Rental Corolla
 

I had a Corolla for a day in Orlando. The last time I drove one was in the late 90's. It was my sister's early 90's Corolla.

Overall, not pleased. Car looks ok, interior was low-rent but not bad except for the tacked-on display.

I came away surprised by how much the car reminded me of that early 90's model. Same buzzy engine under acceleration, but quiet when cruising. I hated the transmission. Perhaps it's the desire to constantly go 3 gears higher than you really ought to be, but I hated it. It seemed to love to do what felt like 1-to-4 shifts. Jumpy off the line and then slow as molasses unless you punch it, in which case you get jerked, car shifts down a few gears, engine makes lots of noise and car starts moving adequately. Let go of the gas and it goes back to 6th gear or whatever.

I actually felt it handled pretty well. Brake feel/response was weirdly non-linear.

Overall, very meh. I know it's a cheap car and can live with low quality materials and even the noisy engine and weird brakes (maybe), but the transmission disappointed. I'm sure it would be a much better car in with a stick.

Modern automatic transmission programming is terrible, in general.

But yeah, I mean, Corollas have always been awful.

A lot of this likely has to do with tradeoffs for either fuel economy or emissions purposes. Corolla owners are probably uninterested in having their transmission reflashed for better responsiveness. :rolleyes:

Interesting - I had very similar thoughts when I rented a Camry a while back. I was surprised that I didn't hate it more - but not surprised that it was one of the worse cars I had ever driven (modern cars anyway - no point comparing it to our 1930 Model A - LOL)

Still - as much as I did not like it, I could see how they sold tons of them. While I didn't like the car - it was like driving the automotive equivalent of an electric toaster. It wasn't there to be exciting - just get you from point to point in reasonable comfort. And it did that ok.

The other thing was that it handled the snow really well (I had it in Detroit in January). For that - I have to give it credit.

Other than that - I am happy driving older cars that actually make me smile. Even if I have to put up with some problems in doing so.

The toaster comment made me laugh.

And then, I also wondered what's happening with your rebuild?

This is so very true. People talk about how great the 8sp auto is that all the automakers are using these days, but its programming - especially off the line is horrible. The old 5sp auto in my e46 is light years more pleasant. It has a pretty linear approach to start - go and slow down.

The 8sp seems completely random in its decision making. I assume its due to fuel economy goals, but it either starts off so soft that you are afraid to pull out into traffic, or locks up so hard you jerk everyone/everything in our car. There is no such thing as smooth acceleration from 0 to 5 mph.

It sucks.

My 2 is fine, but you have to be in Sport.

It might be better than what I have in my '13 X5, but in sport there is no throttle feathering, much more off/on. I expect the fact that the car is heavy as sh*t and being powered by the n55 doesn't help.

It's not perfect in Audis, but it's WAY better. BMW keeps screwing it up.

They seem to have finally figured out, at least the one in our X7. Both of our prior X5 50is had the random decision making and jerkiness.