Toyota Corolla SX Sedan 2015 Review

My, how the Corolla has grown.

From a little, late-1960s two-door runabout to a four-door sedan that is now virtually the same size as the ground breaking, early-1990s “wide body” Camry, Toyota’s mainstay volume seller has followed generations of customers more interested in staying with the Corolla nameplate than upgrading to a larger car.

Typically across the industry, succeeding versions of specific models grow with every new generation to address the requirements of loyal customers and, in the case of the Toyota Corolla sedan, this means the latest, eleventh-generation model more than matches the 1993 Camry in many dimensions, including width, height and wheelbase.

It all makes sense to those who have chosen to stay with the Corolla badge over the years. The car has virtually grown with them.

Needless to say, the small Toyota sedan is pretty generous in terms of passenger accommodation. With 100mm more wheelbase and 345mm of extra length over its sister hatchback, the Corolla sedan is a close match for its Mazda 3 rival externally, but does a lot better internally – as well as providing more boot space (470 litres compared to 408).

About the only thing that hasn’t grown is the powerplant: At 1.8 litres and clearly showing its age, the four-cylinder engine has not seen a capacity increase since the early 1990s. Even the efficiency has hardly improved, with the recently re-worked version of the twin-cam 16-valve Toyota engine making just 103kW and 173Nm – only three kilowatts and two Newton metres more than some versions were producing 13 years ago.

This underlines the Corolla’s sedan’s basic aim in life: To provide plenty of comfort, space and reliable operation in a package that has absolutely no pretensions of being fun to live with. It does its job resolutely, but with little flair.

The upshot was that our manual-transmission-equipped SX test car drew few criticisms other than its essential blandness. It was comfortable and spacious for passengers with heaps more rear-seat legroom than most others in the category (apart maybe from Nissan’s Pulsar).

The seats themselves were comfortable enough, albeit lacking in side support and the overall internal ambience, at least at this spec level, even verged on classy. There’s plenty of soft-touch padding, as well as metallic finish on the dash, doors and the leather-trimmed multifunction steering wheel, as well as contrasting stitching on the cloth-trimmed seats.

The Corolla’s main downside is that the structural members between the boot and interior make for a slightly narrow load-through gap.

Standard SX gear includes seven airbags (including a driver’s knee bag), a reversing camera, rear parking sensors, air-conditioning, voice recognition, cruise control, trip computer, backlit Optitron instruments, a 6.1-inch LCD touch screen with Bluetooth, four power windows and six-speaker audio with a single-CD player.

Although the engine felt pretty flat and needed to be worked just keeping pace with other traffic, it turned out to be more economical than expected, actually bettering the official ADR combined figure of 7.0L/100km with a reading of 6.5L/100km after a week’s driving. Granted, there was a bias towards freeway driving during that time, but it was a fine result nonetheless.

The six-speed manual swapped ratios smoothly enough but there was a bit of a disconnect with clutch pedal feel and travel, because more than one driver managed to stall the Corolla.

The steering, which is not particularly fast with 3.2 turns required to go from lock to lock, is well weighted but feels a little “dead” in the driver’s hands and the car feels a tad unhappy and unbalanced on chopped-up bends.

On less challenging surfaces the Corolla sedan’s ride was generally okay and cabin noise was, in the manner of most sedan-bodied cars when compared with hatchbacks, quite low. On the freeway, we found the cruise control functionality better than many, although holding speed on descents or ascents wasn’t especially brilliant.

In all, the Corolla sedan does exactly what most customers want: It is reliable, resistant to wear and tear over a long period of ownership, and is always a good prospect when it comes to trade-in time.

For many new-car buyers, all that makes good sound sense. That’s what the Toyota Corolla sedan is: A sensible car.