By Christopher A. Sawyer
The Virtual Driver

Though the nameplate has been around for 45 years, Toyota worried that its Corolla was becoming stagnant. A perennial best seller, the small sedan was never high in excitement, preferring instead to provide solid, economical motoring for singles and families on a budget. However, the fight-to-the-death competitiveness of the global car market, which has seen many newer, fresher and more exciting designs enter the market, obviously got the Japanese giant’s attention. It had to respond.

One look at the 2014 Corolla will have some people scratching their heads. It’s still not the most exciting looking vehicle in the segment, nor the most powerful, nor the most sporting.

However, it didn’t need to be any of these things. Despite being the oldest design in the segment, the 2013 Corolla still held the number two in the compact segment and was the second best selling Toyota in the U.S. last year. People were attracted to its reputation for quality and durability and, in a still uncertain economy, gravitated toward the known more than the unknown.

Scaring these buyers off with a radical new look didn’t make sense, so Toyota hewed to a middle ground where the design was allowed to be more exciting while still being safe.

This conservatism permeates the entire car. The Corolla S Premium is more angular looking, and was painted in a vibrant “Blue Crush Metallic” paint highlighted by black accents and minimal chrome detailing. “Inoffensively handsome” would be a good description of the look, which lowers the dweeb factor without being so radical as to offend your grandmother.

The same is true of the larger interior, which relies on piano black and silver horizontal accents to accentuate the otherwise dark interior. Back seat passengers will revel in the luxury of having five inches more leg room than the outgoing model. As I said in my preview report on the new Corolla: “…opening the rear door is no longer akin to opening the door to a Turkish prison cell."

The interior is clean, fresh, modern, logically arranged and surprisingly roomy.” Unfortunately for Toyota, Ford has revised the Focus for 2015, and VW just launched the new Golf. Both cars rise to the top of the interior design sweepstakes with materials that feel and look better. On the plus side, neither can touch the Corolla for rear seat leg room.

The Corolla S gets a unique front fascia, honeycomb grille and piano black trim on the bumper. It does stand out from the rest of the Corolla family, and the thin chrome trim at the lower portion of the LED (you read that right, LED) headlamps and around the grille are very tasteful.

Surprisingly, for a Corolla, the car has an athletic stance that is highlighted by the seven-spoke alloy wheels. These, too, are trimmed in piano black, and the machined aluminum rims and spokes alleviate what could have been a very dark and dour design. Oh, and those LED lights? They’re fantastic at night, giving a bright, white, well-defined beam.

If you order a Corolla S, add the Driver Convenience Package. You get a bundle of stuff like pushbutton start, keyless entry, keyless unlocking/locking of the front doors and trunk, navigation, Bluetooth, and much more. If you’re like our Al Vinikour, you probably won’t want to drop the $850 for the tilt/slide moonroof, even though it does brighten the interior on sunny — and not so sunny — days. However, you won’t have a choice as it’s offered along with the Driver Convenience Package as a $0 option. Thus, when the $840 destination charge is added, you can buy a Corolla S Premium just like the one tested here for $21,210.

That’s $2,360 less than the out-the-door number listed on our tester’s window sticker. That’s a very good deal. However, this suggests that competition is fierce in the compact segment, and — despite Toyota’s best intentions — the Corolla isn’t setting heart fluttering. That seems reasonable, and for more reasons than just the interior and exterior styling.

It’s not unusual to find a Sport button in a new vehicle these days, and the Corolla S is no different. However, it seems a bit odd that a car with the “S” (for “Sport”) designation would need a separate button that the driver must engage each and every time he starts the car to get the highest performance possible. This isn’t as strange as it first seems, however, when you consider how the EPA tests for fuel economy.

By defaulting to the Eco setting upon each restart and requiring driver intervention to engage Sport mode, the car is tested in the default Eco setting on the EPA’s dynos. Therefore, it returns a (slightly) higher window sticker number than it would if tested in Sport mode. It’s just one more way the government makes our lives… interesting.

Engaging the button raises the engine revs 750 rpm, and improves off-the-line acceleration. The car feels livelier, peppier, and more fun. It has more torque on hand (not tons, but more) to accelerate out of turns or away from traffic lights and stop signs. In short, it feels like a car that wears the letter “S” on its trunk lid.

Without it, the Corolla feels a bit lethargic and meek, much like Superman after a Kryptonite milkshake. It would be better if there was a way to choose a “best of both worlds” setting that engaged the Sport mode off the line and under medium to hard acceleration, but defaulted to Eco mode when cruising along or driving less aggressively. By making it something the driver has to consciously engage (but not each time, for God’s sake!), the busybodies, nannies and the overly officious EPA bureaucrats should be satisfied and let the car be tested in its as-delivered Eco mode. Then drivers with even a hint of a pulse could choose the mode they want, when they want, as a free people should.

The vast majority of Corollas will be ordered with the CVT transmission, which is light years better than the ancient four-speed automatic that comes on the base model, and has the added feature of steering wheel-mounted paddle shifters. (A six-speed manual also is available.) These do come in handy, especially in Eco mode, and choose one of seven pre-set steps or “speeds” for better acceleration or deceleration.

Because the other models fitted with the CVT don’t come with the paddles, you also can flip the gear lever into the manual gate and do the same thing. It’s as redundant as closing the gate after the horse has bolted. Very few who want to shift for themselves will ever use this feature.

Nor are they likely to use the Corolla for carving up their favorite road or entering a weekend gymkhana. The MacPherson strut front and torsion beam rear suspensions acquit themselves well, but do little to raise the pulse of either driver or passengers. The car tracks well, steers reasonably, understeers as the limit is approached (as expected) and — with its front and rear disc brakes — stops with little drama. But the overall impression is that the “S” on the trunklid stands for “Spectator”.

That said, the basics are here to make a fine handling stealth sport sedan, and Toyota would be, as stated in my preview report, well-served by retaining the services of the former Lotus handling guru who made so many past Toyota’s (the W10 MR2 and Mark II and Mark III Supras) handle so well. That would be a fun car to drive.

During its week in the fleet, the Corolla S returned 31 mpg, and carried people and things without complaint. The large, regularly shaped trunk swallowed everything that could fit through the opening, and the back seat passengers never complained about not having enough leg room. It started each morning and never let me down, but did nothing to set itself apart from the myriad competitors in this highly competitive market segment.

Truthfully, I was more surprised and delighted by the characterful but flawed Dodge Dart GT than I was by the vice-free Corolla S. However, it’s still the safe choice, and a smart one, for buyers looking for an economical, somewhat sporty small sedan with a bullet-proof reputation and a surprisingly reasonable price.

The Virtual Driver