It won't excite you, it was beyond boring for me. But it does nearly everything a commuter car needs to do, and it does it very well. It gets from point a to b.

We were so underwhelmed we didn't even bother taking a photo of the car we had. I stole this photo from the Edmunds review.

I honestly don't think I've ever reviewed anything that is as soulless as this thing.

The interior is plastic, cheap and boring, and the outside is frankly the most mundane, blended-in machine that I've ever seen.

There's not a single person ever that would turn their head twice at this, and there's nothing special about it in any way, shape or form. Now I wasn't expecting much of the 2025 Corolla, and I didn't get much out it. But you will get about 35 mpg, it's front-wheel drive, you get five seats, about 13 cubic feet in the trun, it has a curb weight of just under 3,000 pounds, and it has a 2.0-liter inline four-cylinder engine. The Carolla has a range of between 396 miles to 565 miles for the Corolla Hybrid, which, I'll admit, is actually pretty good. But we had the Corolla SE sedan, which only has a range of 525 miles, so even of the bland Corollas, we couldn't get the best one, unfortunately.

Now, it almost feels like a waste of time to talk about performance, but I guess it's part of the specs, so I have to at least bring it up. It has 169 hp with a top speed of 111 mph, somehow. Toyota claims it can get to 60 in 7.3 seconds. Other testers like MotorTrend and U.S. News recorded it at about 8.2 seconds. We didn't time it, but it took forever when merging onto traffic. You definitely had to plan your move ahead and be very calculated when wanting to lay down the power, because the result took longer than you would expect. As I said in the video, part of the brilliance of Toyota is that they can pack in all 169 horsepower and you don't feel it at all.

When it comes to the interior, there's not much to say other than it's very bland. You have the big iPad-style screen in the center sticking up, and personally, I find this to be very distracting and irritating. I like it, just like my Mitch in the video, to be integrated into the dash, not this thing sticking up that makes you wanna rip it off. We also found that it was difficult to connect CarPlay to the phone, and it didn't have the most user-friendly features when it came to the whole media system.

Now, how is it to drive? Well, it's your basic commuter car. It's nothing special. It doesn't particularly handle well in the canyons. I did find that it would often understeer in the corners when we drove a twisty canyon road. Now, normally, that's not gonna be a problem that anyone's going to have. However, in this car, that understeer starts at 20 miles an hour! Which might be the slowest I've ever encountered it in a car in the dry. There you are, sitting in an uninspired interior that's bland and boring, understeering into oncoming traffic in a car that has very little passion behind it.

One thing that I definitely found while driving through the canyons of the Santa Monica Mountains was that it very often felt boring. I was on an exciting road with beautiful views, and I just felt bored. There was nothing there. There is no pleasure in the experience. That car isn't designed to be a canyon runner. Usually, I can find something when on a road like this, and there was just nothing there for me.

But things could definitely be worse. This is definitely a reliable car, and it's a safe car. While it is not my favorite-looking car by any stretch of the imagination, I guess it's not the ugliest thing, especially considering the Corolla models of the early 2000s, or, God forbid, a Prius, which I still think is hideous.

I personally would not buy one. I would go for a Civic, Impreza or Volkswagen Jetta. Hell, I might even have to check out the Kia K4. Couldn't be worse than this thing?