Going by looks, I'd say that the GR Corolla is even better than the GR Yaris; the 12th gen Corolla is one of the best looking hatchbacks ever made in my opinion, and the GR Corolla has faithfully retained the lines and proportions of its base model, unlike the GR Yaris. Under its vented bonnet, the 1.6L turbo 3–cylinder gains a sizeable power bump, stiffer suspension, and wider tyres all four corners to help offset the increased mass of the GR Corolla, with the super–hardcore MORIZO Editions churning out 31HP more and packing rubber 20mm wider at each corner when compared to the top–of–the–line GR Yaris—299HP (223kW) and 245mm respectively. The result of all that is a shockingly heavy track toy (1,445kg, 3,186lbs) that is slightly faster than the GR Yaris most of the time, while behaving almost identically to its beloved brother in the twisty bits. The smaller Yaris will have a slight leg–up in tighter corners, while the more powerful Corolla edges away on long straights, meaning that, on the right tracks, the two can be dead even. Considering just how much the GR Yaris impressed us at COTW with its agile yet surefooted handling, it's really saying something that Toyota have managed to retain so much of what made the GR Yaris so lovely to drive in a larger, much heavier body.
Even though its name and body shell nowadays are more associated with Super Taikyu and hydrogen fuel, the GR Corolla is very much still a rally car at heart when powered by old fashioned, unleaded gasoline in road–going guise. Its G16E engine may be capable of revving to 7,200rpm, but that's more for hanging onto a lower gear as the driver power slides the car out of a bend on loose surfaces, and serves no real purpose beyond engine braking on paved tarmac. The MORIZO's happy place is between 3,250rpm and 4,600rpm, where it makes and maintains its peak torque of 400.0N⋅m (295.0lbf⋅ft), allowing it to spin up all four of its wheels from a wide rpm range in a moment's notice on loose surfaces, or simply to lug the car out of a corner in a higher gear to eliminate an upshift. I personally feel it best to shift this thing around 6,700rpm, which is about 3/4 of the rev bar on the game's HUD, or shortly after the gear indicator starts blinking orange in the car's instrumentation screen.
Having its roots buried deep into the dirt of rally stages, the Corolla does unfortunately have some classic understeer typical of rally machines. To counteract this, Toyota engineers have dialed in classic rally car rear rotation under braking in the GR Corolla, and it's a decision I'm struggling to come to grips with, literally and figuratively. On one hand, the rear end swinging out under hard trail braking can be lovely on a narrow, twisting track, such as Bathurst and Laguna Seca, but I'm no Toyota master driver, and I struggle to find any predictability and consistency with it. On a wider track, or for corners with deeper apexes, such as T1 of Road Atlanta and Deep Forest, that tail happiness becomes a dangerous liability that has to be actively avoided and managed. It's a little infuriating and puzzling, because while the GR Yaris had hints of this tail happiness, the car with the shorter wheelbase didn't suffer from this chronic oversteer problem nearly as much as the Corolla. Methinks this extra tail happiness under braking is a conscious setup decision by Toyota to counter the Corolla's larger size and mass to get it to rotate like the Yaris does more naturally, but I personally think they overdid it a bit. I drove the Corolla with ABS Default—the safest setting the game offers players—and I still found the Corolla a bit too quick and eager to snap, and I really do wish they would at least increase the ABS strength on the rear a bit in Track Mode so it doesn't brake the rear tyres that much. After all, Toyota GR models are specially fitted with a traditional handbrake lever to facilitate this style of driving, and the GR-FOUR All–Wheel–Drive system would even automatically decouple the rear wheels from the gearbox when the handbrake is engaged, so I really don't get why the foot brake has to make the car so twitchy.
As for alternatives, there may be cars that can offer or exceed the Corolla's stiff, no–nonsense handling, rally–ready setup, brutish power, charming looks, suggestions of practicality, and relatively reasonable price, but none really bring all those together in one package like the Corolla. The FL5 Civic Type R is the most obvious rival, being a modern sports car on sale today with similar performance on a dry, paved track, but it immediately falls apart the moment grip diminishes due to rain, loose surfaces, or simply on a tight, low speed track like Tsukuba, where the FF Civic doesn't have enough time to use its 26HP advantage to claw back the ground lost on corner exits to the AWD Corolla. The Honda also feels completely dead to drive and unpredictable at speed to my hands. The much more powerful AWD Focus RS actually has rear seats, but lacks the track focus and crispness in the corners that the Corolla offers, and would struggle to even remain a blur in the Corolla's rear view mirror on a tighter track. The 2014 WRX STi is so very pleasant to drive, but it might get another form of STI to its name after the Corolla gets done raw dogging it on a lap time board. An R32 GT-R would happily hang with the Corolla, as will any of its JDM sports car contemporaries, but they're all expensive as hell in GT7, and not all of them drive well. Really, the only thing that seems to be able to closely compare to the GR Corolla is the GR Yaris. Me personally? I'd take the Yaris any day for its lightness, its relative lack of tail happiness, its slightly lower PP when stock, and much cheaper price, even if my gaze stubbornly refuses to convey that.
In short, the GR Corolla is a jack of all trades that does everything at a high level, and is nigh–impossible to argue against as a package, especially when you consider that in real life, it supposedly even comes with a warranty.
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