Toyota Etios Liva Sportivo

While the hot-hatch genre hasn't received the love and attention it deserves, Toyota is planning to jump into the segment with their petrol engined Liva. Expected to draw design inspiration from the Sportivo edition, the Liva hot-hatch would look like a proper JDM (Japanese Domestic Market) product and that can work in its favour, especially since this segment of cars is solely for the enthusiasts out there.

The Etios Liva Sportivo will get the 1.5-litre petrol engine from the Etios sedan, which produces around 90PS of power and 130Nm of torque. As the power and torque figures aren't massive, we don't expect Toyota to detune the engine before placing it in the Liva's engine bay. The 5-speed gearbox too is expected to be carried straight from the elder sibling.


We are told that the car is quite close to its launch and it seems like Toyota will price it somewhere in the (now discontinued) VW Polo 1.6 category. As for the competition, there's a good list of petrol engined cars but we feel that this Toyota still has a good opportunity at hand to win some enthusiasts' hearts and climb the sales charts. A balanced chassis setup with a sweet sounding petrol engine will be a delight to own, we reckon.