SA Roadtests
South Africa
ctjag8
This is the home of automobile road tests in South Africa. I drive South African cars, SUVs and LCVs under real-world South African conditions. Many of the vehicles driven are world cars as well, so what you read here possibly applies to the models you get where you live.
My most recent drive is on the home page. Archived reviews and opinion pieces are in the active menu down the left side. Hover your cursor over a heading or manufacturer's name and follow the drop-down.
Editor's note: SA Roadtests accepts multi-day vehicle loans from manufacturers in order to provide editorial reviews. All vehicle reviews are conducted on our turf and on our terms.
For out-of-province vehicle launch features however, travel costs are covered by the manufacturer concerned. This is common in the motor industry, as it's more economical to ship journalists to cars than to ship cars to journalists.
Judgments and opinions expressed on this site are our own. We do not accept paid editorial content or ads of any kind.
Pics by Motorpress
Posted: July 22, 2019
The numbers
Price: R343 200
Engine: 1197 cc, DOHC, 16-valve, Otto- and Atkinson cycle four-cylinder with turbocharger
Power: 85 kW between 5200 and 5600 rpm
Torque: 185 Nm between 1500 and 4000 rpm
Zero to 100 km/h: 9.5 seconds
Top speed: 200 km/h
Real life fuel consumption: About 7.0 l/100 km
Tank: 50 litres
Luggage, seatbacks up: 503 litres
Ground clearance: 140 mm
Turning circle: 10.2 metres
Standard tyre size: 205/55R16
Spare: Full
Towing capacity, braked/unbraked: 1300 kg/450 kg
Warranty: 3 years / 100 000 km
Services: 6 services within 90 000 km, at annual or 15 000 km intervals
There’s a hot and dirty little secret I suggest you withhold from your boss, your partner or anyone else who wields the power of veto, or stamp of approval, over your choice of office car or grocery-getter.
Play along. Let them believe you’re prepared to accept, rather than really want, a new Corolla. You might suggest that you get a hatchback this time; Toyota resurrected the Auris and renamed it Corolla Hatch. Show them you aren’t completely ignorant. Say it’s so you can more easily load extra stuff when the back seat isn’t being used. But whatever you do, don’t reveal the truth.
And that is, that this is no longer your common rep’s car or Mom’s shopping cart. By liberally applying Science, they re-jigged Corolla into a Midlife Crisis Machine. You can have it without spending a shipload of money or arousing unwanted suspicion. You could call it Victoria’s Secret Hooligan Car if your first name fits. Or possibly not.
Toyota did it by fitting a hot-blooded, 1200 cc turbo-motor; making its body longer, wider, lower and sexier; dropping its centre of gravity by 10 mm; stiffening the shell so it flexes less; installing sophisticated, Lexus-style dual-wishbone suspension at the back and tweaking the front McPherson struts like nobody’s business. The disc brakes at both ends are still there, as are its seven airbags and V-rated, medium-profile, Bridgestone Ecopia tyres. The headlamps are now auto-on LED units with automatic dipping and follow-me.
Then, when nobody was looking, Corolla’s logistics squad sneaked into the Lexus warehouse and made off with auto-engage-and-release for the electric parking brake, one-touch up and down for all windows, keyless entry and start, dual zone climate control and the ten-step CVT for automatic gearbox variants. Unconfirmed reports reckon one of them got into the design studio and photographed Lexus’ blueprints for its new, supremely comfortable and supportive, seat designs. We believe she did.
You have three choices: Xs trim with either six-speed manual or the CVT mentioned above and slightly fancier Xr specification that offers CVT only. Prices range from R343 200 to R373 800. We got to drive the “basic” six-speed manual that offers all the above plus alloy wheels, cruise control, powered and warmed outside mirrors, touchscreen control unit with CarPlay and Android Auto, reversing camera, hill hold, speed-sensitive door locks, fog lamps and, as always, ABS brakes with EBD and VSC.
Xr level adds blind spot monitoring, heated front sports seats in Alcantara and leather, powered lumbar adjuster for the driver and retractable mirrors.
The 85 kW, 185 Nm turbocharged engine comes from C-HR and together with the manual shifter, makes joyous music if you let it. Or you could drive like it’s just an Old Corolla and let its wide torque band shuffle you inconspicuously, between home and bored-room, exactly as it did. But where’s any Midlife Crisis alleviation in that?
Get yourself out onto a winding back road, dial in lots of revs, work those gears, do the three-pedal cha-cha-cha and be a kid again. Double your fun by double declutching on the downshifts, or let iMT do it for you if you never learned how. Stomp on the gas to slingshot the little projectile between bends, let its new-found handling agility power you through them and learn, once more, that you don’t really need a Supra to have fun in a Toyota.
Getting back to reality: Corolla Hatch has a cavernous boot that can be extended by dropping seatbacks in the usual way to accept loads up to 1.5 metres long; the fully sized alloy spare is stored upside down so you can stash small stuff under the baseboard; the loading platform is roughly 70 cm high, about average, and it’s equipped with a light and lashing rings for convenience. Ambidextrous pull-down handles mean that lefties can feel comfortable while closing it.
Tall back seat passengers may find themselves a bit short of leg room but there’s headspace a-plenty. There’s an armrest with the expected pair of cup holders back there but no door bins; just two more cup holders.
Up front you will find an armrest box with a USB recharging point inside. Your storage USB plugs into a port hidden in a dark spot on the lower curve of the lower dash, so don’t try to use the wrong one. A small cubby, narrow bins, odd little storage spaces, a huge tablet-style screen, two lit visor mirrors and well-spaced foot pedals, that allow size-14 trainers past the clutch to rest on a proper pad, complete the picture.
Except for that six-speed manual shifter. It’s as slick as a snake oil salesman and a must-have all on its own.
Test unit from Toyota SA press fleet
We drove a Corolla sedan in 2020
Automatic version shown
This is a one-man show, which means that every car reviewed is given my personal evaluation and receives my own seat of the pants judgement - no second hand input here.
Every test car goes through real world driving; on city streets littered with potholes, speed bumps and rumble strips, on freeways and if its profile demands, dirt roads or goat tracks as well. As a result, my test cars do occasionally get dirty. It's all part of the reviewing process.
I do my best to include relevant information like real life fuel economy or a close mathematical calculation, boot size or luggage space, whether the space is both usable and accessible, whether life-sized people can use the back seat (where that applies), basic specs of the vehicle and performance figures if they are published. In the case of clearly identified launch reports, fuel figures are of necessity the laboratory numbers provided with the release material.
If ever I place an article that doesn't cover most things, it's probably because I have dealt with a very similar vehicle already, so you will be able to find what you want in another report under the same manufacturer's heading in the menu on the left.
Hope you like what you see, because there are no commercial interests at work here. There are no advertisers and no “editorial policy” rules. I add bylines to acknowledge sponsored launch functions and the manufacturers or dealerships that provide the test vehicles. And, as quite a few readers have found, I answer every serious enquiry from my home email address, with my phone numbers attached, so you can see I do actually exist.
Comments or questions?
Want to ask a question, comment or just tell me you completely disagree with what I say? If you want advice or have a genuine concern, I will be happy to hear from you. All I ask is that you write something in the subject line so I know which vehicle you're talking about.
This site is operated by Scarlet Pumpkin Communications in Pietermaritzburg.
Unless otherwise stated, all photographs are courtesy of www.quickpic.co.za
Copyright this business. All rights reserved.
SA Roadtests
South Africa
ctjag8