Clutch failure at 27k miles

[jazzyb88]

So I was driving to work this morning and everything was as normal. Then when I stopped at the traffic lights and went to pull off, the car felt a bit odd (2.5-3k RPM to get it to move) but then it moved off fine so thought nothing of it.

Got to the roundabout, shifted down to third, went to shift up to fourth and bang! Lost all power to the front wheels!! Never experienced anything like that before! The clutch has totally gone.

Worse still, I then had to wait 7 hours for the recovery truck to come!!!

I bought the car used, with 11k on the clock and have always had clutch judder in the cold since I've owned it. I was never sure if this was normal or not as reading on various forums suggested some judder might be normal in the cold as moisture is on the clutch surface? I also tried the stall test a few times and it would always stall, and the biting point seemed ok. There were no tell tale signs other than the judder that there might be anything wrong?

Mine is the 1.0L and most of the clutch issues seem related to the earlier 1.33 models or the MMT boxes. I am not the world's best driver but I know how to drive a manual, so have not been resting my foot on the clutch or leaving the clutch depressed in traffic - in fact I always shift to neutral and try my best not to slip the clutch going up hills by keeping a distance.

Wonder if the previous owner killed it?!

Anyone seen this on a Yaris before? Felt embarrassed seeing it on the back of a recovery truck!