Must say I’m a big, big fan of the Corolla. Once you’ve sampled its 125 bhp delights, most other cars in India seem tame in comparison. The Corolla wants you to get involved, go fast and enjoy your driving. The gearbox is slick – shift-quality is second only to the new Honda City’s – the clutch feels light and though the Corolla’s sharp, edgy handling is not to everyone’s taste, I just love it. If there was one car in India which I could buy and have it hopped up, the Corolla would be it. High-lift cams, free-flow exhaust, twin turbos, nitrous oxide, 19-inch alloys, a pair of Recaros and... er, sorry, got carried away there.
From dreams, back to reality. And the reality is, Hyundai have launched the Elantra 1.8 and a match-up was inevitable. However, given the performance intent of both these cars, we decided to do a full-blown Performance Evaluation Track (PET) test around a short but demanding circuit. Before I’d actually driven the Elantra 1.8,I was mildly dismissive of the Korean car. It may be equally powerful (125 bhp), but it was still going to be very difficult for the Elantra to beat the Japanese rice-rocket. Or at least so I thought before I’d switched on the Elantra’s 1795cc, 16-valve, DOHC inline-four. But the unassuming Hyundai had a shock in store for me. As soon as I turned the ignition key and revved the motor a bit, I knew this wasn’t going to be a pushover. Blip the accelerator pedal and the needle on the rev-counter shoots up instantly, while the engine makes some angry sounding noises in accompaniment. ‘Surely, the Corolla has a fight on its hands,’ I thought.
The Motoring team was up bright and early the next day and that’s a bigger feat than it sounds. As we started the work of marking out our PET circuit (at our new, top-secret testing location just outside Mumbai), Srini drove up in the test Corolla, which he had collected the night before. And there we had a small surprise – Toyota had not been able to give us a manual-shift Corolla and we would have to make do with an automatic. ‘Ah, well, no worries,’ we told each other, ‘The Corolla should still be able to pull through on the strength of its brilliant engine alone.’ Hmm...
Coming back to our PET circuit (see diagram), it looks simple, but was designed to thoroughly test the cars’ acceleration, braking and handling abilities. The PET is not a race between drivers – it’s just meant to reveal a car’s strengths and weaknesses in a controlled environment. One familiarisation lap and one timed lap for each person and the man (or woman – Shweta Jain from The Strategist was also pitting her skills against us) who emerges fastest, gets a raise. Er... okay, let’s not discuss the raise just yet and let’s get on with the PETing.
Korean Karma
The Elantra first, and first to get off the line was our intern, Joshua Crasto. The man accelerated away without stalling the car (well done, dude!), executed a perfect lane-change manoeuvre, braked hard, took the first U-turn and then... almost lost the plot while going through the slalom section. Whether it was Joshua himself, or the Elantra’s 195/60 Kumho KH18 rubber, we didn’t know, but the young Mr Crasto went completely sideways and mowed through a couple of cones before regaining composure. To his credit though, he went on to post a time of 54.39 seconds – a scant 1.43 seconds off my time and only 1.77 seconds off Shumi, who set the fastest time of the day in the Elantra. Bravo!
After driving the PET circuit, my take on the Elantra was that the chassis/suspension combination is actually not bad at all, but the Kumho rubber is a big letdown. Given the inadequate tyres, the car starts sliding around too early and if you press on, things snap out of shape. At a steady 50 kph through the slalom section, the Elantra would begin to lose it by the third cone and unless you backed off, would go into a tailspin. Bijoy opined that ‘as a package, the car feels dated and old. It doesn’t feel sporty.’ Like most other cars in this segment (the Octavia being a notable exception here), the Elantra’s steering is a bit numb, with little in the way of ‘feel’ or feedback. It’s way better than, say, an Accent’s steering, but still leaves something to be desired. I, for one, wasn’t tackling the lane change manoeuvre very hard simply because the steering wouldn’t tell me enough about what’s happening with the front wheels. Param didn’t like the gearshift and also said he would’ve preferred a tighter, tauter suspension setup.
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