New Toyota Corolla sedan revealed

Toyota wants to revive interest in the flagging four-door market and hopes its striking new Corolla sedan will help the cause.

Revealed to media in California last week ahead of its official debut overnight in China, the new model is built on the same underpinnings as its hatchback sibling but gets two unique front end styling treatments and a steeply tapered roofline, which is 20mm lower than the old model, to give it a sportier silhouette.

While not yet confirmed for Australia, the US market will offer both the standard front grille and a sportier treatment.

Despite the shift towards compact SUVs and the continued preference for hatchbacks over sedans, Toyota Australia’s vice president of sales and marketing, Sean Hanley, said the brand never considered dropping the Corolla sedan from the local lineup.

“The simple answer to that is no,” Hanley said. “I’ll tell you why. It is true the sedan market is dropping overall size, but we believe that if you bring a compelling product to market, with great styling, wonderful engine performance and at an affordable price, there’s still a large sedan market there. We believe this new generation Corolla sedan ticks all the boxes - style, safety, performance. So we believe that market is still significant and we need to be involved in it, and we’re seeing that on Camry now.”

It’s built on the same Toyota New Global Architecture (TNGA) as the Corolla hatch, which means it has a wider track than the old Corolla sedan and shares its 2700mm wheelbase with the five-door model. It will also share the hatch’s multi-link rear suspension as Toyota tries to make the sedan more fun to drive.

While not due in Australia until the late 2019, Toyota has confirmed it will take the sedan with its bigger 2.0-litre four-cylinder petrol engine, boasting 125kW of power and 200Nm of torque. However, despite the brand’s push to make hybrid more mainstream by offering it across the Corolla hatch range, the sedan is likely to miss out on the petrol-electric powertrain.

“At this stage we’re not confirming any hybrid on the sedan,” Hanley said.

US models will also be available with a six-speed manual transmission with rev-matching technology, but it’s also not known if Australia will take that or simply offer the CVT automatic.

“Not yet confirmed. It’s too early to say,” Hanley said.