91 Fest: A gathering of 2nd-gen Toyota Yaris and Vios enthusiasts
Small car, big impression
There’s something special about owning a car that does both project and daily car duties really well. And for a growing community in the Metro, that is what hooked them into choosing the second-generation Toyota Yaris and Vios.
This decade old subcompact hatchback / sedan platform is starting to become another Toyota classic in the Philippines, in the same way that enthusiasts celebrate the small body Corolla that came years before it. If AE92 owners celebrate 9/2 Day, the second-generation Yaris and Vios enthusiasts have taken one earlier day as their own - the 91 Fest.
A small online group chat of owners started the 9/1 Day movement around two years ago. Following an initial meet last yeat at a Super Sprint event, enthusiasts from Grupo Toyota and GEN2 club then came together and the 91 Fest was born.
September 1 might be viewed as the start of the -BER months for most people in the country. But for this community, it’s an annual reminder of why they fell in love with this subcompact platform in the first place, and the cars that are lined up inside Blue Bay Walk are an expression of each owner’s story.
Why 9/1?
It’s simple. The chassis code for the second-generation Yaris is NCP91. For its sedan counterpart, the Vios, it’s the NCP93. The second-generation Vios/Yaris platform stands as the last generation offered with no major regional differentiation, as succeeding generations of the Yaris and Vios had models developed for global and emerging markets.
As succeeding generations of the Vios and Yaris mostly had a single design for the ASEAN market, the NCP91s and NCP93s that lined up the mall wore different faces.
The second-gen Vios was generally known as the Batman, but the Yaris had different names depending on the year model. The 2007-2008 examples are known by owners as the OG face, the 2009-2011 called the “bigote” with its bumper claddings, and the 2012-2014 models were called the local RS2s, as it had the same light and bumper design as the JDM Vitz RS.
With that being the case, this year’s 91 Fest showcased the creativity and passion of enthusiasts with the Yaris and Vios platform, as examples were in various states of build— from bone-stock daily drivers, the full JDM Vitz RS1 / RS2 with its all-black interior, the JDM Belta sedan setup, slammed stance builds, and even bold-liveried examples with track-prepped setups – each hiding its own clever DIY mods that Yaris and Vios fans would definitely appreciate.
Some even chose the forced induction way into unlocking more performance out of the trusty 1.5-liter 1NZ-FE – either by way of a supercharger, or a JDM engine swap to the turbocharged 1NZ-FTE TRD Turbo M. Likewise, other 1NZ powered cars joined the 91 Fest, such as a few examples of the first-gen Vitz/Echo, and the third-generation Vios.
Let’s be real: the Yaris NCP91, and the Vios NCP93 weren’t really built to be the fastest cars on the track, or let alone dominate the drag strips in the quarter mile. But that’s exactly why people love it—it’s approachable, mod-friendly, and reliable to a fault.
Pop the hood of one of the cars in the meet, and most of the time you’ll find the trusty 1.5-liter 1NZ-FE engine lurking underneath - a motor that can take hundreds of thousands of kilometers of abuse without complaint. Add in a short wheelbase, a light but stiff chassis, and you’ve got a car that feels alive in the corners - without ever having the complexity of modern driver assist features.
As cars get more and more complex with added tech and features, this group of enthusiasts are here to appreciate the mechanical simplicity of the Vios and Yaris platform – complete with its mix-and-match items that make it such a fun platform to build on and drive.
If there's any takeaway from this growing movement, it’s a proof that sometimes, the smallest cars can leave the biggest impressions.
