2015 Toyota Yaris Leaked Ahead of Official Debut

As you may or may not already know, Toyota is expected to debut a newly facelifted version of their Yaris hatchback by the end of 2014 for the 2015MY. We didn’t plan on seeing any of the new updates until this summer at the earliest, but an Italian automotive blog was kind enough to upload several leaked images of the new car for us, taken from a Japanese brochure. Check it out below:

Technically, these images depict the JDM Toyota Vitz, but Toyota has reportedly confirmed that the changes will make it into the European-spec Yaris. Nonetheless, it’s good to keep the images’ origins in mind – they came from a Japanese brochure, and they were intended for the Japanese market.

But, enough talk of origin and technicalities, let’s talk about what looks new in the 2015 Toyota Yaris. Here’s the 2014MY for the sake of comparison:

As you can see, there aren’t any incredibly drastic changes, but they are noticeable. The most obvious changes can be found in the front clip, where the normal Yaris features a larger trapezoidal grille and darker, higher-contrast slanted headlights; it makes for an all-around more aggressive and distinctive design. The Yaris RS, which is the vehicle on the lower half of the leaked image, also gets the same headlight changes, but also gets a mesh X-grille – the same we saw on the new Toyota Aygo back at the 2014 Geneva Motor Show a few weeks ago.

Looking to the side and back of the leaked Yaris images, we see that the car has some new alloy wheels, and the rear bumper has been slightly re-sculpted to fit the more aggressive front-end. The taillights also look to share the headlights darkened, high-contrast design… But it’s hard to tell for sure from this angle.

All in all, these changes aren’t anything spectacularly new or progressive, but they will help keep the petrol/diesel versions of the Yaris in line with the Yaris Hybrid, stylewise.

A few more changes can be seen from the facelifted Yaris hatchback’s interior. Although the image is fairly grainy, we can see that the interior has a much more premium feel to it than the current model, without forgoing the car’s inherent simplicity.

The black leather upholstery with red stitching serves to elicit a high-performance feel from behind the wheel, a welcome change for Yaris drivers. The car also looks to receive a new, higher-resolution infotainment system with an updated touch-screen and dash. If you look closely, you can see that the steering wheel looks to have been integrated with the infotainment system with multi-function buttons, although we won’t know for certain until we can examine the real car more closely.

Unfortunately, we still don’t know when or where the new Toyota Yaris (or Vitz, as the case may be) will make its debut. We also don’t know where the updated versions will be available, although early sources indicate that the Yaris RS, at least, will not make it into the UK. Either way, we’ll be sure to keep you updated as we know more, so stay tuned and thanks for reading!