2009 Toyota Corolla: Love/Hate

I’m not going to lie — I wasn’t exactly looking forward to my weekend with the 2009 Toyota Corolla. I’ve driven a series of vanilla four-door sedans since May, and it’s gotten a little boring. There was nothing inherently wrong with any of the cars, but “responsible” isn’t usually how you’d describe your summer dream car. Fortunately, I was spared total boredom when I discovered the Corolla I’d be driving was the sportier XRS version.

Loved: Sporty handling
Although the Corolla XRS isn’t going to win any land-speed records or anything, I was pleasantly surprised with its zip. With some of the other economy cars I’ve driven this summer, merging onto the expressways required stomping the gas pedal into the floor and crossing my fingers. The Corolla needed far less coaxing to ease into high-speed traffic. Changing lanes on the crowded Chicago-area interstates can even be a pleasant experience in a car that moves without hesitation, like the XRS did.

Toyota Offering Five-Year Leases to Comply With Cash for Clunkers

Part of the small print in the Cash for Clunkers legislation is that it can only be applied to leases with terms of at least five years. Most lease deals are for much shorter terms — two to three years — because the allure of a lease is that you get out of a car and into a new one quickly.

Toyota is one of the few automakers we’ve heard of that will offer five-year leases, created just for the program. The 60-month leases are available for the Yaris, Corolla, Camry, RAV4 and Tacoma. One sample offer for a Yaris lease lists a headline-grabbing monthly payment of $79 per month for 60 months. The money you’d have to pay up front is $5,229, but if you deduct the $4,500 Cash for Clunkers credit, you’d end up paying $729 up front.

How much would it cost you to buy a Yaris in the same scenario and own it outright at the end of the term? Financed at 2.9% for 60 months, with that same down payment, it would be $125.03 a month, not including tax or destination.

The lease also allows you to drive only 12,000 miles a year. Offers vary by region.

2009|Toyota|Yaris

2009|Toyota|Corolla

2009|Toyota|RAV4

2009|Toyota|Camry

2010 Toyota Corolla, Matrix Get Standard Stability Control

The 2010 Toyota Corolla and Matrix will start arriving at dealerships in late February with some newly added safety features.

The Corolla and Matrix — which share a common platform and powertrains — now come standard with electronic stability control and traction control in all trim levels.

By 2012, the government will requiring all vehicles to feature stability control; apparently, Toyota is getting a head start on completing this task.

Does this affect the price? On the Corolla, no; prices will remain the same, with a starting price of $15,350 (plus a $720 destination charge).

The Matrix will cost $16,550, which is a $260 increase from the 2009 model year. If you don’t recall the specifics of electronic stability control or traction control, you can get caught up on them here.

Related
Toyota Corolla News
Toyota Matrix News

Best Cash-Back Finds: 1.23.09

Chrysler’s new round of incentives go into effect Monday — meaning, don’t buy a Chrysler this weekend — but nearly every other company also has healthy incentives out right now. Ford’s employee pricing sale has been extended until Feb. 2, in case you win betting on the Cardinals in Super Bowl XLIII.

Here are a few deals on Cars.com-recommended cars that are impressive — especially $1,500 cash back on a new 2009 Toyota Corolla. All were found in the Chicago area and end Feb. 2. Remember to double-check deals in your area on our incentives page and via automakers’ websites before heading to a dealership.

Mileage Challenge 3.4: Fuel Economy Value

The fuel economy results of our mileage drive are in, and by now you’ve already read which cars we tested, the mileage they achieved and our impressions of each compact car. It’s using those real-world results that we’ve calculated which of these frugal commuters offers the best fuel economy value, based on each car’s as-tested price compared to the mileage it returned.

The calculation was simple: To pinpoint a value based on fuel economy, we merely divided the MSRP by how many miles per gallon the car returned during our testing. Now, let us mention that you can always get a bare-bones, stripped version of car, improving its fuel economy value, but the following results are a reflection of the specific trim levels we tested, which mostly included niceties that made the drive easier.

Mileage Challenge 3.3: Driving Impressions

This week, we reported the results of our latest mileage challenge, a 300-mile highway trip in four high-mileage commuter cars. Our convoy averaged a respectable 33.8 mpg. The Toyota Corolla and Honda Civic achieved the highest numbers, with the Pontiac G5 and Ford Focus coming in a few ticks worse. Three editors and an editor in chief logged considerable time in each, and we cobbled together some impressions and off-the-cuff rankings for the group.

Read on for our thoughts.

Cars.com Mileage Challenge 3.1

Gas prices are dropping — precious good news in otherwise dismal economic times — but automakers clearly think we’re still in for a long-haul increase. To wit: The MPG war remains afoot, and the higher the gas mileage numbers you can put up, the better. General Motors markets XFE trims, for Extra Fuel Economy, of certain cars and trucks that have been tweaked to get better mileage. Ford has the makings of a similar lineup in its SFE, or Superior Fuel Economy, badging. Even Hyundai and Kia tout drivetrain revisions that yield incremental upticks in several of their ’09 models.

The ratings are sometimes impressive, especially among commuter cars, so for this fall’s mileage challenge we put four of them to the test. GM’s Chevy Cobalt and Pontiac G5 twins now get an estimated 25/37 mpg city/highway in high-efficiency XFE trim, which only comes with a manual transmission. The redesigned Toyota Corolla gets a close 27/35 mpg city/highway rating with an automatic; that’s a slight increase over the prior-gen automatic. A number of other contenders post impressive highway figures, too.

Balk all you want about how your kid brother’s ’87 Tercel got 35 mpg going uphill, but we’ll remind you that today’s commuters can reach 60 mph in less than 10 seconds – with side curtain airbags and habitable backseats to boot.

Toyota Extends 0% Financing, Annoying Ads

October was universally a brutal month for car manufacturers, but some companies were hit harder than others. GM saw its average daily sales rate drop 45%, and Ford saw decreases of 29%. Comparitively, Toyota’s decrease of 24% doesn’t seem so bad. What saved the Japanese automaker?

Toyota’s could-have-been-worse numbers likely had something to do with its financing offer in October, which gave customers 0% financing on 11 models in its lineup. Buoyed by the sales, Toyota is extending the offers for another month, making them available until the end of November.

The downside to this is that your TVs — and brains — will again be invaded by Toyota’s utterly brutal “Saved By Zero” commercials. You know the ones. These are the sacrifices we make for affordable financing, we guess.

The models included are listed below:

Toyota Corolla Best-Selling Car in the Country, Sort Of

Sales numbers for June are rolling in, and the list of the top 10 sellers in the country has once again shifted. Last month the Honda Civic took the top spot away from the Ford F-150, and now the Toyota Corolla has taken the No. 1 mantle. Before Toyota can claim the spot, though, we must tell readers that Toyota includes Matrix sales along with that Corolla number because they’re built on the same platform.

We don’t agree with that form of accounting, but Toyota’s Camry came in second, so even without the added Matrix sales it still would have come out on top. The Civic slid to third.

Overall sales were down for Ford, GM, Chrysler and Toyota — yes, Toyota — as people start pinching pennies. Many other automakers saw upticks — most significantly Honda, but Kia, Hyundai and Subaru also saw numbers go up. Hyundai sold more than 50,000 vehicles in a month for the first time ever last month, with the Accent, Sonata and Elantra seeing big increases.

Below is the new top 10.

Cars.com Faceoff: 2008 Ford Focus, 2008 Honda Civic, 2009 Toyota Corolla

In honor of graduation season, Cars.com took three of the most popular compact sedans on the market and decided which one should get a big bow put on top. Even if you’re a Hoops McCann and no one gets you a car for your hard work, these three are sensible first-car choices for the newly employed, too. But which one takes the cake? See if the Honda Civic can stand up to the redesigned Ford Focus and all-new Toyota Corolla.

Cars.comparison: Graduation Gifts