I finally did it, guys.
I bought the dream car.
Although between the unexpected expenses,
not to mention the two months
that it spent in the shop with a battery issue,
it's ended up feeling like half a dream
and half a nightmare,
which has gotten me thinking.
Was there a better way?
Yes, there was.
The Taycan may have neck breaking acceleration
and sublime handling
and every single creature comfort known to man,
but there's one thing that it really lacks.
Fun.
He's not wrong, you know?
I mean, don't get me wrong.
On the track, it's a blast,
but who has time to go to the track?
And when I'm at road speeds,
I get about half a second of wee!
And then it's got about as much personality as my minivan.
I'm not even that much of a car guy,
especially when it comes to gas-powered ones.
I mean, what year is it?
But something about this vehicle just calls to me, you know?
Maybe it's just the stick.
Man, have I ever missed that.
Or maybe it's the no-nonsense,
lightweight, three-cylinder engine design.
But the first thing it made me think of
was goofing around as a teenager
in my parents' 94 Suzuki Swift.
I mean, obviously it's gonna fall short
of the 5,500 pounds of German engineering I drive today,
but it was just plain fun.
And that's what the GR Corolla is.
At least, that's what these guys tell me.
They haven't let me drive it yet.
But I'm about to, and I'm so excited
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Important?
Do it.
Man, it's like, it's very light.
Suspension's definitely squishier than a car
that costs four times as much or whatever.
Squishier?
Yeah.
This is pretty stiff.
Oh!
Okay, that was bad.
It actually like flashed yellow and got mad at me.
But you were going off the red line
while slipping the clutch.
That's very not good.
What is good though,
this has a special constant pressure clutch.
So the pressure plate and the clutch are done in such a way
that you always have the same amount of pressure
between the two.
I know if I'm gonna want some power right now.
So if I need to, whoops, okay, that was,
we're going a little fast for second gear,
but my point stands.
Three, two, one.
Go until the thingy blinks.
Oh my God.
There we go.
Okay, that was probably close to 5.5.
I find it's not exceptionally fast.
No, but it doesn't have to be.
Oh, and it sounds so good.
It has character.
And yeah, you know what?
Compared to the car I'd normally drive,
it's not that fast, but it's like,
you can feel it, you know?
Yep.
An automatic car would be like this right now.
Gas pedal all the way down, do nothing.
I know this road well and I don't wanna,
oh man, that's good.
So one other quite fun thing.
Yeah, there's more?
There's many.
Right now it is sending 60% of the power
to the front and 40 to the back.
You can change that with this knob right here.
Turn it to the right.
Now it's 30 to the front, 70 to the back.
Can I have more back?
No, 30, 70.
That's pretty good.
Yeah, and if you press it in the center,
it's 50, 50 and you're in track mode.
It's not that fast, but it doesn't matter.
It's just fun.
I actually take back what I said before
about it feeling squishy at all.
Like it's just, you know?
It just go.
But like, it's not scary.
You just, it feels good.
You can rip it around again, like you said,
without going so fast.
Like it feels exciting at, what were we doing there?
65?
We're not going that fast.
Oh, oh cool.
Yeah, it just like goes.
It just grabs it.
I mean, look how far back the camera car is.
We've gotten ahead of ourselves though.
On the GR Corolla, so much of it just makes sense.
Like it has Pilot Sport four tires on it
just from the factory.
You don't need to throw it the ones that they give you.
It also has Enke rims that are 18 inches.
That is the perfect size for a car like this.
And if we come around here,
the cooling system that's in it
is actually incredibly rudimentary.
Just like radiator, thermistor, pump.
That's it.
And how they get around that
is just by having a big old front mount.
In here, we've got the three cylinder
that everybody absolutely loves.
And if you look, it's pushed all the way back there
to try and get it as far behind the front axle as it can.
What I really like in here though,
is if you look at this intake,
first of all, you can see that it goes through here
into the intake from there.
But if we look under this filter,
you can see that there's a little flap right here
controlled by the vacuum lines
that opens under hard acceleration
so you can get way more air into there.
And dang, does it ever sound good.
Around the side, we've got a nice factory wide body kit.
And around back, we have three exhaust tips.
Now the two on the sides go through all of the muffler,
but the one in center goes through only a tiny bit.
That means that there's a valve that can open
so you get not only more power
when it's going mostly through the middle,
but also more noise.
I confirmed with Toyota that in the GR Corolla,
you're getting zero pumped in audio, unlike the GR Yaris.
So you're just only hearing that engine
making all of those beautiful noises.
Something that no EV can say.
But that's not to say
that we don't love electric vehicles here, we really do.
It's just better suited for something like this,
the GV70 electric.
It's super luxurious.
It's super quiet.
And also it can do this.
Oh, you get all of that electric
just slamming you into the back of the seat,
but in something where the weight doesn't matter as much
cause you're much more concerned
about just it being a really nice spot to be.
And coming back to the GR Corolla,
that nice spot to be factor
is an area where arguably the GR Corolla falls behind.
We've got the stock sound system.
And although the imaging is decent enough,
at least in the driver's seat,
the frequency response is simply put not good.
And the EQ bands are poorly set with no way to fix them.
We have tried the optional JBL system in the Prius Prime
and it is better even all right,
but it's still far from excellent.
Meaning Toyota's track record here is not that great.
As for the infotainment,
we get Toyota's connected services,
which has a bunch of cool stuff
that you will likely never use
once you see the cost per month,
meaning that the eight inch infotainment screen
is purely a vessel for wireless Android Auto
or Apple CarPlay.
Not that that's a bad thing at all.
I actually much prefer this approach
where those that want to completely ignore
everything that Toyota has done software wise
have that option.
Tesla, Chevy, and for that matter,
anyone else who's trying to get around
allowing me to use my phone
and the services that I already pay for, stop it.
Possibly the worst part of the infotainment system though
is that it entirely lacks the ability
to adjust critical vehicle functions
with those instead buried
in a difficult to navigate maze of acronyms.
Also, you gotta factor in in all of this
that the GR Corolla is far from cheap
and for the price you can get dual climate,
ventilated seats, adaptive damper
so you can choose how stiff the ride is,
adjustable lumbar support, a sunroof,
a backup camera that isn't blurry
and perhaps most egregiously, a flipping armrest.
Like I realize having an armrest
might be a bit of a problem for, you know,
ripping on the e-brake,
but it would be really nice to have
for any trip longer than like 10 minutes.
If you're compromising everyday drivability
for track performance then,
it better be fricking good on the track.
And I can tell you, it most certainly is.
We are on an oval,
which is the most logical spot of course
to test out a rally car.
And holy frig, this thing is good.
I was a little bit concerned
cause I heard that in long sweeping corners
it can starve of oil.
I'm seeing no issues whatsoever.
Plenty of oil pressure.
We are all good there.
And it does have a little bit of understeer
but it's really not all that bad.
And the amount of trust that I have in this car is so good.
Like I have never just trusted that I want to go to spot.
I point, I go there.
It is so intuitive.
The throttle response is excellent.
I was really concerned hearing
that there's 25.3 PSI of boost going into a three cylinder
that it would take a long old time to come on
but it isn't only very little lag
but it's incredibly linear.
So you don't have to worry about like an STI
where you're like, nothing's happening, spinning.
Now you might expect with being able to send 70%
of the power to the rear wheels
that you would be able to drift this thing with the power.
But first of all, in order to do that
it would probably need what like 50, 100 more horsepower.
I'm gonna floor it here.
Yeah, the front is pushing.
And even if we had that extra power
I am still very suspicious that in 30, 70 mode
you would still not be able to do proper drifts
because of how this all wheel drive system works.
Let's have a little discussion about that.
I am curious, 50, 50 mode in the track.
That actually feels so much better.
Yeah, you really need the e-brake
if you want to get it to rotate, like just.
Oh, I ran out of skill.
All right, we'll stop doing that.
How this all wheel drive system works is fascinating.
If you put this thing up on a lift
and spin the front tires at 1,000 RPM
the rear tires are going to be spinning at 1,007.
That's because it's geared such that the shaft
that goes to the back of this car
is spinning 0.7% faster than the front wheels.
It would obviously be a huge problem
if your rear wheels always spun
a tiny bit faster than the fronts
but this is overcome by having a clutch pack
that always slips on the rear differential.
And how tightly you clamp that using electromagnetism
determines how much power is sent
to the front and to the rear.
This is why you can't drift
with 30% of the torque sent to the front
and 70 sent to the back.
The second that those rear wheels break loose
you're not going to have the torque available
to send more power to the front
and you're just gonna grip up and go up.
Whereas if you have it in 50-50 on track mode
you'll be able to do big smoky slides.
In theory, I'm not good enough for that.
It's everything I could have asked for it to be
and I am sorely tempted to buy one.
What does that process look like?
Well, for starters, at 47,000 Canadian rubles
for the configuration we tested
it's already quite a bit to ask for a Corolla.
And the issue is that you could end up paying
quite a bit more than that.
In the US it's particularly brutal
with dealerships telling us that they're gonna want
let's say an extra $15,000 dealer markup.
Now in Canada consumer protections are a bit stronger
so the dealer can't just increase the price.
So instead they have to do things the shady way.
Our local dealer told us, yeah, we can get you one
but you're gonna have to pay in cash
and included will be literally every single nonsense
dealer added accessory, prepaid maintenance
and optional insurance, which surprise, surprise
totaled an extra $15,000 in random crap that I don't want.
Even ignoring the fun Corolla that is in low supply
this issue is chronic with Toyota.
Want a RAV4 Prime?
Jam it up your rectum.
I mean, how is it even possible that for a car company
like that's their whole business.
It's so difficult to buy a car from them.
You want a Sienna, RAV4 Prime, Corolla Hybrid.
I mean, basically anything on this list here
you can expect to wait literally years
between giving a dealer a deposit
and actually taking delivery of your vehicle.
Must be nice collecting interest on the $1,000
that everyone on the wait list gave you Toyota
or does it go to the dealers?
With all this in mind then,
oh, the question's for me in the script.
Do you still wanna buy one?
I still want to, but I don't think
I can justify it right now.
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If you guys enjoyed this video
we haven't done a ton of cars on LTT lately.
So I'm gonna throw you over to Short Circuit
where we've got a really great video on the Prius Prime.
It's not really that comparable to this
but it's probably a more sensible car.
Alex really liked it.