2025 Toyota GR Corolla AT
Price: $58,737 CAD
Colour: White
It was 2023 when Toyota shocked the world by announcing they would be making a hot version of their Corolla hatchback. It wasn’t anything people had been asking for, nor does it seemingly make business sense in the SUV obsessed North American car market. Toyota was doing it anyway. They told us about the unusual 100hp per cylinder powerplant and, even more incredibly, it was manual only. It felt like Toyota had spied on one of my inappropriate, sweaty car dreams and taken a bunch of notes. I love a proper hot hatch. We haven’t really seen them for years now and it was a revelation to know it was coming back. Given that the vehicle was launched during the latter stages of the Covid-19 nonsense, access to a GR Corolla was limited. Such is the way of things, it took a few years before I was notified I could drive one. I mapped out an incredible week of backroad blasting full of hairpins and anticipated redline shifts. I could not wait to get behind the wheel. Imagine my surprise and resulting disappointment when I arrive to pick up the car to find they had booked me into the new for 2025 Automatic Transmission version. Much like the 4-year-old who is teased with a plate full of tasty donuts only to be handled a broccoli crown as a snack, my disappointment was complete. I immediately pulled out my phone to see if I had missed this little detail when booking the car. Nope, they made no mention of its secret shame. I was hoodwinked. Deceived. My heart was broken.
I will admit I was tempted to hand the keys back to the fleet manager and head home on the train. I knew what was coming in the auto version of a car born to be a manual. I’m sad to tell you I was right. Keeping in mind I’ve yet to drive the manual I can’t comment on that car’s manners, but I can certainly tell you about the auto. Lifeless. I wasn’t expecting much, and I wasn’t surprised in any way. While you have paddle shifters to blip through the gears as you see fit (just like a manual they’ll tell you), the shifts were so slow I found it challenging to get the car to respond. It felt sluggish and lifeless. I don’t argue there was an acceptable amount of power (300 in fact) from the 1.6L 3-cylinder turbo and it made a good noise, but the entire thing felt neutered by that gearbox.
While my heart was broken and my dreams dashed by the surprise from the GR Corolla, there’s more to a car than a transmission. The rest of the GR Corolla was pretty acceptable, and you could live with a manual one everyday. It’s clearly designed to be a street fighting hero and while demand has largely outstripped supply Toyota clearly decided they needed to sell more of these things and to do that, an auto was required. The kicker is there are decent performance-oriented automatics out there and I’m sure Toyota could have slipped one into the GR Corolla without anyone getting too upset. Instead, they put in what they had on the shelf and hoped we wouldn’t notice. I’m not missing the irony that a vehicle built with specificity and a singular vision has now gone through its first round of neutering.
