Interesting stuff. I, for one, would be happy to learn of your further thoughts on the Corolla. We know the market has evolved when a rental Corolla attracts this kind of commentary from someone with unquestionable car guy credentials.
I'll update my thoughts further for you. In no particular order..maybe even rambling a bit.
My fuel mileage over 4 days has now creeped up to 5.2L/100km in a mix of 80/20 hwy/city. A/C has been running constantly. Max speed is usually 90km/h on my commute. On winter tires. So very impressive. It has an "eco" economy bar thing similar to a hybrid so you can drive it a bit more economically. The more throttle you apply, the further it starts to go out of the economy graph. I have been keeping it within those bars. There's also a glowing green ECO light in the tach area to let you know you're driving conservatively. Despite keeping the car in the "eco" area, to date I haven't held up traffic. The CVT is smooth as silk. And works. The RPMs are shockingly low at various speeds. At 60km/h, it's barely over 1000RPM and the instant L/100km shows the car in the high 3s. If the long term reliability of the CVT holds up, Toyota has a winning tranny here. The black surround near the radio isn't black...it has flecks of metallic in it that show up in the sunlight. Not sure it needed those..but a small detail I noticed. The steering has pretty good feel. Not sportscar good...but definitely on the higher end of what's expected of an econobox.
The headlights are very bright (HID) and the cut-off line is among the crispest I have seen. Which makes the high beams seem weak and bordering on useless. The HID seems to wash it out. I'd put in some Silvestar Ultras and see if that improved things if this was my car. The speedo/tach/gauges glow a nice (soothing?) blue color at night. The steering wheel feels really nice in hand...the proportions are quite good.
I continue to be impressed with the ease of use and accuracy of the infotainment system. My phone has not failed to link a single time. Within 5 seconds of starting the car, the phone is linked. It reads text messages correctly and even turns short forms into regular spoken works. For example, in one of my texts, the sender said "NP" at the start of his sentence and the infotainment system correctly read out "No problem". I wasn't expecting that. My streaming music sounds wonderful. You can flip through songs/stations easily with the steering wheel controls. As I said earlier, I'm impressed with the sound quality no doubt improved by the extremely quiet, solidness of the cabin. The reverse camera works as expected and a red horizontal bar shows where the bumper is. Just back up until the red bar is near a wall..and you are cozied right up to where you need to be.
The handling surprises too because generally Corollas were awful. This car is stable and you can easily zoom through corners much faster than you'd expect. This car has shattered any preconception of Corolla handling. While I won't say it's lively or fun (in a sportcar way)...it's very good...and fun for econoboxes...it definitely falls to the side of competent rather than adequate or acceptable. There's a few corners I'm familiar with in my 911 and for fun I went through them in the Corolla faster than I expected. No fuss.
The other thing, and I think this is a good thing, is you don't really need to think about much. Just get in an drive. This Corolla does everything I need it to do for my commute. I can see why people love these things. It's just so easy. Everything is easy about it. Easy to drive, easy on the eyes (gauges), easy on the ears, easy at the fuel pump and easy on the wallet in general.
This is about as good as basic transportation gets...unless one wants higher performance in both engine and handling. But for most people and most families...this Corolla is tough to beat.
Reverse Camera backing up to a wall:
ECO indicator:
Dash at night:
