Last month, English soccer referee Andy Wain made headline news when he sent himself off during a match between Peterborough North End and a Royal Mail side, bringing the match to a premature end. He later explained that he’d become involved in an eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation with one of the players, which he subsequently decided was unprofessional behaviour. ”If a player did that I’d send him off, so I had to go,” he said. Toyota South Africa did much the same thing by quietly suspending their hot-hatch RSi from the RunX lineup when they gave the model a face-lift late last year.
The problem wasn’t that the RSi failed to deliver, but that its awesome 141 kW from a naturally aspirated 1,8 litre engine arrived so far up the rev range that the car was only fun to drive flat out, with the rev-counter needle hanging around in the 7000 — 8000 rpm area.
I don’t know if Wain has returned to the football field, but the RunX RSi is back with a vengeance. The Yamaha-built four cylinder twin-cam engine has been significantly retuned to improve engine response and flexibility, particularly in the mid range, without reducing its phenomenal top-end power. The induction system, engine ECU, air cleaner and exhaust system have all been breathed upon and the RunX RSi now delivers 80% of its available torque from as low as 1600 rpm, and 90% between 3600 and 6000 rpm, with the peak of 180 Nm arriving at 6800. Even at 7900 rpm, there’s still almost 170 Nm on tap.
When I drove the previous RunX RSi I found it to be very impressive when driven hard, but quite inappropriate for everyday use because it was just so peaky. My feelings were shared by many other testers, and Toyota got the message. Their technicians started working on the retuned version.
After a spell with the new car I can now endorse the RSi whole-heartedly. It ‘s still a rocketship when you choose to slip into boy-racer mode, but it’s also much more user-friendly to drive under everyday conditions. At R202 475, this combination of two usable cars in a single package suddenly looks enormously more appealing.