I still think it will smoke a civic - atleast initially.
I have felt the prosmatec civic to be slow below 80 km/hr - I guess it has something to do with its economical engine, it's not annoyingly slow but as compared to an altis Grande it is slow- I drove the Civic prosmatec after my test drive of the grande - maybe it's because I was able to downshift at low speeds to get that extra 'boost' which would have been impossible in an automatic civic .
Well, I'm not a technical guy - and i just felt that the grande had better acceleration - not in auto mode but in manual mode, this makes sense too, no? A manual 1800cc having an edge over an automatic 1800cc
Khair it doesn't really matter - its not a sports car and i'm sure no corolla grande owner or civic owner will be enrolling his beloved car in a endurance race against each other so it doesn't matter.
The grande is coming upto international standards, like the 9th gen civic. And with the upgrade of climate control, immobiliser and passenger airbags in a year or two (of course, with a higher price tag), both the pkdm family saloons will finally be at par with their international models in security and safety aspects.
This has never been possible before as PKDMs were always a notch below their international models.
So good job toyota, just upgrade the Corolla with immobiliser, climate control and passenger airbag. And With better looking alloys people actually won't know what to buy - civic or corolla.