So an impatient driver put my ID.4 in the body shop ~2 weeks ago, fortunately no one hurt just a Lexus ES350 that pit maneuvered itself against my drivers front. We both have same insurance carrier (Progressive) and they deemed other driver 100% at fault so it has been shockingly smooth, I will say I didn't realize Progressive shut down their one stop shop service centers so I was not looking forward to having to deal with the body shop and Enterprise but honestly it went quite smoothly (knock on wood). Anyhow - onto the rental car.
2021 Toyota Corolla LE - good old neighborhood Enterprise edition. 46k miles on the clock, smells like they sprayed a gallon of perfume in it which made everything sticky and the perfume burned the heck out of my eyes on the drive home, stains all over the seats and headliner(?), one mismatched tire that is far more worn than the other 3 Ironman tires, rough idle, etc. This car has seen it all and has been ridden hard and put away wet. This Enterprise location is probably an hour round trip for me so I decided I would wipe it down with some Clorox wipes and deal with it instead of trying to trade it for another car.
Powertrain - 1.8L of fury hooked up to a CVT with a "takeoff" gear. I don't know if some of those 139 HP left the stable or the takeoff gear is not working properly but this thing is incredibly slow. I would clock the 0-60 around 10 seconds. I learned the first day to be very cognizant of pulling out into traffic as you will not be getting out of the way in any sort of quick fashion. Honestly after driving many CVT equipped vehicles I don't think they are cut out for smaller displacement engines. Altima 2.5 just fine, Altima/Maxima 3.5 just fine, Sentra and Corolla they can't get off the line in any expedient fashion and I don't recall regular geared automatics in the 1.8-2.0 class being this slow. Toyota has since made the 2.0L standard across the board with Corolla so hopefully that one has a bit more guts to it - funny enough the bigger 2.0 gets better fuel economy than the 1.8 so there is that too. Bonus - the CVT whines like a supercharger on WOT so you sound fast when you are not going fast.
Fuel Economy - Middling in my daily commute. After ~320 miles I am sitting at a whopping 24 MPG. My commute sucks and is horrible for efficiency with ICE vehicles so this is not surprising, outside of EV's I have never been anywhere close to city EPA #'s in any ICE car I have slugged through my commute. It has hit EPA hwy numbers on a few hwy drives I have done so its not a car problem, its a traffic/commute problem that is causing the 24 MPG.
Interior/Comfort/Ride - Comfort, ride and handling are quite good, this is a very competent daily. I will say it has quite a bit more personality than the mid-sizers I have rented (Camry, Sonata, Altima, Malibu, etc.). Road noise is atrocious though - hitting worn out asphalt on the freeway will have you and your passenger yelling at each other to communicate, this car has far more road noise than anything I have rented in the past 5 years.
Technology - Like in my Camry review the Toyota systems are just not that great. Lane centering is all over the place and even drives the car into lane departure warning territory where you get the beep beep beep. How am I letting you drive yourself but you drive yourself into a lane departure warning. The Toyota beep beep beep is haunting me in my dreams now after 4 days in Camry and now 2 weeks in a Corolla - I'm not alone here as my other half said "oh I know that beep" because he had a rental Camry a few months back for a trip to South Carolina. Radar distance always defaults to max distance no matter what it was set on the last drive. Trip computer is a piece of junk, Corolla and Camry are the only cars I have driven in recent years where you have to pick one fuel economy metric (tank, trip or total) and you cannot have multiple trip computers going on. Apple Carplay on my rental is crap and disconnects constantly - I have tried multiple different cords and it just blanks out a couple times every drive.
Misc stuff - The spare tire tool kit styrofoam carrier is not mounted or held down by anything it just sits loose in the spare tire. Every speed bump you hear it bang down, I checked to make sure spare tire was secure and it was and I didn't see any way to keep the tool kit carrier from banging around. HVAC - Toyota logic is to have it constantly recirculate the air and it resets to recirculate every single startup.
Overall - It's not terrible but not great either. More fun and engaging than the mid-sizers but with the penalty of not being as refined and far slower. If you ever pull up to a Corolla at a stop light and need to pass before the lane closes you can probably easily smoke them without even trying unless you are in a Versa, Sentra or Mirage.
Not my video but this is about how Corolla does 0-60.
Corolla 0-60
2021 Toyota Corolla LE - good old neighborhood Enterprise edition. 46k miles on the clock, smells like they sprayed a gallon of perfume in it which made everything sticky and the perfume burned the heck out of my eyes on the drive home, stains all over the seats and headliner(?), one mismatched tire that is far more worn than the other 3 Ironman tires, rough idle, etc. This car has seen it all and has been ridden hard and put away wet. This Enterprise location is probably an hour round trip for me so I decided I would wipe it down with some Clorox wipes and deal with it instead of trying to trade it for another car.
Powertrain - 1.8L of fury hooked up to a CVT with a "takeoff" gear. I don't know if some of those 139 HP left the stable or the takeoff gear is not working properly but this thing is incredibly slow. I would clock the 0-60 around 10 seconds. I learned the first day to be very cognizant of pulling out into traffic as you will not be getting out of the way in any sort of quick fashion. Honestly after driving many CVT equipped vehicles I don't think they are cut out for smaller displacement engines. Altima 2.5 just fine, Altima/Maxima 3.5 just fine, Sentra and Corolla they can't get off the line in any expedient fashion and I don't recall regular geared automatics in the 1.8-2.0 class being this slow. Toyota has since made the 2.0L standard across the board with Corolla so hopefully that one has a bit more guts to it - funny enough the bigger 2.0 gets better fuel economy than the 1.8 so there is that too. Bonus - the CVT whines like a supercharger on WOT so you sound fast when you are not going fast.
Fuel Economy - Middling in my daily commute. After ~320 miles I am sitting at a whopping 24 MPG. My commute sucks and is horrible for efficiency with ICE vehicles so this is not surprising, outside of EV's I have never been anywhere close to city EPA #'s in any ICE car I have slugged through my commute. It has hit EPA hwy numbers on a few hwy drives I have done so its not a car problem, its a traffic/commute problem that is causing the 24 MPG.
Interior/Comfort/Ride - Comfort, ride and handling are quite good, this is a very competent daily. I will say it has quite a bit more personality than the mid-sizers I have rented (Camry, Sonata, Altima, Malibu, etc.). Road noise is atrocious though - hitting worn out asphalt on the freeway will have you and your passenger yelling at each other to communicate, this car has far more road noise than anything I have rented in the past 5 years.
Technology - Like in my Camry review the Toyota systems are just not that great. Lane centering is all over the place and even drives the car into lane departure warning territory where you get the beep beep beep. How am I letting you drive yourself but you drive yourself into a lane departure warning. The Toyota beep beep beep is haunting me in my dreams now after 4 days in Camry and now 2 weeks in a Corolla - I'm not alone here as my other half said "oh I know that beep" because he had a rental Camry a few months back for a trip to South Carolina. Radar distance always defaults to max distance no matter what it was set on the last drive. Trip computer is a piece of junk, Corolla and Camry are the only cars I have driven in recent years where you have to pick one fuel economy metric (tank, trip or total) and you cannot have multiple trip computers going on. Apple Carplay on my rental is crap and disconnects constantly - I have tried multiple different cords and it just blanks out a couple times every drive.
Misc stuff - The spare tire tool kit styrofoam carrier is not mounted or held down by anything it just sits loose in the spare tire. Every speed bump you hear it bang down, I checked to make sure spare tire was secure and it was and I didn't see any way to keep the tool kit carrier from banging around. HVAC - Toyota logic is to have it constantly recirculate the air and it resets to recirculate every single startup.
Overall - It's not terrible but not great either. More fun and engaging than the mid-sizers but with the penalty of not being as refined and far slower. If you ever pull up to a Corolla at a stop light and need to pass before the lane closes you can probably easily smoke them without even trying unless you are in a Versa, Sentra or Mirage.
Not my video but this is about how Corolla does 0-60.
Corolla 0-60
