The 8th gen was a half n half project and that car (which is worse than the 7gen in every way) is usually found as a sprinter, it also is found as a daihatsu and in usa it was also sold as a geo (chevrolet) prism (its old factory is now where Tesla is made)
To be honest, ive repaired some in Pakistan (some imports, some ncp cleared) the used car dealers called it “french model” too. Its build quality was extremely bad, it made the quality of a 7gen seem like that of an early w124 mercedes.
The 7gen corolla is what the modern larger camry platform was prototyped on (code named atlas) and then the camry/celica-camry/carina/daihatsu altis became a massive success for toyota globally, they have been evolving the same chassis/platform on the camry/highlander/sienna etc and it has proven itself good.
Corolla was ditched as the 7th gen chassis and entire production was expensive and corolla customers dont care for “finesse” so they made the craptastic 9th gen platform.
