This is about colour. Toyota also offered the Yaris in a metallic mint green. Later years seldom saw such personal colours.

The Yaris is a car that I feel has been around for longer than it has. Why is that? The first one had a zany Europroduct appearance which has gone direct from fresh to “period” with no intervening awkward phase. The dusky pink looks pinkier when you see it from above. Here it is seen from above.

And maybe I can find the minty one. Here it is….

This image doesn’t capture the paleness or pearlescent quality.
Isn’t the Yaris very homogenous in its style? Toyota seldom achieve such a unity. This car could be a Renault, perhaps. The current one reverted to form. Have you noticed that customers choosing a car soon after launch are more likely to select a fun colour than customers buying a car further into its run?

Or is that an illusion?
Designing small cars is a tough gig, probably the toughest. Yet the mark 1 Yaris is one of those designs, a bit like the mark 2 Nissan Micra or mark 1 Ford Ka, that is fundamentally right.
I’d agree. Can I add the outgoing Mazda2 to the list? The current Swift is another good one. There are no Fiats, Renaults, Citroens or Peugeots on the list. The Corsa and Fiesta are on the neutral side.
The Opel Corsa B is another example. Going back in time, the Peugeot 205 remains delightful.
Do you mean no Fiats, Peugeots, etc deserve to be on the list, or are you inviting nominations, Richard?
The original Fiat Uno … not the Brazilian one.
The current Swift is awful. It’s just a bloated revamp of the generation before, which was a great and homogeneous design with interesting proportions.
Ah, right. I was thinking more about the contemporary batch. If we go back in time we get a good list, of course.
I though that must be the case and my answer is certainly none. The French trio were hit and miss in the past, but most disappointing are the one time kings of the stylish small car, Fiat, who can only make a stylish one now if it refers to a 60 year old template.
I see some of this Yaris on different Micra iterations. as for the dusky pink, it’s less pinky than a tone offered by Lancia a few years ago…
it was called “cipria” (Italian for “pressed power”, that make-up cosmetic)
There is a version of this colour available for the current Mazda 2, of which I’m also a fan!
Rolls-Royce do a nice Rose Quartz
Super. My choice might be an Opel Insignia with that colour and mid-green cloth interior.
I enjoyed coming back this – I am on record as a fan of the Yaris’s design. Previous gen Mazda 2? Yes, agree, although I find the grille a bit weak. I prefer the Mk3 Micra to the Mk2. Original Uno is a great shout, and I like all the unfacelifted Puntos, although the Mk1 looks a little soft in today’s context.
I was born and currently live outside Europe, but I just returned home after three weeks in Italy. There are, of course, a lot of Fumia’s Ypsilons still around. This is a car I have admired for a long time, and I would argue it actually beat the Ka to the punch in integrating the body’s graphic shapes with its shutlines. The true test of a sound design is that it works irrespective of colour. In my opinion, one of the reasons the 1995 Y is still an aesthetic pleasure is that buyers really made use of Kaleidos – just about every hue is still visible on Italian roads, be it the launch powder blue, green, burnt orange, purple, canary yellow. The 500 has picked up that mantle somewhat, but is it just me, or is the current Y offered in a frankly rank set of colours that do nothing to help sell one of its traditional virtues?