Does this dealer leak hint at a Toyota Corolla wagon?
Fri, 23 Aug 2013
The hopes of car enthusiasts are often vain little things; bordering on irrational desires for technologies and form factors that the market has declined to buy in volume, at least in North America. Manual transmissions, diesel engines (although slightly more mainstream these days), compact pickup trucks and, of course, station wagons, are all variations on the well-worn theme here. And so, when we come across a rumor that one or more of these items from our wish list might be upcoming, and a surprise at that, we tend to get fairly amped.
Use that as background when you're considering just how many grains of salt to swallow with this latest Toyota Corolla rumor, which stems from a leaked schematic on the dealership level, and portends a wagon bodystyle for the new car.
One enthusiastic Autoblog reader and Toyota dealership employee recently stumbled upon the interior lighting schematic drawing you see inset here, which clearly identifies both the "4D" four-door sedan version of the 2014 Corolla, but also a long-roof "5D" car that is unimpeachably a station wagon (click to expand the image). The real question is, is it a Corolla?
What's possible, albeit disheartening, is that we're looking at a diagram for the European Auris Touring Sports model (pictured above), a car that debuted at the Geneva Motor Show this past March. However, at least from the diagrams above, the D-Pillar doesn't look correct, and the nose doesn't seem quite "pointy" enough, for lack of a better word. It also doesn't explain why a US dealer would receive such information.
Just this week, we drove the 2014 Corolla (look for the review very soon), and at that launch event, Toyota spokespeople told us that there were no further bodystyles planned "at this time." That kind of language leaves the door open just a crack for a North American wagon. Still, with compact two-box competitors like the Kia Forte5, Mazda3 and Subaru Impreza rekindling our collective appetite for small wagons, perhaps the first Corolla attempt since the Nineties' 7th-generation E100 isn't so far-fetched after all.
By Seyth Miersma