This is one hell of a weird car. It's not broken, but it has a lot of weird design choices. It's like the people making it don't really drive cars, but they've seen a lot of TV shows involving cars.
Headlights cannot be turned off
Cars in Canada are required to have day-running lights that never turn off. This is what the car will run if the knob is set to off. 1 click turns on the parking lights, just like every other car. 1 more click turns on the headlights, just like ever other car. Once the night time headlights are on and car is running, they cannot be turned off until the car is turned off. If I get some drive through mcdonalds at night then eat in my car, I'm blinding the shit out of everyone who drives by because I can't turn the lights off. If I stop on your driveway and I'm waiting for you, my headlights are shining into your living room and I can't turn them off. If I'm parked at a slight upward angle and my headlights are shining directly into the eyes of incoming drivers, I can't turn them off unless I turn the engine off.
The clock is located in a very strange place
In most cars, the clock is part of the stereo. When looking at the road, the clock is high enough on the dash that it can be seen in peripheral vision. We can know what time it is without looking directly at the clock or taking our eyes off the road. In a Corolla, the clock is located as far down as possible. It's right next to the 12V power outlet and there's no way to look at it without looking away from the road and turning my head down.
Traction control cannot be turned off
Traction control is generally a nice feature and I'm really glad this car has it. The problem is that I can't toggle it off. There's a button to temporarily disable it, but it turns itself on again once the car moves faster than ~30mph. This is bad because the car has much better acceleration when the traction control is turned off. Without traction control, the snow tires spin and throw a bunch of snow around, but the car still accelerates quickly. With traction control, the computer aggressively cuts power and the acceleration is horrible as a result. Traction control is mostly a feature to prevent getting stuck and it does almost nothing useful once the car is moving, so it seems very odd that it would be a toggle-off rather than toggle-on button.
The cruise control sucks
My last compact cars were a Honda Civic and a Ford Tempo. The Tempo had a cable driven accelerator, and I could feel the pedal go right to the floor when the cruise control tried to maintain speed. It usually didn't work too well since that Tempo had less power than a bicycle, but at least it tried its best. My Civic would also go wide open throttle to maintain speed, and it could usually pull it off because it had a lot more power than the Tempo. That Civic could maintain cruise on a relatively steep hill in fifth gear. Cruise in the Corolla is just pathetic. It doesn't even try. Rather than keep it in 4th gear (top gear) and floor it, the cruise control will drop to third then rev up to 4000 just to get up the most pathetic hill imaginable. It makes the ride a lot jerkier when the cruise is constantly jumping between third and fourth gear because it won't open the throttle enough. I've driven the manual transmission version of this car, and I know for a fact that it could easily stay in top gear and maintain speed, but for some reason the automatic loves to fuck around.
Terrible highway performance
The maximum speed my brother and I could get this car up to was 108mph, and the acceleration is slow enough that passing a car driving 60mph is a considerable challenge. It takes long enough that it's a bit scary. Comparatively, my 2006 Honda Civic had a top of speed of 125mph (it would govern itself at that speed), could easily pass cars on the highway, and got the same gas mileage while doing so.
The OEM remote starter is very strange
I can understand a remote starter behaving weird, but we're talking about a remote starter that came with the car. If I remote start the car, the regular remote entry and the smart key entry no longer work. The doors must be unlocked by the remote starter's remote. Once I'm in the car, hitting the brakes will turn the engine off. The only way to get the car moving without turning the engine off and on is to put on the emergency brake, shift into drive or reverse, put my foot on the brakes, then disengage the emergency brake. wtf??
The doors automatically unlock, even when you don't want them to
This is probably a "feature" on many cars, but the doors will automatically unlock when the car is put into park. This one doesn't really affect me since my last car was a manual and it's now second nature to put the car into neutral and use the emergency brake whenever I come to a temporary stop. Unfortunately girls don't drive manuals, so both my mom and my girlfriend were totally freaked out when they found out the car automatically unlocks all 4 doors when the car is put in park. Stop at the Taco Bell drive through? All the doors unlock. Park at Walmart then dig around in your purse for shit? The doors unlocked themselves long before you thought about leaving the car.
Bing bing bing bing bing bing bing
In my Tempo, there was a little indicator on the dash to tell you that your seatbelt is not done up, but it wouldn't make any noise. My Civic was slightly more annoying as it would beep every few seconds then eventually give up. This Corolla is relentless. It will beep forever until both the driver and the front passenger are wearing seatbelts. My brother and my best friend don't like wearing seatbelts, so the car will annoy the fuck out of me until they decide to put their seatbelts on.
I just had to get this stuff off my chest. So far it's a pretty good car and nothing has fallen apart yet, but it sure has a lot of annoying problems. Whoever thought of the beeping seatbelt thing should be shot.
Headlights cannot be turned off
Cars in Canada are required to have day-running lights that never turn off. This is what the car will run if the knob is set to off. 1 click turns on the parking lights, just like every other car. 1 more click turns on the headlights, just like ever other car. Once the night time headlights are on and car is running, they cannot be turned off until the car is turned off. If I get some drive through mcdonalds at night then eat in my car, I'm blinding the shit out of everyone who drives by because I can't turn the lights off. If I stop on your driveway and I'm waiting for you, my headlights are shining into your living room and I can't turn them off. If I'm parked at a slight upward angle and my headlights are shining directly into the eyes of incoming drivers, I can't turn them off unless I turn the engine off.
The clock is located in a very strange place
In most cars, the clock is part of the stereo. When looking at the road, the clock is high enough on the dash that it can be seen in peripheral vision. We can know what time it is without looking directly at the clock or taking our eyes off the road. In a Corolla, the clock is located as far down as possible. It's right next to the 12V power outlet and there's no way to look at it without looking away from the road and turning my head down.
Traction control cannot be turned off
Traction control is generally a nice feature and I'm really glad this car has it. The problem is that I can't toggle it off. There's a button to temporarily disable it, but it turns itself on again once the car moves faster than ~30mph. This is bad because the car has much better acceleration when the traction control is turned off. Without traction control, the snow tires spin and throw a bunch of snow around, but the car still accelerates quickly. With traction control, the computer aggressively cuts power and the acceleration is horrible as a result. Traction control is mostly a feature to prevent getting stuck and it does almost nothing useful once the car is moving, so it seems very odd that it would be a toggle-off rather than toggle-on button.
The cruise control sucks
My last compact cars were a Honda Civic and a Ford Tempo. The Tempo had a cable driven accelerator, and I could feel the pedal go right to the floor when the cruise control tried to maintain speed. It usually didn't work too well since that Tempo had less power than a bicycle, but at least it tried its best. My Civic would also go wide open throttle to maintain speed, and it could usually pull it off because it had a lot more power than the Tempo. That Civic could maintain cruise on a relatively steep hill in fifth gear. Cruise in the Corolla is just pathetic. It doesn't even try. Rather than keep it in 4th gear (top gear) and floor it, the cruise control will drop to third then rev up to 4000 just to get up the most pathetic hill imaginable. It makes the ride a lot jerkier when the cruise is constantly jumping between third and fourth gear because it won't open the throttle enough. I've driven the manual transmission version of this car, and I know for a fact that it could easily stay in top gear and maintain speed, but for some reason the automatic loves to fuck around.
Terrible highway performance
The maximum speed my brother and I could get this car up to was 108mph, and the acceleration is slow enough that passing a car driving 60mph is a considerable challenge. It takes long enough that it's a bit scary. Comparatively, my 2006 Honda Civic had a top of speed of 125mph (it would govern itself at that speed), could easily pass cars on the highway, and got the same gas mileage while doing so.
The OEM remote starter is very strange
I can understand a remote starter behaving weird, but we're talking about a remote starter that came with the car. If I remote start the car, the regular remote entry and the smart key entry no longer work. The doors must be unlocked by the remote starter's remote. Once I'm in the car, hitting the brakes will turn the engine off. The only way to get the car moving without turning the engine off and on is to put on the emergency brake, shift into drive or reverse, put my foot on the brakes, then disengage the emergency brake. wtf??
The doors automatically unlock, even when you don't want them to
This is probably a "feature" on many cars, but the doors will automatically unlock when the car is put into park. This one doesn't really affect me since my last car was a manual and it's now second nature to put the car into neutral and use the emergency brake whenever I come to a temporary stop. Unfortunately girls don't drive manuals, so both my mom and my girlfriend were totally freaked out when they found out the car automatically unlocks all 4 doors when the car is put in park. Stop at the Taco Bell drive through? All the doors unlock. Park at Walmart then dig around in your purse for shit? The doors unlocked themselves long before you thought about leaving the car.
Bing bing bing bing bing bing bing
In my Tempo, there was a little indicator on the dash to tell you that your seatbelt is not done up, but it wouldn't make any noise. My Civic was slightly more annoying as it would beep every few seconds then eventually give up. This Corolla is relentless. It will beep forever until both the driver and the front passenger are wearing seatbelts. My brother and my best friend don't like wearing seatbelts, so the car will annoy the fuck out of me until they decide to put their seatbelts on.
I just had to get this stuff off my chest. So far it's a pretty good car and nothing has fallen apart yet, but it sure has a lot of annoying problems. Whoever thought of the beeping seatbelt thing should be shot.
). I didn't know how aggressive the traction control was since I test drove it in August. The cruise control fucking around mostly happens in a hilly area of the highway roughly 30 minutes north of Edmonton, so I wouldn't know about that unless I took it for an incredibly long test drive. Highway acceleration is like that as well; most highways around here are 2 lanes in each direction until about 30 minutes out of town, then it drops to 1 lane each direction and the acceleration becomes a big deal. The test drive car didn't have the remote starter; it was thrown in as a free extra while haggling. The seatbelt and automatic "please car jack me" are on lots of cars, so I can't really get away from that.
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