Looking at Icon Tech spec cars on Autotrader, seems more than half have diamond cut alloys. These generally don't wear well before starting to look well scruffy, a chip or scuff allows air under the lacquer resulting in a milky white area around it. Better to get a car with painted alloys if at all possible.

Otherwise the only thing is the 12V battery like Doc says.

Thanks for all the input, greatly appreciated. Challenge now is to find one for a sensible price.

All the Toyota dealer used stock seems to be priced massively over book (any book!) and never enjoyed buying privately due to all the 'home traders'. Will get looking.

As for the non-hybrid Yaris, my wife tried it and hated it, much preferring the hybrid/ecvt combo.

I'd imagine the hybrid Yaris would feel more relaxed and perhaps a tad more peppy in town with the electric motor (and its instant torque hit) doing much of the heavy lifting. But at motorway speeds, not sure that would continue to be the case because the electric motor does less the faster you go. Bear in mind the internal combustion engine by itself is only rated at 75bhp, the 100bhp quoted is the combination of both power sources. By contrast, the non hybrid 1.33 and 1.5 make 99 and 111bhp respectively by themselves and I would expect both to feel more at ease if pushing on at main road speeds.

I drove the latest Swift auto as a courtesy car late last year and have to say I thought the box was awful,

Current auto Swift and the previous shape 1.2 use a n/a engine along with a CVT. But the 1.0 Boosterjet I suggested earlier uses a 1.0 turbo (and t/c auto) which would give a much more muscular performance without the high revs needed to get the most out of a small(ish) n/a.

though not as bad as the previous shape Jazz amt we also drove last weekend; genuinely terrifying when trying to get away from junctions!

We had one for three years and I found it absolutely fine in terms of actual performance. Thing is, you need to drive it as it needs to be driven to access what performance is available, bearing in mind peak torque happens at a lofty 5k rpm!. If you push the throttle all the way down it accelerates quick enough.

Reading between the lines, it sounds like you want a bit of oomph, but not have to use the engine too much to get it. So while the Yaris hybrid may fulfil that requirements at urban speeds, it won't at higher speeds (current shape is much better here). Fine if it will be used mainly around town, but if not, I'd repeat the Suzuki Swift Boosterjet suggestion as being able to provide muscle (without high revs) at low and high speed.

You could also consider the Puretch engined cars (Citroen, Peugeot, Vauxhall). And yes I know about its reputation for lunching its seatbelt, but according to forum member John F (who has a Peugeot 2008 with this engine) 2019 on cars are fine. Being turbo, they have plenty of muscle, and they use a t/c auto.