome is the toyota gr yaris a worthy winner for the drive 2021 driver's car of the year

Channel: Drive.com.au

Views: 26,623

Keywords: caradvice car advice, car, car review, caradvice.com.au, car comparisons, new car review, car reviews, australia, toyota gr yaris, gr yaris, hot hatch, mercedes-amg a45 s, hot hatchback, drivers car, drive car of the year, ford fiesta st, deca, mercedes-amg a45, car review 2021, gr yaris review, fiesta st

Id: B59q38FfuGg

Length: 13min 22sec (802 seconds)

Published: Thu May 13 2021