Abandoning Corolla - New Auris

a 5 to 10 year old Corolla continues to be a value. I don't car what they call it.

I think that the Corolla badge name and sedan style is no longer as popular with the younger car market as it was with the older baby boomer generation. Hence the funky name and body style change.

I just got a plain Jane Corolla CE 2007 because I preferred the simplicity of the car compared to other Toyota models and other car makers. The less gadgets, the less things that can go wrong. My only peeve was that side curtain air bags and heated side mirrors were not available. These are safety features that should be standard.

The new hatchback body style, while more user friendly for hauling large items, it useless from a security aspect. At least with a sedan, you can lock your valuables out of site. A neat feature I found with my new Corolla is that the rear seats can only be released to fold down with a lever located inside the trunk. With the trunk key slot in the horizontal position, your Christmas shopping gifts will have a reasonable chance of making the trip to the bottom of your tree.

The current Corolla is a great value car. Here (Vancouver, BC) they are taking over the taxi market, even heavily used at the airport. Last week 4 of us, with 2 bags each, came from the airport in one. Quite comfortable.

They and ABS should be standard on all cars.

I disagree with you here. As thief can easily get into any car, a more secure trunk accomplishes nothing. Some protection is gained by not leaving anything visible. The European tendency to have the trunk default to unlocked when the doors are unlocked is the biggest car security exposure I know of. Friends of mine had some luggage stolen in Europe when they were at a stop light. I've rejected several otherwise excellent European cars with this "feature".

There are a lot of smash and grab burglaries in shopping mall parking lots here in Winnipeg around Christmas time. They are usually done by punks without any special skills other than being able to smash a window and grab whatever they can get their hands on. If easy access to the trunk isn't there, they don't bother and move along to another car.

You are right about being able to bypass locks. The ones that carry those tools are the ones who want to steal the whole car for joyrides. There are a lot of GM and Ford trucks and SUV's being stolen in Winnipeg.

I'd really like to know where you are getting your info from because it is flat wrong.

First the Auris introduction form the English portion of Toyota Japan website

Now the Corollaannouncement. Now for the Japanese language site which has much better pictures of the cars . The one I'd really like to see over hereis the Mark X, the third one shown on the opening page. The deal with the Corolla is that it is being held in Japan for one year before it is going to be released to the rest of the world to work any bugs out. Toyota did that in the past but got away from it and went to a 6mo hold in most cases but quality suffered. As it is, the new Corolla is already late in Japan because the new Civic's design and appointments took them by surprise.

"If" the Auris ever makes it to the States, my bet would be that it will replace the Matrix.

if anything, the auris looks to be a good choice to replace the scion xA. i think its too small to replace the corolla, and the yaris already has a 2dr hatch and 4dr sedan.