Toyota’s plan to make you care about the Corolla? This radical pointy restyle

The Toyota Corolla is the answer to a good pub quiz question: what’s the most popular car in the world?

Because although the VW Beetle remained on sale longer, the Ford Model T sold faster, and the Tesla Model Y (and RAV4) have booted it from the top of the sales charts, the Corolla is a sales phenomenon. Over 50 million have been made.

And there’s a very good reason for that. It’s boring. A car ham sandwich. Wholesome, easy to digest, and entirely forgettable.

Photography: Toby Thyer/manufacturer

Toyota sells 10 million vehicles a year globally and the Corolla is a massive money spinner, but the company knows it’s never been a car you ‘want’. You buy one because it’s practical and inoffensive, and never breaks down.

But what if a Corolla looked edgy and streamlined, like a cross between the latest Prius and a stealth jet? What if it had a totally reimagined minimalist interior? Would that make a Corolla cool?

That’s what the new Toyota Corolla Concept is here to ask. It’s a gamble: a radical lane-change pointing where Toyota takes its best-selling family car next, as it’s attacked on all sides by crossovers, EVs, bargain Chinese upstarts and premium badges punching down.

The ‘pixel’ LEDs remind us of Hyundai’s Ioniq series. The wraparound rear light bar and darkened roof has hints of the Lucid Air. Inside it’s got a toy Corolla-shaped lozenge for a gear selector and controls are mounted on pods near the steering wheel, so it doesn’t even have a ‘dashboard’ as we know it. It’s way too nice inside to be an Uber.

It’s easy to be sniffy about an edgy concept car promising a drastic, brave future, but apparently this one is to be taken seriously. Toyota tells us “whatever the power source, Toyota’s vision is to make good-looking cars that everyone will want to own and drive".

So, what are those power sources? How can the Corolla offer something for everyone when there are so many new regulations, emissions targets and jitters about EVs?

“Technological innovation enables the flexibility for Corolla Concept to be a battery-electric vehicle (BEV), plug-in hybrid (PHEV), hybrid (HEV), or internal combustion engine vehicle,” Toyota says. It even hints about the engine-powered car is “perhaps running on carbon neutral fuels".

So, the game plan is for the Corolla to remain a car for the entire world to buy in enormous numbers.

Except maybe if it looks like this inside and out, they’ll sell a few to people who actually care about cars, instead of it being the four-wheeled equivalent of a dishwasher.