If you are looking for a cheap but still practical and comfortable small SUV then you should look at the Toyota Yaris Cross Hybrid. I got to go to Lisbon in Portugal and test drive the Toyota Yaris Cross Hybrid. 

To make the test drive something extra, Toyota had invited five local artists to decorate the cars available for us to test drive. I chose one that a Portuguese girl named Inês Santos designed. Inês is 26 years old and lives in Lisbon. Inês is a graduate of ESAD.Cr, Portugal's top college of art and design. She has been active for 5 years. Inês has worked at advertising agencies and the award-winning studio Barbara Says and is. She mainly works with digital art. Her inspiration for the Yaris Cross Hybrid is inspired by Lisbon's famous azulejo ceramic tiles, adapting the classic scroll work that can still be found on the facades of older buildings and using light blue and white hues.

What Inês did with the car reminded me of the art form Kurbits from Dalarna and what our dala horses look like. Inês herself didn't know Kurbits or what a Dala horse looks like but could understand how I saw the similarities when I showed her a picture of a Dala horse. Compared to the other cars that were available, I thought Inês worked more with the car's shapes than the other artists. Unfortunately, Inê's design will not be available as an optional extra for those who buy a Yaris Cross Hybrid. Sin!

I set off from Toyota's workstation in the LX Factory area, which is located just on the outskirts to the east of Lisbon. An area that was originally a place of industry with historic Portuguese companies. Nowadays, this is an area full of fun and cheeky restaurants, bars, galleries and clubs to visit in the evenings and on weekends. 

The journey out of the LX Factory takes us east of Lisbon. But first on the road and right by the LX Factory, we pass, with a small detour, a place where I have been before and photographed cars at other press events. The location is right under the 25 de Abril Bridge that goes over to Almada. It is a bridge similar to the Golden Gate and on the other side you see a Jesus statue up on the mountain like the one in Rio de Janeiro. This is a perfect place to calmly take the photos of the car for the article with the bridge in the background. 

After the photos are taken, the journey continues out of Lisbon and along the coast. The route entered in advance by Toyota goes via Cascais which is just before the most western point in Portugal. Here the landscape is incredibly beautiful but dramatic. Two words that may not fit on the Yaris Cross Hybrid. Because calling the car beautiful is not correct. It is certainly not ugly, but beautiful is the wrong word. But with Inês Santos' decor, the car actually becomes beautiful. And it's not that dramatic either. Which is good! A car like this shouldn't be dramatic. It must be safe and comfortable. That is exactly what the Toyota Yaris Cross Hybrid is.

The drivetrain in the Toyota Yaris Cross Hybrid is a so-called hybrid, as the name suggests, with an electric and a gasoline engine. In total, the effect lands at 130 horsepower, so it's not about a rocket. 0 to 100 goes in 11.3 seconds and the top speed is reached when the meter reads 170 km/h. But it does the job and comfortably too. Toyota has worked with so-called CVT boxes for a long time. It is about a continuously variable gearbox. Previously, before combining this technology with an electric motor, the CVT box felt quite dry and inharmonious. But in combination with an electric motor, the journey becomes much smoother and more harmonious. In the Toyota Yaris Cross Hybrid, it is no exception. A car this size actually does quite well with a CVT box plus a hybrid powertrain. The main advantage of the CVT box is that it contributes to low fuel consumption (light and compact unit).

The journey along the coast offers very varied driving with both city driving, country roads and at the end also the motorway. I must say that the Yaris Cross Hybrid is very pleasant to drive. It is soft and compliant without becoming boring as other cars in this class easily become. What is annoying, however, is the pinging of warning signals when you either drive too fast, change lanes without blinking or when the prevailing speed changes and the car sees a sign with information about this. This is apparently a new EU law that has been introduced and that all new cars must have this system now. Mercedes, for example, have been kind and put a button on the steering wheel to turn this off, but which you have to press every time you start the car. Toyota hasn't done that, but you can find the shutdown function inside a menu that you can't find without giving it some time. My guess is that there will be companies that specialize in turning this kind of thing off for a fee. Because it may be good for some, but for you who are an experienced driver, it is more of a distraction than a help. 

In addition to the large screen in front of the steering wheel where all the necessary information for the driver is shown, the center console in the Yaris Cross Hybrid is also new. Everything you need is on a 9-inch touch screen, and here you can easily connect your smart phone.

The Toyota Yaris Cross Hybrid comes in several designs. Active & Active Plus with 116 hp and front-wheel drive. Style, GR SPORT and Premiere Edition with 130 hp with the option of Toyota's four-wheel drive system AWD-i. The car I test drove was a Premiere Edition, i.e. the most equipped.

The Toyota Yaris Cross Hybrid can probably be an appreciated car for the small family or someone who wants a practical but not so expensive car. Had it been possible to order it with Inês Santos's design, some would surely have chosen it.