Audi RS7 vs Toyota GR Yaris

What's the difference?

The new-generation RS 7 Sportback heralds the further evolution of this large majestic beast, with more features, a beautifully finished cabin and with more grunt with the looks to match. You’d be hard-pressed to find a better combination of power, dynamics and comfort in the Audi range – apart from in the RS 6 Avant of course.

The GR Yaris GTS with the Aero Performance Package is a so wonderfully special with its brilliant engineering, mind-blowing dynamics and fun-to-drive nature. The new aero package makes an already angry beastie look furious, making it the perfect enhancement that's also functional.

The only lower marks here are for warranty, fuel use and practicality. But if there was a score for fun it'd be a 10/10.

The big news is the RS 7 Sportback now comes with five seats. The previous generation car had just two seats in the second row. I'll talk more on practicality below but for now let's examine the new styling.

This RS 7 Sportback has new broad, black mesh grille, flanked by gigantic side air intakes, narrow headlights, and a thin upper air inlet which is a hat tip to early racing Audis.

While that new angrier, more angular and menacing face is a showstopper, everything about the new RS 7 Sportback seems to be accentuated further.

Look at the wheels. The previous generation came with 21-inch rims, now the new normal for the RS 7 are 22-inches – they're huge. Those wheel guards also flare out 20mm more than a regular A7's and the rear haunches have bulked up massively.

Come to the back of the car and the diffuser and bumper have also been beefed up. Nobody sitting behind you in traffic is going to think this is just a regular A7.

Don't expect the RS 7 Sportback's insides to be just as hardcore as its exterior. The cabin is almost identical to a regular A7's. It's a stunning cockpit dominated by a dash which protrudes back towards the passengers and houses the media screen. Anther display for climate is set into the big centre console which divides the driver and co-pilot into almost cocooned cells.

The cabin isn't without its RS touches though – there's the sports seats with honeycomb stitching, fully digital instrument cluster with RS specific meters, the RS steering wheel, the Nappa leather on the dashboard and the doors, the aluminium inlays. The level of fit and finish is up there with the best that I've seen on any production car.

The RS 7 Avant is 5009mm long, 1424mm tall and 1950mm across for a wide planted stance.

The GR Yaris exists so that Toyota could go racing in the World Rally Championship. As with many racing series it required Toyota to build a road-going version of their Yaris race car, also known as a homologation vehicle. It’s a good deal, they get to race, you get a race car for the road. And so the GR Yaris was born. 

Wildly different from a regular five-door garden variety Yaris, the GR Yaris is a hand-built three-door hatch with a wider track, wider and lower body and the use of forged carbon and aluminium for lightweight construction.   

The GR Yaris already looks very angry, but the GTS Aero Performance Pack makes it look furious. It adds a huge adjustable rear wing, fender ducts that channel air, a front spoiler lip that aids stability, a giant bonnet scoop to help release air, and rear bumper ducts to reduce drag. 

The GR Yaris’s cabin was redesigned for the 2025 update and that saw the dashboard angled more to the driver much like in a race car, but it's more functional than fancy and it’s all very plain.

Still, we’re not complaining. The seats are lovely and the red stitching is a nice touch but this isn’t a Lexus. It’s supposed to favour function over form and so the design is absolutely fitting. And by function I mean dynamics and not practicality.

The previous RS 7 Sportback was a four-seater, now it has five seats. That's right, a middle seat has been added to the second row, but, as you'd expect, it's not the best place be in the RS 7 Sportback, straddling the large driveshaft and ducking under the low roof-line.

That fastback profile does mean headroom in the second row is nowhere near as good as the RS 6 Avant's, but legroom is the same and, at 191cm tall, I can just fit behind my driving position with about 10mm to spare.

Up front it's not as spacious as you might think. That stepped dash protrudes into the passenger's space, the door pockets are thin and the centre console storage under the armrest is small.

Sportbacks are more practical sedans thanks the large opening offered by the hatch. The boot's 535-litre cargo capacity is great and only about 30 litres less than what you have in the RS 6 Avant.

For phones there's a wireless charger and two USB ports in the centre console storage box, while back seat passengers have two USB ports and a 12V outlets. There's also directional air vents and dual-zone climate control in the rear, too.

The regular Yaris is small, the GR Yaris is smaller at 3995mm end-to-end and with two fewer doors. As a tall person (I’m 1890mm end-to-end) the space on board is adequate up front with just enough knee, head and elbow room.

The GR Yaris is a four seater with the two rear seats accessed through the front doors. There’s not much room in there for adults and not even my lanky 11-year old would be happy in there. Still if you need to carry three other people, technically you can.

Cabin storage is limited to fairly large door pockets and two cupholders between the front seats. There is a little shelf carved into the dashboard which is great and a small glovebox below it.

Boot space is tiny at 174 litres but again this is a small car with other priorities. 

The GR Yaris GTS Aero Performance Pack sits at the top of the model range with the six-speed manual version listing for $64,990 before on-road costs, while the automatic is $67,490. That’s $4500 more than the standard GTS without the aero pack

The aero pack significantly toughens up the look of the GR Yaris, and also improves its dynamics. So if you plan to use the GR Yaris as a track car and drive it hard and fast, the kit will help.

That's thanks to improved down force from the giant rear wing, air ducts in the fenders to improve steering under braking, a front splitter for stability, underbody cladding to maximise airflow and a bonnet scoop to help release hot air from the engine bay.

The rest of the high-performance equipment comes on the regular GTS including a Torsen limited slip differential, high performance suspension tune and 18-inch forged wheels with Michelin Pilot Sport 4S tyres.

Standard features are the same as the regular GTS and include heated GR sports front seats with suede leather upholstery, a 12.3-inch digital instrument cluster, leather-wrapped steering wheel, aluminium pedals, dual-zone climate control, proximity unlocking and push-button start.

There's also an eight-speaker, eight-inch media screen with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, and an eight-speaker JBL sound system.

The value is actually great considering all the high-performance engineering around you in the GR Yaris, and it will save you money from being tempted to go down the aftermarket route and buy equipment that hasn't been designed for the car by the people who made the car.

There are some nice comforts, too, like the leather seats, although the media screen is small.   

The RS 7 may look like a large, well-mannered business class car, but think of it as a thug in a suit because this thing is a monster with a 441kW/800Nm twin-turbo petrol 4.0-litre V8.

That's almost 600 horsepower and the supercar acceleration that goes with it is brutal: we're talking 0-100km/h coming in 3.6 seconds. That also matches the RS 6 Avant and it's a tenth of a second faster than the Audi R8 V10 RWD supercar, (and also the previous-gen RS 7 Sportback Performance) and this is a large, four-door, five-seater.

Compared to the previous generation RS 7 Sportback Performance the power is down by 4kW, but torque is up by a whopping 100Nm. Give me torque over power any day.

Shifting gears is an eight-speed automatic transmission, sending the drive to all four wheels.

It still boggles my mind how 221kW and 400Nm is extracted from a 1.6-litre three-cylinder petrol engine but here we are. The GR Yaris has this set up with this output, along with all-wheel drive. 

Thanks to lightweight materials such as forged carbon and aluminium the GR Yaris weighs nothing in car terms - just 1300kg - so acceleration from 0-100km/h is a rapid 5.1 seconds.

I’ve already detailed the juicy engineering bits the GTS Aero Package is fitted with, from the limited slip diff to the adjustable rear wing, and it’s not an exaggeration to say that not many small hatches are this gifted with this kind of genius.

Our test car has an eight-speed automatic, which is easy to drive in city traffic. However, I'd opt for the six-speed manual because if you've come this far you may as well go the whole way.

This is a large, all-wheel drive car with a 600 horsepower V8, but it also has a mild hybrid system in this new generation, which will switch the engine off at let the car coast down hills or at speeds under 22km/h.

Audi says this can save up to 0.8L/100km in real-life driving. That's great news, but consumption is still fairly high with Audi saying that after a combination of open and urban roads the RS 7 Sportback will have used 11.6L/100km.

The GR Yaris is a hungry beastie that eats through its 50L petrol tank fairly quickly and then wants more. Toyota says you should see 9.1L/100km of 98 RON used in the automatic and 8.2L/100km with the manual over a combination of driving conditions. 

Stop-start city driving in traffic saw fuel use increase dramatically to 13.0L/100km in the auto. According to our car's trip computer, my own testing used an average of 14.5L/100km after mainly suburban driving.  

I've never met an RS model that hasn't been great to drive – these cars are way more than just tough body kits and big wheels. The engineering which separates the RS 7 Sportback from the A7 makes them more distant cousins than siblings.

As I mentioned before the RS 7 Sportback and RS 6 share more than the same twin-turbo V8, there are also the giant brakes in form of 420mm discs at the front with 10 piston calipers and 370mm discs at the rear.

The optional carbon ceramic brakes are the largest ever to be fitted to a production vehicle at 440mm at the front and 370mm at the rear, saving 34kg in mass over the steel brakes.

Now standard for the first time is Audi's Dynamic Package, which adds dynamic steering (a variable ratio) paired with all-wheel steering, a sport differential, and a 280km/h top speed.

Coming standard is adaptive air suspension and for $2850 you can option the Dynamic Ride Control suspension, which is a hydraulically activated adaptive damper system 

At the Australian launch, Audi supplied two RS 7 Sportbacks: one with the air suspension and the other with not only the Dynamic Ride Control system, but also the RS Dynamic Package Plus which adds the ceramic brakes and increases the top speed to 305km/h – this was the car I started off in.

I'm going to say right away that you don't need ceramic brakes for regular road use. Sure it means you can tell people that you have the biggest brakes in the world and they save you almost 35 kilos in weight, and, yes, they're resistant to fading, but they're expensive to replace and the steel ones are incredibly good.

I also feel the Dynamic Ride Control sports suspension isn't necessary in a car like the RS 7 Sportback. This is a Grand Tourer designed to eat up hundreds of miles at lightspeed in comfort.

So, while I found the first RS 7 Sportback with the big brakes and sports suspension sharper and firmer than the standard car, it didn't seem to fit with this vehicle's intent.

The regular RS 7 Sportback still accelerated with the same brutal force and roared at the scenery flashing past. It still handled through the tight corners superbly with excellent turn in, mind-boggling traction and grip, and excellent body control, but all in far more comfort.

This is the point – we covered hundreds of miles at the Australian launch of the RS 7 Sportback in a range of RS models, and sports suspension can go from great to gruelling on Aussie roads with their coarse-chip bitumen and potholes. The RS 7 Sportback, with its air suspension, not only made driving far more comfortable, but easier, too.

There’s been a multitude of electric cars through the test garage over the past six months and the GR Yaris is like a diamond found in a tub of Lego when it comes to driving.

So much sound. The three cylinder snarls on start up sending vibrations into the cockpit and up through the steering wheel, the transmission can be heard engaging gears, the big brakes creak as they’re released. And we’re hardly even moving yet. There’s so much theatre. It’s all real and I love it!

I even love that in the first 10 minutes of driving, a message appears on the instrument cluster asking that excessive acceleration be avoided while the engine is cool. You don’t get that beautiful inconvenience in an electric car.

But when you can excessively accelerate (on a race track of course, right?) it's wonderful and it's loud. Lift off, and the wastegate lets out a little "weeee!" in excitement.

I don't need to tell you that the GR Yaris handles better than just about anything in this price range and while the ride is firm and speed bumps feel like you’ve hit a gutter I still drove the GR Yaris every day, even to do the school run, because it is so much fun. Meanwhile my hybrid long0term test car looked lonely in the driveaway all week...

Being an automatic makes it easy to drive in traffic and the small size makes finding parking spots quick and simple.

Visibility is good, steering is excellent, the seats are big enough to accommodate me but snug enough to offer good lateral support, too.   

The GR Yaris has not been crash tested by ANCAP and the score for the regular Yaris can't be applied to the GR version.

Still the GR Yaris comes equipped with an array of advanced safety tech such as auto emergency braking (AEB), lane keeping assistance and a blind spot warning.

There are six airbags, two child seat ISOFIX points and two top tether anchor mounts in the rear row.  

The RS 7 Sportback is covered by Audi's three-year, unlimited kilometre warranty which not only falls behind in duration compared to mainstream brands but also its direct rival Mercedes-Benz which now has five-year, unlimited kilometre coverage. 

Service intervals are every 12 months or 15,000km with a three-year plan costing $2380 and a five-year plan for $3910.

The GR Yaris is covered by Toyota's five-year/unlimited-kilometre warranty which is lacking compared to many other mainstream manufacturers’ seven-year-plus warranties. The good news is that the engine and driveline is covered by an extra two-year warranty.

Servicing is capped at about $300 for the first six visits, although services are six months apart which means that after three years you’ll run out of capped-price servicing.

Still, Toyota’s reputation for reliability does provide some peace of mind.