Many many many people are caught up on the "it's just a Yaris" message. But it's not just a Yaris with some performance parts, once you see it and drive it, you'll get it
This!
Having owned a 911 and driven many 911's the test drive reminded me so much of how a 911 feels so well built and tough. Apart from the low rent cabin, the actual car felt like it was built to 911 standards, by that I mean it felt like the kind of car you could drive to a track day, track it all day and do so several times a year and never fear that something is going to break, infact more so in the Toyota simply because having done around 20-30 track days in a 911 it gets mega expensive fast, especially when you need to replace a set of ceramic disc and other consumables, the Toyota feels tougher, because it is the suspension setup I believe is the full rally car spec so in theory you could drive this car on a bumpy gravel rally stage and the suspension would not snap/break whatever.
Also its expensive, but at same time is it, a car that is truly bespoke, it is no Yaris all it shares I think is the lights and mirrors, everything else is bespoke to this car, brakes, engine, suspension, body panels, I mean how many hot hatches come with carbon roofs? This is a car built by engineers and left to the engineers, hence the price, but factor in the price could increase to 36k levels in future, factor that 100k mile / 5 year warranty, well I was like OK this has me interested, the fact they were offering interest free at £299 month just made my man maths go on red alert and I had to have one. Worse case in couple of year it loses 10k, best case it loses a couple grand or you break even after miles of fun and low cost motoring.
There's always going to be an element of that, when I told my mum I was looking at a Yaris she looked at me like I was a fruit loop, she was driving a Yaris at the time, no amount of explaining makes it right, only car people will understand.
Used to get similar with my 147GTA, which had wide arches and v6 etc, say you have a 147 abd you'd hear oh my mum had one of those blah, blah, it's just something you have to deal with.
Shame really the Yaris is more bespoke it could have detached itself from the main car with another name entirely as there's no crossover really with typical Yaris owners and this.
Simple really you buy a car for you, yourself not to applease others.
The comments I got when I sold my 911 to buy a Mustang, people thought I'd lost the plot.
I also had some comments when I got the Ferrari in yellow, why did you not buy red as you should buy red because that is the colour everyone buys one in, well after looking at all the colours I preferred yellow and I paid more to get a yellow one lol.
Buy it for you, who cares what others thnk.