FAMILY CAR REVIEW: 2017 TOYOTA COROLLA

In the front of the Toyota Corolla are two good sized cup holders in the central console. I found both reusable and disposable coffee cups fitted in them, as did my big refillable water bottle. One thing I noticed was if you have a water bottle in the rear of the two cup holders it obstructs the opening catch of the central console storage box like it did in the Holden Colorado and Trailblazer.

The cup holders are quite adaptable as there is a rubber star shape that sits in the bottom of one to raise the floor level and reduce its depth, so you could put a coffee cup in without it disappearing down into the central console! There is also a removable divider between the two cup holders. This whole section of the central console seems to have a rubber feel so when I put my big water bottle in the holder, the area around it could flex and bend.

The central storage box is underneath a padded armrest which has two catches, one for the small but deep box at the bottom, the other to a coin tray in the top.

There is also space for a small 600ml or Pigeon baby bottle in the door pockets, but they are not lined so they do rattle and mark quite easily. After a week of use, there were marks and scuffs on the doors. Although the door pocket looked small, my wallet fitted nicely sideways and the iPad fitted on its end too.

There is a USB and headphone socket in front of the gear lever and a 12V power socket there too. Below them is a small, rubber lined well which I found was perfect for putting my phone in whilst driving and having it plugged into the USB port, although you do have the USB cord hanging down in the footwell. This seems to be the case in most of the cars I’m driving.

There is is a single glasses case located in the ceiling with the two press-on interior lights and a coin pocket by the driver's right knee. The glove box is a very generous size; it came with two user manuals inside and there was still plenty of roome after I'd added my glasses case, wallet and iPad.

In the back, there are generous half map pockets in both front seatbacks which easily fit and conceal an iPad. The back door pockets are not as deep as the front ones, but they do seem to hold the same amount. My wallet and iPad fitted in them fine and they will hold a 600ml drinks bottle but not my larger refillable one.

The middle seat in the back has a pull-down armrest with two cup holders in it. They are underneath a lid which folds back, but unfortunately not far enough. When you put a disposable coffee cup in, the cup holder lid presses against the lid of the coffee cup, causing it to leak hot coffee everywhere! It is only a small detail but rather annoying. I found only a disposable coffee cup would fit, a baby bottle rattled around and a sippy cup and my water bottle were too big.

There is also a small well in the back of the central console thar a few years ago would have been for an ashtray I’d imagine! Although there is no USB socket in the back, I rested my phone playing nursery rhymes in this little well. I find I do this for quick journeys sometimes when I don’t want to plug my phone in or hear the music in the front.

The Corolla really surprised me with its boot capacity! I could get sixteen shopping bags in there! Four against the back of the seats, then a row of five and a third row of seven bags nearest the opening!

Our Mountain Buggy Urban Jungle stroller fitted easily in the boot, with space for six shopping bags as well. There was also plenty of space on top of the Mountain Buggy so I could fit the Steelcraft Holiday 2 compact stroller in too!

The Holiday 2 compact stroller fitted easily across the width of the boot with nine shopping bags in there as well!

Unlike an SUV, you do have to bend down and into the Corolla's low-slung boot, and lifting things into it can be a little awkward when negotiating the shape of the boot opening. However, the boot capacity definitely rivals that of many SUVs I’ve driven.

The boot space and its functionality are really important. I like to have a big boot space and little side wells or areas I can divide things into. So something I don’t want to move around while I’m driving such as Tulsi’s lunch bag or her wet swimming gear can be sectioned off in a little well where it’s not going to spill or get squashed by the rest of the things in the boot.
Hooks for securing shopping bags to are also favourites of mine, I like being able to secure the bag containing more fragile things like eggs so they don’t move around on the journey.
I measure the boot space in freezer shopping bags, prams and dogs. Not because I think all there is to a mum’s life is food shopping, prams and dogs. (Although it can feel like it sometimes!!) But because these are visually mesurable items we can all associate with. For me, the car company boot measurement of litres ia not an amount I can easily visualise and 400L in one car may differ in usability to that in another due to the configuration or shape of the space.

I thought that nappy changes would be difficult too because of having to bend down to reach the boot floor but I was pleasantly surprised and reminded how these shape boots mean the baby can’t roll out so they make for a little more relaxing nappy changing times!

There is no 12V socket in the boot so you could not put a plug in Esky in there. The parcel shelf is not removable, it is fixed in behind the back seats, they do fold forward though so you can access the boot from the back seats.

Because of the parcel shelf, you wouldn’t put a dog in the boot but there is room for a medium size dog on the back seat if only one child seat is installed. Or, with a child seat in each of the outside seats a small dog would fit in the central seat. Alternatively, they could ride shotgun in the front passenger seat and leave the kids in the back!

The Toyota Corolla is a hilarious cacophony of beeps and noises, my nemesis being its seemingly unnecessary reversing beep! As soon as you put the car in reverse it starts a loud, shrill and constant beeping. Just like you would have on the outside of a truck to warn pedestrians etc that it is reversing. With the Corolla, it sounds on the inside of the car?! I can’t imagine why all the passengers of the car need warning that the driver is reversing?!! I would love to have been a fly on the wall when the meeting for that decision was made! Who thought this was a good idea?
There is no way of turning it off either, which just makes it even worse!

It reminded me of my time in India years ago and all the tuk tuks had their own individual reversing songs (that played outside the vehicle mind you!!) and Titanic was very popular at the time and “My heart will go on” played in musical beeps from reversing tuk tuks everywhere I turned!!

On top of this, you have the reversing sensor which is another beeping sound! You can not turn the volume down for either. The two together make reversing a very noisy experience and definitely something to be avoided at all costs if you have a sleeping baby in the car!

The lane departure warning has its own beep also. You cannot alter the volume, you can only turn it on or off with a button on the steering wheel.

Becoming a parent I soon realised there are some noises and sounds I feel are unnecessary and I could happily live without if it meant my baby stayed asleep!! That often the distraction of my screaming, distressed baby is more dangerous when driving than not having a lane departure warning for example.
If it is the lane departure warning beeping that creates distress with my baby then which is safest? It’s where I think we need to be able to strike a balance and choose when we can mute the warnings or swap them to a vibration in the steering wheel or flashing light perhaps?
A lot of these noises come with the increase in technology and especially linked to safety features and alerts. For me these all have their place.
Another thing I have realised is I spend my time in a lot more places where small children roam, parks, beaches, play gyms, swimming lessons, daycare centre etc. I have become more aware that when I’m reversing or manouvering in the car parks I have to tripple check for small children running around behind me or being in my blind spot when reversing. For this I LOVE reversing cameras, I just don’t like their beeping sounds!!
I have become so much more aware of safety and potential accidents or hazards since having a child and so I love the peace of mind that I get from the cameras and sensors combined with my own vision from windows and mirrors as I don’t trust cameras alone.

These safety features on the Corolla are all part of the Toyota TSS safety update. Also part of the TSS is forward collision warning. The on/off button for this is situated by your right knee, along with the parking sensor on/off button. The forward collision warning alerts you of an impending collision with its own beeping sound and the dash display flashes red. I didn’t find it over sensitive but my husband did find it got confused when driving along roads with traffic islands and it thought the traffic islands were cars and it encouraged him to stop for them!

The indicator noise is relatively quiet and not too intrusive. The touchscreen has a beep when you touch it, which is quite annoying. Thankfully this can be adjusted or turned off within the screen settings.

The sat nav voice volume can be turned up and down through the settings but not muted. I found the system difficult to navigate and had to go through six screens to get to the sat nav volume controls. You can also alter the sat nav verbosity level – which I LOVE!! You can choose from compact, minimal and verbose. The system will remember your settings from the previous journey which is good so you don’t have to try and locate the adjustment screen each time you drive. I found compact or minimal the best, verbose setting reads a long list of directions for the route which was just too much unnecessary talking for me!!

The Corolla screen felt out of date. The system does not use Apple CarPlay or Android Auto and I found the layout of the system illogical. The home screen is half sat nav map and the other half of the screen dedicated to your phone. This is a system I hated at first but after having three Toyotas in a row I became more familiar with and began to actually enjoy being able to multitask on the media screen!!
The buttons for all the normal home screen options were hidden under a tiny cog button in the top right-hand corner. I found this was not a very obvious place at all for all the usual home page options.

The windows had a nice quiet mechanism but the doors closed with quite a bang and anything in the door pockets rattled around too.
An alarm sounds if you come to a stop and open your door with the engine running.

Since becoming a mum I spend A LOT of time parked up somewhere with a nice view while my daughter is asleep in the back! If it's hot I need to leave the engine running and the aircon on but I do like to get out and drink my cuppa tea in the fresh air while enjoying the fact my limbs are free from said dangling child!!
SO this is a very important test as I have found that sometimes I have been held hostage by a cars BEEEEPING alarms when I have taken off my seatbelt or opened the door while the engine is still running!! (I only stand outside the car, I am not a bad mother!!)

You can lock the doors and windows from the driver's door control panel but they do not lock automatically.

Another alarm sounded when I drove with my lights on at night using the ‘auto’ setting. When I came to a stop, turned the engine off and opened the door to get out of the car. The lights did not automatically turn off. An alarm sounded until I turned them off manually at the stick, which I found extremely baby waking!!

The Corolla engine was quite loud going up hills but around town and on country roads it was pretty quiet and didn’t seem to struggle at all.

Of all the beeps and noises there was no seatbelt removal alarm in the Corolla! Just a red warning light on your dash board.

The Corolla is a five-seater. In the back, all three seats have top tether points in the fixed parcel shelf behind their headrests.

The two outer seats have ISO Fix points in the join of the seat base and seat backs. The positioning of the top tethers and ISO Fix made fitting the child seats nice and simple. With a bit of a squeeze, I managed to fit three child seats across the back row: A rear-facing Infasecure Kompressor 4 on one side, a Mountain Buggy Protect infant capsule on the other side and an Infasecure Foldaway booster seat in the middle. It was a very tight squeeze and the central seatbelt buckle was underneath the booster seat base so in reality, I think it would be too hard to locate and do up once a child was in there.

When only one child seat is installed, posting bub into the rear-facing car seat from inside the car was good. From outside the car, the door opening was surprisingly large and open for posting Tulsi into her child seat.

Australia being a country of weather extremes- blazing sun and torrential rain, mean you may find it easier to put Bub into their seat from inside the car sometimes. If it’s hot you can get the air-con going, cool the car down and not stand out in the sun while you fasten them in or shelter from the rain and not get soaked yourself whilst you’re doing it. So it is important to test whether Bub can be easily installed from either direction!

There was room for feeding bub in the back with only one child seat installed. Any more than that and you wouldn’t have enough room.

The seats are definitely not a wipe clean surface. They are a diamond woven fabric which I think would trap the dirt, sand and crumbs that come with driving little ones around! The angle of the back seats is good, the seats are firm but comfortable.

The front seats in the Corolla are comfortable. They do not pivot and stick into the base of your back like a lot of modern car seats do. They are adjusted with two plastic handles which feel pretty cheap and flimsy but work quite easily. I didn’t need to think about the seats which, is always a good thing. If I am thinking about them every time I’m driving then they are not comfortable!! The seats are by no means luxury but they are all comfortable, functional and adequate and I can have a ponytail!

I had spent hours styling my hair this morning to get it just right too… said no new mum ever!!!

In the back it is the same; the outside seats are comfortable but the middle one has the fold-down armrest, so its backrest is pretty uncomfortable and you wouldn’t want to travel any distance in it.

The Corolla is quite spacious. You can get two rear-facing child seats in the back row and the front seats are still able to go far enough for a 184cm driver. There is plenty of leg room in the back for adult passengers too.
The steering wheel is fully adjustable in/out and up/down and I found it easy to adjust everything to a comfortable driving position.

There are two horizontal air-conditioning vents in the central dash and a circular fan-like vent at either end of the dashboard. These look a little strange as they are completely different to the others, and overall the interior does feel like a bit of a hotch-potch. Despite the look of the vents, they seem to function well and are quite effective at cooling the car quickly. It is controlled very easily with three circular knobs on the central console. Very simple but effective.
There are no air-con vents in the back but I found the front vents ample for cooling the whole car.

The rear windscreen is very big and very sloped allowing the sun straight in onto the rear facing babies. I noticed it was a problem every time I used the car and this was very upsetting for Tulsi.
The visibility was already pretty poor out of the rear because of the extreme slope of the window and the two side pillars dramatically reduce the visibility out of back as well, so I didn’t want to put a shade on there as the visibility would be even worse then. When reversing I had to rely on the reversing camera every time as visibility was so poor.

I found it easier to park the Corolla front in, because of the poor visibility at the back and to avoid the ridiculous reversing beeper! The reversing camera was good for giving visibility where I didn’t otherwise have it but the resolution of the screen was quite poor.

One thing I have noticed since being a mum is I hate it when I reach a destination or get home from being out and Tulsi has either done really well in the car or she is screaming her head off and I have done really well to keep it together for the entire journey (usually the latter!!) and it takes 10 minutes to park the car! It can be really stressful. Usually I dread when we get the big cars and utes as they take longer in our tight apartment block carpark, but the Corolla is a sedan and I found it really quite difficult to reverse park due to poor visibility!

The Corolla drives relatively well. It’s pretty basic, functional and you don’t have to think about driving it, but it’s not very exciting either. It is an A to B car that does what it needs to without any bells and whistles. Well, actually it does what it needs to with a lot of annoying beeps and alarms actually!!!

There are lit vanity mirrors in both visors in the front, two central press on/off lights near the glasses case in the ceiling and a light for the back passengers that the driver can reach behind to activate also.

There are well-positioned handles and hooks on both sides in the back that are good for hanging baby toys on!

There is a 12V socket in front of the gear stick, which brings me to the general aesthetics of the Corolla. It is inoffensive and functional but quite a hotch-potch of cheap looking plastics and the gear lever looks and feels disgusting! Shiny cheap silver plastic with a skinny stick that looks like it’s going to come off in your hand! There’s also a weird neon blue used on the screen and the 80s digital clock on the dashboard.

Everything feels very cheap and basic. Not in a well designed minimal way, just in a cost-cutting way. Like on the door panels where you can see where the edges have been cut and joined and a lot of the surfaces look like they mark and scratch very easily too. The felt-like covering on the ceiling and even down to the fonts that have been used on the buttons and switches all make my inner designer scream in pain!!

The boot does have a powered tailgate activated on the key. I LOVE this feature and especially with the large boot on the Corolla too! Double points for the boot!!

The floor mat in the back goes all the way across the width of the footwell. I like this as you will not get little mats moving around in the footwells. The mats are the same type of carpet as the flooring of the car, and although they are not rubber so cannot be as easily cleaned they do blend in well with the rest of the Corolla’s cabin.

The Toyota Corolla Sedan has a five-star ANCAP safety rating and comes with seven airbags as standard, including a driver's knee airbag, driver and front passenger airbags, front side airbags and full-length curtain airbags that provide protection for the front and rear side passengers.

For the 50th anniversary of the Corolla range, Toyota updated most models with the addition of Toyota Safety Sense technology.
For the Corolla Sedan I drove, this meant pre-collision safety system, lane departure alert, emergency brake signal, anti-lock brakes with electronic brake-force distribution, a reversing camera, front and rear reversing sensors, and auto high-beam.

The Toyota Corolla didn’t have any standout features that felt unsafe, apart from its forwad collision warning sometimes confusing traffic islands for cars! The Corolla comes with a lot of safety features for a very good price. The beeping when reversing is something that I feel is unnecessary and definitely raised my blood pressure! Not something you really want when you are driving!

Some of these safety features are also features that drive me crazy as a mum! Like the lane departure and forward collision alert or the parking sensor beeping sound. I want all the safety technology AND to be able to mute the sound when Tulsi’s asleep!