Corolla Takes Best Hybrid Title In Toyota’s Triple What Car? Awards Success

• British-built Corolla named best hybrid car
• Yaris Hybrid wins award as best hybrid car costing less than £20,000
• Aygo x-play takes best value car title

The Toyota Corolla has taken the title of Best Hybrid Car in the 2020 What Car? Awards, leading a haul of three honours for the brand.

Announced at a ceremony in London yesterday evening (14 January), the awards also saw the Toyota Yaris Hybrid taking the title for Best Hybrid Car for Less Than £20,000 and the Toyota Aygo being named the Best Value Car (priced between £10,000 to £12,000).

Steve Huntingford, What Car? Editor, said: “The Toyota Corolla comfortably beats the fuel economy of pure petrol-powered rivals and betters a fair few diesels in its 1.8-litre form that we recommend. Better still, it manages this while delivering more performance than most people will need. Plus, in stop-start traffic, near-silence descends when you use electric power alone.”

Corolla earned five stars for reliability, equipment features, running costs and ride comfort in its full What Car? test, scoring four stars overall.

The Corolla Hatchback and Touring Sports are built at Toyota’s UK car plant in Burnaston, Derbyshire, and use engines supplied by its factory in Deeside, North Wales. Corolla has pioneered Toyota’s new dual hybrid strategy as the first Toyota model in Europe to offer customers the choice of two hybrid powertrains – 1.8 and 2.0-litre – offering a wider range of performance but with uncompromised fuel and emissions efficiency. Following Corolla’s lead, the same choice has recently been extended to the Toyota C-HR compact crossover.

The strength-in-depth of Toyota’s hybrid technology helped the Yaris compact hatchback claim the award for best hybrid car costing less than £20,000. This success follows on from its 100 per cent fault-free record in the What Car? 2019 Reliability Survey

Editor Huntingford explained: “The Toyota Yaris Hybrid is one of the most efficient cars we’ve ever tested, returning 80mpg around town and doing decently on the motorway.”

Notably Yaris’s award comes just as the current model prepares to make way for an all-new range, due for launch later this year. The fourth generation Yaris will offer a new hybrid powertrain that promises to be even more efficient than its predecessor.

Toyota’s third award recognised the great value of its Aygo city car. Huntingford commented: “Aygo has plenty more going for it than just funky looks. Not only is it cheaper to buy than rivals in our recommended x-play trim, but its 1.0-litre petrol engine is gutsy yet efficient, so should be cheap to run. It’s agile around town, too, with a tight turning circle, which makes it ideal for city car parks.”

ENDS