DRIVE
FILM - DO-CALENDAR - LIVE & MOVE - BUY - TRAVEL - CLICK - DRIVE
MAY 8, 2008

2009 Toyota Corolla
By Kim Reynolds

Who should drive this car: With 30 million of these things sold worldwide since 1966, it’s virtually the planet’s primary car. You ought to drive it – just out of curiosity.

How does it drive: Quietly (for its class), smoothly (for its size), and sedately (well, that’s what you get for quiet and smooth).

MPG, city/highway: 27/35 (all 1.8-liter engines); 22/29 (2.4-liter/manual trans); 22/30 (2.4-liter/auto trans)

Cost: base price, $15,250 to $19,950; destination charge, $660

Comparables: Honda Civic, Mazda 3, Nissan Sentra

Can 371,000 Americans be wrong? OK, sure. But every year? Crazy, zany, outrageous, eye rolling and – oh, wait, wrong spelling. This is supposed to be about the Toyota Corolla, not radio personality Adam Carolla. (How does this Spell Check thing work again?)

The Toyota Corolla is exactly the opposite of all those things I just said about Carolla. It’s staid, responsible, meticulously operates between the lines, and for almost 400,000 happy new owners per year (think every person in Minneapolis), it’s a near-perfect auditorium for listening to its radio alter ego while trekking to work or school. Despite the mega sales and popular acclaim, this all-new Corolla – the 10th generation of its nearly 40-year-old lineage – has been heavily sniped at by the automotive press.

Why? The new Corolla is boring. And it might have been even more so, had the radical new Honda Civic not appeared during the Corolla’s gestation and shaken Toyota up a bit. (Toyota denies all this, but there are reasons to be suspicious.) So, are almost a half a million people per year making a $15- to $20,000 mistake?

The answer is no. Toyota’s idea of excitement – a thrill-button it shares with a whole lot of people, apparently – is to offer stoutly built, logically designed and slow-depreciating wheels that ride comfortably and cruise quietly.

If you fancy yourself a Jeff Gordon or Danica Patrick behind the wheel, maybe you’re not Corolla material. But, for the rest of you real-world people for whom those imminent tax-rebate checks are genuine money, listen up.

Compared to the previous edition, the 2009 Corolla hasn’t so much grown as been rearranged by age, adding 2.5 inches in girth but shrinking by 0.8-inches in stature (which is just about how age affects all of us). Still, it’s laudable that its basic volume (and weight) have hardly risen at all – a rare defiance of the automotive commandment that bigger is always better (particularly given that Toyota now has the viable Yaris bumping up against the Corolla from below).

However, the Corolla’s rakish silhouette (possibly Civic influenced) sharply sets it apart visually, and maybe more importantly, it helps raise fuel efficiency and lower aerodynamic hiss. It’s a hushed little car, aided by an array of unusual measures in this category, including an acoustic glass windshield (composed of two layers of glass encasing an acoustic laminate), side glazing that’s snubbed of unruly vibration and even “quiet carpeting.” In a Corolla. Take that, Mercedes-Benz.

Both the power-train line-up and trim nomenclature have gotten much more sophisticated. Previously, all Corollas were powered by a single 126-hp, 1.8-liter engine and came in three simple flavors – CE, S and LE.

The 2009 edition arrives with an all-new, 1.8-liter, four-cylinder, producing 136 hp available in four trims (standard, LE, XLE and S), plus a 158-hp derivative of the Camry’s base engine that propels the sports-oriented XRS model. And while the “big” engine can be had with a five-speed automatic transmission, the 1.8-liter cars make do with a four-speed auto (too bad). All of them can be shirred by five-speed manuals, however.

Price-wise, the bottom-end “standard” Corolla is a steal (at $15,250) – if you’re more about Suze Orman-style household budgeting and getting 35 mpg on the highway than having to hand-crank side windows and being seen on puny 15-inch steel wheels. At the other extreme, a $19,950 automatic-transmission-equipped XRS rolls on relatively meaty 215/45-17 tires, pops to 60 mph in a respectable eight
seconds and still returns a 30-mpg highway number.

Who knows, there may even be a Corolla for Carolla. Any wonder that Toyota has just surpassed GM’s 76-year claim as the world’s best-selling car manufacturer? No. OCM

Kim Reynolds is technical editor of Motor Trend magazine.





Back to top