What if I told you this car is fun to drive?
Not in the traditional sense, of course. The tune it accelerates to is a duet of buzzy four-cylinder and CVT drone. Throw it at a corner, and you're rewarded with all the body roll it can give you. There's no road feel, or even general feedback through any of the inputs.
No, the fun the Corolla doles out comes from the fact that it's a car you simply cannot care about. To be more exact, it was specifically designed to have that effect on you.
Even I was surprised by the grin driving it made me bear.
If you're wondering how the Corolla fares as a car, well wonder no more: it is, in fact, a car. It accelerates. It stops. It has space inside for people and some of their things. You can see out of it. It's comfortable. It can fit into basically all parking spaces. It even has LED headlights as standard. But none of that is the point here.
The point is that you can, for instance, not see a speedbump, and not only will the car soak the sudden jolt right up, you'll likewise feel nothing in an emotional sense – except the joy of not having to worry.
It doesn't care, and neither will you.
* * * * * * * * *
Sooner or later, you'll be waiting inside the car for your spouse or something, and you'll notice things you never got around to noticing.
The interior materials are fine – not great, not terrible, definitely more than passable. The infotainment is moreso a traditional radio that happens to have some buttons on a touchscreen. The cabin's color palette is painfully drab, making you wish you chose the red one they had on the lot, instead of silver (wait, no, it's white), so that at least the exterior could have a little spice to it if the interior can't.
You know the "Oh, what a feeling" Toyota ads spanning the eighties and nineties? I had always thought it was another mindless marketing campaign with no substance to it. Only now do I realize they were simply being factual: that 'incredible feeling' was the constant freedom from burden that Corollas give you.
If you're used to having a nice car – or just any car you care about, for that matter – you'll know the 'death of a thousand cuts' that keeping it nice can sometimes be: don't slam the door, park far away, don't track dirt into the interior, avoid ruts on the road, don't scratch the paint, etc. Not only is that simply not a thing with the Corolla, it also won't break if you stay at the bare minimum, nor will it cost more than next to nothing.
It's the car that's mindless, not the marketing campaign. The Corolla is consequence- and expectation-free.
You'll never look back at it, even if it's red. And that's kinda the point.
"Oh, what a feeling!
-Uroš M.
2016 Toyota Corolla LE
[four-door compact sedan; front wheel drive, front engine]
[four-door compact sedan; front wheel drive, front engine]
L4 16-valve, DOHC
GASOLINE
[AUTOMATIC]
w/ "sport" & "low" modes
[top speed] 185 km/h
[L / 100 km]
highway
6.2
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