Honda City vs Toyota Yaris: Segment-leading car vs new cool kid on the block

The segment of compact sedans has recently welcomed the latest cars into the line-up – Toyota Yaris. The Yaris is the first attempt by Toyota in this fiercely competing segment. And after entering this market, Toyota Yaris will take in the well-established names like Honda City, Hyundai Verna, Skoda Rapid, and Volkswagen Vento. Among which, Honda City is considered as the segment-leading car. How will the newcomer like the Yaris compete with such a strong brand like Honda City? Let’s dig into every aspect of each car to find out the answer to this question.

1. Honda City vs Toyota Yaris: Dimension

Comparing with City’s dimension, the Yaris owns a greater height and width. The Yaris’s width is 35mm larger than the City, which means that it will offer a more ample shoulder room for car occupants. At 4,440mm, the City is 15mm longer than the Yaris, and of course, has a considerably longer wheelbase of 2,600mm. It could be translated into a larger room for the City. 

The City also offers a bigger boot space of 510 litres – the same number as the Ciaz; whereas the Yaris only has a 476-litre cargo space.

2. Honda City vs Toyota Yaris: Exterior

Honda City features a more aggressive exterior, whereas the Yaris's design seems to be flat and conventional

Overall, the Yaris, despite being a newer design, indeed, lacks outstanding look and is considered to be conventional. On the other hand, Honda City, even being around for longer, still manages to keep their design fresh, current and more importantly, pronounced and memorable. 

Honda City is definitely a smart and balanced sedan

The City’s design attains a balanced proportion and dimension. The City gets a prominent honey-comb grille with a thick chrome strip, and a sleek LED headlights. On the side, the sharply diamond cut alloys are the highlight. It doesn’t miss a chance to impress with its polish rear which contains dual-tone taillights and rear spoiler and honey-comb rear bumper. Honda shows its generosity with LED-laden rear: from the stopping light on the spoiler, tail light, and rear fog lights, all feature the LED lights.  

Yaris's front face is the most attractive part of the design

For the Yaris, its front is the most notable parts of the exterior. With an extra-wide grille and an aggressive and glossy swept-back headlamp unit. Apart from that, there are not much things about the exterior to mention. 

3. Honda City vs Toyota Yaris: Interior

Unlike the exterior where the City looks more mature than the Yaris, the interior is where the Yaris shows it grown-up side. The Yaris features a simple and practical layout whereas the City tends to be more playful. 

Honda City's cabin is more youthful and stylish while the Yaris's one focus more on the practicality 

Both of the cars features the black and beige exterior with some silver accent over the dashboard. However, with the addition of black piano accent on the central console and touchscreen for automatic climate controls, Honda City looks cooler and smarter. Notably, the City’s dash features a soft plastic.

Whereas, the Yaris’s dash features a neater layout with a high-set infotainment screen, a black-piano inserted climate console panel. The silver contour makes the layout more distinctive and easy-to-operate. The plastics quality is on par with the City’s. 

Space and seating    

Toyota Yaris is the first car in the segment to offer an 8-way adjustable electronic driver seat. However, the City is still the one to score over with a segment-leading seating quality. The City offers a large and comfortable cushion on the front seats, as well as a telescopic steering wheel column allowing the drive to easily find a suitable sitting position.  

The Yaris, on the other hand, offer a rear central headrest and even a seat belt for the third passenger on the rear bench. 

Interior feature

The Yaris and City both features cruise control, touchscreen infotainment system, leather upholstery, rain-sensing wipers and especially, rear AC vents. For the entertaining purpose, the Yaris and City will give you CD player, Aux-in, as well Bluetooth activity. Touchscreen infotainment system is only available from the second to the-top variants in Toyota Yaris, while for the City, it only comes from third variants. 

The Yaris comes with many first-in-the-segment features like roof-mounted air vents

Toyota has prepared the Yaris with the first-in-the-segment features like parking sensors, gesture control as well as tyre pressure monitoring system. The Yaris also makes them outstanding and more appealing by offering features like a chilled glove box, impact sensing door-unlock feature and full disc brake, and roof-mounted rear air vents. 

The City, on the other hands, gets a sunroof and telescope-adjustable steering, which could not be found in the Yaris.

Safety Features

The Yaris plays it big with the safety feature package, it offers seven airbags, ABS with EBD, brake assist, keyless entry, central locking as standard. The City, even though could not offer as many airbags as the Yaris, still comes with a decent safety bid with dual front airbags, ABS with EBD and ISOFIX child seat mount, keyless entry. 

4. Honda City vs Toyota Yaris: Engine and Performance

Honda City edges out the Yaris with the diesel option, which is not available in the Yaris.

Toyota Yaris is powered by a 1.5-litre engine which is able to make 107PS and 140Nm. The engine is fixed but you can choose to pair it with either a six-speed manual or a seven-speed CTV automatic transmission.

Honda City will come with either 1.5-litre petrol or a 1.5 diesel motor. The engine specs are 119PS/145Nm and 100PS/200Nm respectively. The diesel engine goes exclusively with a six-speed gearbox, while the petrol engine could be mated with a seven-speed automatic or a five-speed manual transmission. 

Honda City is more vocal than the Yaris. To compensate, the engine returns a more exciting driving nature. It also displays a more powerful performance as it takes the least time (10.13sec) to do the 0-100kph acceleration in the segment. 

Whereas, the Yaris is at its best when coasting in the middle range. It is quieter than the City. Moreover, it performs decently in stop-and-go traffic of the city. But outside the city traffic, the Yaris feels out of breath sometimes. And unlike the City, it takes longest to run from 0-100kmp. In-gear acceleration also feels sluggish. 

Mileage

Toyota Yaris could give a mileage of 17 to 18kmpl. The City’s petrol mill could return the same fuel consumption figure, but the diesel engine gives a distinguishing performance with the admirable mileage of 25kmpl.

5. Honda City vs Toyota Yaris:  Price

Honda City’s price starts from 8.77 to 13.93 lakhs, and the Yaris will be priced at 8.75 to 14.07 lakh. The two base variants are compatible while the top-spec of the Yaris is slightly pricier.