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Daily Driver: 2015 Toyota Yaris SE

Daily Driver videos are micro-reviews of vehicles in the Autoblog press fleet, featuring impressions from the staffers that drive them every day. Today's Daily Driver features the 2015 Toyota Yaris SE Hatchback, reviewed by Sebastian Blanco. You can watch the video above or read a transcript below. Watch more Autoblog videos at /videos. VIDEO TRANSCRIPT: [00:00:00] Hello, everyone. Sebastian Blanco here from Autoblog and AutoblogGreen, with the Daily Driver, this time in the 2015 Toyota Yaris SE Hatchback. It's in a fine blue color called Blue Streak Metallic. This car comes in at just under $17,000, but with all the options and we'll talk about that in a minute, it comes to $18,700. It's rated at 30 miles per gallon in the city, [00:00:30] 37 on the highway, and 33 combined. I've driven it a little over 350 miles this week and the dashboard is reading at 36.8 miles per gallon average, so it definitely gets props for hitting the EPA fuel economy numbers. It has warmed up a little, so we're not operating in the cool Michigan winter that some of my previous cars were, so I gave them a little slack for being under the average. This one right on the money her in the spring time. I do like the [00:01:00] roominess of it. I think it feels great for such a small car. Visibility, you can see everywhere you look. All cars should have this but so few of them do. I like that it's a manual transmission. It's been way too long since I've driven a manual. I do like even this little pocket thing up front here. I haven't put anything in it. I just like that it's there. I don't know, maybe you can put your phone in there or something, but it's cool. The worst part about this though is the infotainment screen here. It is unresponsive. It looks like it's something from Windows 95. [00:01:30] It just acts so weird when it connects to my phone. It connects either via Bluetooth or USB. It's for me, maybe I just haven't had enough time with it, but it's very hit and miss as far as getting my music or my podcast to stream over the vehicle's audio system. The nav system is a $900 upgrade, and given how bad it looks and how bright it is at nighttime, I think an after-market system or even just a mount for your phone is a much, much better deal. Like [00:02:00] I said, this is the base model. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. I'm a big fan of utility, practical, don't get anything extra.

Drive like a prince: Join us for a walk through Monaco's car collection

Small, crowded, and a royal pain in the trunk lid to drive into during rush hour, Monaco sounds like an improbable location for a huge car museum. And yet, this tiny city-state has been closely linked to car culture for over a century. It hosts two major racing events every year, many of its residents would qualify for a frequent shopper card if Rolls-Royce issued one, and Prince Rainier III began assembling a collection of cars in the late 1950s. He opened his collection to the public in 1993 and the museum quickly turned into a popular tourist attraction. The collection continued to grow after his death in April 2005; it moved to a new facility located right on Hercules Port in July 2022. Monaco being Monaco, you'd expect to walk into a room full of the latest, shiniest, and most powerful supercars ever to shred a tire. That's not the case: while there is no shortage of high-horsepower machines, the first cars you see after paying ˆ10 (approximately $11) to get in are pre-war models. In that era, the template for the car as we know it in 2023 hadn't been created, so an eclectic assortment of expensive and dauntingly experimental machines roamed whatever roads were available to them. One is the Leyat Helica, which was built in France in 1921 with a 1.2-liter air-cooled flat-twin sourced from the world of aviation. Fittingly, the two-cylinder spun a massive, plane-like propeller. Government vehicles get a special spot in the museum. They range from a Cadillac Series 6700 with an amusing blend of period-correct French-market yellow headlights and massive fins to a 2011 Lexus LS 600h with a custom-made transparent roof panel that was built by Belgian coachbuilder Carat Duchatelet for Prince Albert II's wedding. Here's where it all gets a little weird: you've got a 1952 Austin FX3, a Ghia-bodied 1959 Fiat 500 Jolly, a 1960 BMW Isetta, and a 1971 Lotus Seven. That has to be someone's idea of a perfect four-car garage.  One of the most significant cars in the collection lurks in the far corner of the main hall, which is located a level below the entrance. At first glance, it's a kitted-out Renault 4CV with auxiliary lights, a racing number on the front end, and a period-correct registration number issued in the Bouches-du-Rhone department of France. It doesn't look all that different than the later, unmodified 4CV parked right next to it. Here's what's special about it: this is one of the small handful of Type 1063 models built by Renault for competition.

Toyota recounts past Supra glories

It could just be a slow start to the news week around the Toyota offices, but its UK blog has posted a brief history on its legendary Supra sports car. Read into however you'd like, but there has been plenty of speculation as to the return of the Supra nameplate in recent years (including last month from incoming Toyota chairman Takeshi Uchiyamada).
Built from April 1978 through July 2002, Toyota's sports coupe made quite a name for itself as both the Celica Supra (shown above) and the Supra, and the blog post charts many of the changes and highlights through the years. Head on over to the Toyota UK blog to read more about this Supra's history, and then be sure to check out the gallery of images from Toyota spanning all four generations.