Toyota Corolla 2.0 XSE CVT 2019 review

This largely new car revives an old name but rides on a fresh platform and replaces the Auris, which was engineered specifically for Europe and sold largely here.

Like Corollas past, this one is a world car, although the flexibility of the Toyota New Global Architecture (TNGA) platform philosophy promises a car potentially more suitable for European tastes than the Auris ever was.

Like the Auris, the Corolla will be built at Toyota’s Burnaston plant, and it will be offered with the familiar 1.2-litre petrol engine and a choice of two petrol hybrid powertrains of either 1.8 litres and 118bhp, or 2.0 litres and 176bhp. Both of these come with CVT automatic transmissions, as is Toyota’s hybrid way, whereas the 1.2 has a six-speed manual.

At the core of this new Corolla is a body structure that’s no less than 60% stiffer, underpinned by an all-new suspension that includes a multilink rear axle as standard and the option of electronic dampers. Apart from its extra strength, an additional benefit of the TNGA hardware is its lower centre of gravity. Also much improved from the Auris – and it needed to be – is the Corolla’s interior.

Rather than sitting before an ugly, cliff-like dashboard assembled from an assortment of unyielding plastics, you now view an appealing, sculpted, part-stitched and sheathed facia crowned by a conveniently protuberant infotainment screen and, ahead of the driver, a neat instrument binnacle filled with blue-glowing instruments.

The infotainment system is easy to use, too. The climate control knobs are rubber, as are the bits you grip of the door pulls, the upholstery you’d consider for a domestic sofa and the cabin architecture shows plentiful signs of sculptural flair.

It’s hardly a revolution, but this is a cabin designed with more than the perfunctory box-ticking mindset evident in many Toyotas past. The powertrain in this US-spec Corolla won’t be coming to the UK because this a straightforward petrol 2.0-litre. But it’s only 10bhp shy of the output of the more powerful 1.8 VVTi hybrid that we’ll get here and, set-up details apart, it has the same chassis. True, the all-up weight, and its distribution, will be different, but this car should provide a solid clue to the Corolla’s dynamic character.