Toyota Corolla VE
Can thousands of driving-school instructors be wrong?
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Toyota Corolla VE
Base price: $14,928
Options on test car: Touring Package (tilt steering, wheel covers,
185/65-14 tires, CD player, outside temperature gauge, tachometer,
white-face gauges, rear spoiler and side skirts, remote control
mirrors) $1581; Rear speakers $170.
Price as tested: $16,679
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When I went car-shopping with some relatives a couple of years
ago, the Toyota Corolla was high on the list of cars that I thought
they should be looking at; after all, it had a reputation for
reliability and build quality that was second-to-none.
Their kid would have none of it. The Corolla, to his thinking, was
a dowdy, undesirable little sedan with boring styling and a
conservative image. It was a car you learned to drive in, not the car
you actually wanted to drive. But style aside, the Corolla has a lot
to offer to a buyer shopping for an entry-level sedan.
For one thing, it's well-built, with a paint finish and body-panel
gaps that would put some luxury cars to shame. The doors are the only
weak spot here; they thwack, not thunk, when they shut, and the
rubber weatherstripping on my test car seemed poorly applied. The
side-view mirrors are also too small to see anything useful behind
you.
The Corolla's interior, in both design and fit-and-finish, is a
cut above everything else in this class. The dashboard and console
are logically designed, curve softly, and are beautifully made. The
radio is mounted up high, above ventilation controls operated by
rotary knobs so big that you can work them with gloves on.
There's a big covered storage bin just underneath them, perfectly
situated for holding tapes or CDs, parking stubs, whatever. Kudos to
Toyota for providing proper rear-seat headrests and for windows that
don't turn the interior into a mini-tornado when open. (Smokers will
also love the Corolla; it's one of the few compacts that still comes
with a cigarette lighter, not a power outlet.)
And even on my base VE model, the quality of the materials was far
better than any car in this class. To be sure, you won't be mistaking
the Corolla for a Lexus, but there are pieces in here that wouldn't
seem out-of-place in an LS400.
Driving the Corolla reminds you why so many of them appear in
driving-school livery9Æ@ >ê:=pre simple
an9ôprect, and its handling, while perhaps not entertaining,
is reassuringly safe, with moderate body roll. The steering is quick
and nicely weighted, and the brakes, once you get used to the long
pedal travel, bring the car to a stop without drama.
The engine, a 1.8-litre, 110-horsepower unit that's now standard
on all models, has plenty of low-end torque. It revs smoothly and
willingly up to its 6000-rpm redline, though doing so gets you more
noise than power.
My VE's manual transmission was the only weak link in this chain.
The clutch pedal felt cheap and loosely connected, and the shift
lever did a flop-clunk between gears. A glance at the owner's manual
shows that the Corolla really was designed to be driven with an
automatic&emdash;unlike most booklets, this one puts the instructions
for the automatic first.
Still, the Corolla's build quality and its sort of resolute
obedience to every input grew on me, and I even began to find its
honest simplicity endearing. At a base price of $14,928 for a VE
model&emdash;CE ($16,588) and LE ($18,718) models, with more features
are available&emdash;it's also quite a good value.
But, please, please, don't buy the VE touring package that my
tester was equipped with. Not only were its side skirts and rear wing
almost laughably ugly, but the white face gauges were difficult to
read and backlit in another color from the rest of the dashboard. The
Corolla ain't a sports car&emdash;put the $1581 into an automatic and
pocket the change.
Equipped that way, you'd have a bona-fide driving-school special.
But that's not such a bad thing&emdash;after all, could tens of
thousands of driving professionals be wrong? In the case of the
Corolla, not likely.