How does the only estate car-based small van on the market, the Toyota Corolla Commercial, stack up in daily life? Graham King has six months to find out.
Update 1: getting acquainted
There was a time when small vans based on estates and hatchbacks were ten-a-penny. Escorts, Astras, Sunnys and Golfs with blanked back windows and no back seat. Despite the type’s former popularity, the changing van landscape has left just a single contender – the Toyota Corolla Commercial.
True to form, it’s essentially a Corolla Touring Sports estate with blacked-out rear side windows and no back seat – the back doors are still in place. The back seat has been replaced with floorboards stretching from the tailgate to a few inches shy of the front seats. The boards are coated in hard-wearing plastic and covered with a rubber mat. A mesh grille separating load bay from cab completes the transformation.
Otherwise, it’s standard Corolla fare. Power comes from a 1.8-litre petrol hybrid powertrain producing 140hp and 142Nm of torque. That translates to a less-than-sparkling 0-62mph time of 11.1 seconds but, more relevantly, the WLTP figures show average fuel economy of 61mpg is possible.
Over the next six months, I’m going to put the Corolla Commercial through its paces, finding every opportunity to load it up to the brim and covering a lot of miles. Hopefully by the end of my time with it, I’ll be able to answer a question that’s nagging at me: what, exactly, is the point of the thing when the brilliant Ford Transit Courier is cheaper and more useful?
First impressions
This Toyota Corolla Commercial is my first long-term test car. Or van. Or car-van. I’d spent the previous two years in happy ownership of an F10-generation BMW 520d Touring, a very fine thing. First impressions of seeing the Corolla Commercial in the Parkers car park are… underwhelming. It’s washing machine white and wears plastic wheel covers, just like half the taxis in my hometown – taxi drivers love their Corolla estates. The interior is a sea of hard, grey plastic, as well.
But let’s take aesthetics out of the question. How does it shape up as a practical proposition? My first concern is always interior storage. No vehicle ever hits every mark, but the Corolla Commercial starts strong, having a little shelf for your phone in front of the gear lever. My sunglasses loop neatly round the gear lever (my preferred solution), the glovebox is large, the cupholders convenient and the under-armrest cubby is useful.
But there’s nowhere to put the keys. Or, for that matter, a clipboard or stack of job sheets. That would have to sit loose of the passenger seat – hardly ideal. At least my phone syncs with the infotainment system in seconds and it’s immediately apparent how to operate the Corolla’s main features and functions.
What about the load bay/boot? It’s a pretty good size, measuring 1,558mm long, 682mm deep and up to 1,430mm wide. That’s a total volume of 1.3 cubic metres and the payload is a not inconsiderable 465kg. The first section of floor lifts up to reveal the empty spare wheel well, which I’m using as extra storage space. There are a couple of pockets to the side of the floorboards, as well.
Before setting off, I immediately disable the lane departure warning and speed limit warning, both easily done from the steering wheel. Toyota’s lane departure system isn’t especially intrusive, but I find it irksome in any vehicle. The speed limit warning is a bit hyperactive for my liking, sometimes sounding before you reach the speed limit.
From behind the wheel, the Corolla Commercial feels exactly like the Corolla Touring Sports it’s based on. It’s an absolute doddle to drive. The steering’s light and accurate, the CVT isn’t annoying, it’s extremely comfortable. It’s going to be interesting to find out how I get on with it.
Update 2: miles and miles… and miles
I did 17,000 miles in my own car in 2023, and I believe I’m already well past that between the various cars I’ve had custody of thus far in 2024. It comes with living over 100 miles away from the office (I go at least once a week) and going to things far from home at weekends. So I’ve done well over 2,000 miles in just the first month of my time with the Toyota Corolla Commercial.
That includes half-a-dozen commutes from Yorkshire to the office, a couple of schleps down to the Midlands and a daytrip to London. I’ve rarely been so comfortable and relaxed covering big mileage. The Corolla’s seats are soft yet supportive, the ride is buttery smooth over all but the worst surfaces.
I live in a town that actually has the worst road surfaces I’ve ever encountered. Utterly ruined, they are. In every other car I’ve driven, they feel like the proverbial ploughed field. But the Corolla just floats over them. Yet body control is perfectly good, and the car feels resolutely tied down. The Corolla gave not a single moment of concern in the heinous weather driving back from London, even when I hit huge rivers running across the road.
I haven’t yet had the chance to truly test the Corolla’s commercial vehicle credentials, but it swallowed my partner’s bike easily. We had to take the front wheel off, but that’s to be expected. I’ve offered fetching and carrying services to all and sundry, so I’ll hopefully be able to see how it copes with a full load in the near future.
Irritations emerge
While there’s much to like about the Corolla Commercial, there are a few things that take the shine off the experience. The phone shelf that appears so convenient at first has a pretty fundamental flaw. The shape of the moulding covers a central charging port, which my phone has, so you can’t plug it in there. The infotainment system now refuses to connect to Android Auto – I must book it into a service centre to have that investigated. And it turns out you need a subscription for the satnav.
Then there’s the powertrain. The engine can function as a generator, feeding electricity into the hybrid system’s battery. It usually does so when you back off the throttle at high speed. That’s great in principle, but generator mode causes the revs to spike up to the top of the range, at which point engine noise is unpleasantly loud and there’s a strong vibration through the pedals.
The regenerative braking cuts in and out at random, as well, which doesn’t help slowing down smoothly and consistently. When it gets its act together, though, I have found it possible to slow down from 70mph to a near stop in fairly short order without touching the brakes.
Fuel economy
Those irritations could be make-or-break for a lot of people. But I can overlook them when the Corolla Commercial is comfortably averaging well over 50mpg, sometimes over 60mpg. That’s much better fuel economy than I was expecting, considering the vast majority of miles I do are on motorways. Around town, it might be possible to exceed 70mpg.
As such, I’m getting around 400 miles of range from the 35-litre thimble of a fuel tank. Which has caused an unexpected issue. I’ve got a voucher for double Nectar points if I spend £45 on fuel, but the Corolla doesn’t take that much!
Update 3: a cracking time
After clocking up over 3,000 miles in my first five weeks with the Toyota Corolla Commercial, I decided it was time for a rest. My calendar has been pretty much empty since the start of October, so there wasn’t really anywhere to go, anyway. But the rest was kind of enforced when I spotted an enormous crack in the Corolla’s windscreen.
I’ve no idea what caused the crack. The Corolla had been sat in a gravel car park that day, but there were no obvious signs of impact. Regardless, it wasn’t safe to drive, so went back to Toyota’s press garage to have a new ‘screen fitted. I was furnished with a top-of-the-range Corolla Touring Sports to drive while the Commercial was away, and it made for an interesting comparison.
In Excel spec, the Touring Sports has a lot more gadgets than the bone-stock Commercial, but its interior is fundamentally the same. I found a few plusher materials dotted about the place; the main difference was the deeper seats. Deeper, but not necessarily any more comfortable than those in the Commercial, at least not for my back. Which shows how good the Commercial’s seats are.
Similarly, the Corolla TS wasn’t really any more refined. Really concentrating, there were a few decibels less ambient noise, but not enough to make a significant difference to long-journey comfort. That there was no obvious way of turning off the lane departure or speed limit warning was a huge black mark, though. I could live with the former, less so with the latter and I restored to turning up the volume to drown it out – no hardship with the JBL-branded stereo.
Passenger rides and tip runs
The Corolla Commercial returned after a couple of weeks looking good as new. Whatever caused the issues connecting to Android Auto had also been solved, most likely by dint of my having a new phone. A trip out was in order.
My partner is a demanding passenger. She has sensory issues and often feels distressingly cut-off from the outside world in modern cars. She also struggles to get comfortable in the seat. But she hasn’t had any complaints about the Corolla Commercial on those fronts. The passenger seat suits her shape. and the relatively vocal engine makes her feel in touch with what’s going on. She is, however, as bothered as me about the lack of cabin storage, and that the bulkhead prevents reaching into the back.
A garage clear out necessitated taking several big bags of junk to the tip. I slung them into the back of the Corolla without any thought – not possible even in a big estate. However, I could have done with more space around the bags to sort out the various materials whilst I was at the tip. I realised I hadn’t taken the Corolla around my road test route in the Yorkshire Dales. So, naturally, I chose the day we got the first winter snow. The roads weren’t icy but were sopping wet in places. The Corolla displayed its excellent traction and stability, it has pretty good overtaking poke as well. But there is not a trace of engagement to be found.
