![]() (The XSE, with its bigger wheels and stickier rubber, comes in at 30/38/33.) The SE’s numbers trounce the Golf’s EPA figures by 8 mpg in the city and 9 on the highway, and it edges the Civic by a narrower 1 to 2 mpg. The SE hatchback earns EPA estimates of 32 mpg city, 42 highway, and 36 combined. ![]() ![]() One area where the Corolla does not stray from its image is in its abstemious appetite for fuel. And hard acceleration in the Corolla reveals an engine note that’s fairly gritty, although the four-banger is well muffled in gentler cruising.īrad Fick | Car and Driver Still Drinks like a Corolla It also trails the Chevy Cruze hatchback, with its 153-hp turbo 1.4-liter, at 7.7 seconds. But it’s still far afield of the more powerful, turbocharged, automatic-equipped offerings at the head of this class: the Honda Civic Sport (180 horsepower, 6.9 seconds) and the Volkswagen Golf (170 horsepower, 7.7 seconds). In our testing, the 2.0-liter sent the Corolla hatchback scampering to 60 mph in 8.3 seconds, 0.8 second quicker than the previous CVT-equipped Corolla iM and just behind the 8.0-second Hyundai Elantra GT hatch. ( Read more about the new engine and CVT here.) Horsepower stands at 168 versus the previous 137, while its 151 lb-ft of torque is 26 lb-ft greater than before. Displacing 2.0 liters, it’s bigger and more powerful than the 1.8-liter weakling in the Corolla iM. The CVT distills the output of a new four-cylinder engine. How did the Corolla escape that thing? Four with More Shout out, by the way, to that traditional, mechanical shift lever, which is so simple, so intuitive, and so preferable to the funky electronic wands and oddball shift patterns found in so many other Toyotas. Drivers also can use the standard shift paddles or the shifter’s plus/minus gate to exercise more control over the proceedings. That further aids throttle response but also locks out the tallest ratios, keeping the engine spinning at 3000 rpm at 75 mph, whereas switching off Sport mode brings that down to 2400 rpm or so. Even so, its programming is designed to mimic a conventional gearbox, shuffling through 10 preset ratio steps.Įngage the Sport mode via a button near the shifter and the engine spends more time in closer proximity to its torque peak, which in this naturally aspirated inline-four is up at 4800 rpm. ![]() First of all, it’s supplemented by an actual fixed-ratio first gear, beyond which the continuously variable portion of the transmission takes over. More specifically, the transmission is a continuously variable automatic (CVT), but it’s one that goes to extraordinary lengths not to behave like a traditional CVT. Who You Callin’ CVT?Īlthough the Corolla hatchback offers-in both its trim levels-a six-speed manual with rev matching, our test car was equipped the way the vast majority of Corollas will be: with an automatic. The latter is more visually appealing, with sharp-looking 18-inch wheels and slightly different exterior trim our test car was the more basic SE, rolling on 16s and with a hatch-top spoiler that, frankly, is the one aggressive element that looks out of place. Combine those revised proportions with attractively folded sheetmetal, and you have an aggressive-looking compact hatch. The new car is longer and wider than the iM, and it sits astride a slightly longer wheelbase and has wider front and rear tracks. The hatchback model replaces the Corolla iM (née Scion iM) and, like that car, is sold under the Auris name in Europe.
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