Looking at our local market, we’re actually lucky we get a few station wagons here. When we last counted all the wagons sold in the Philippines, we came up with less than ten.
It’s a shame, really, as wagons are easily more practical than their sedan counterparts and offer more load space than some crossovers or SUVs. It also means we’re missing out on a lot of good stuff from abroad.
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Over in Japan, there’s the Toyota Corolla Touring. It’s not an entirely new car, and we’ve even covered it a few times before. Still, that doesn’t make us stop wishing for it in the Philippines.
We bring up the long-roof Toyota Corolla again because there’s a new special edition sold in its home market. Dubbed the Active Sport, it gets several interesting styling details inside and out. It even gets an upgraded chassis.
The Active Sport gets a two-tone paint scheme with a black roof and a special color called Cement Grey Metallic. It also comes with a specially designed front bumper and it’s exclusive to this variant. Black side skirts are part of the package and have Active Sport embossed on the panel. Curiously, the Active Sport badge on the tailgate is an option.
Inside, it gets a pair of sportier seats with thicker bolsters. It then gets leather and suede trim on the seats and door panels. Further sprucing up the cabin is the fact that the dash is wrapped in leather. Well, synthetic leather. Oh, and Toyota is quite keen in pointing out that the seats in the car have ‘static neutralizing’ properties.
So, what are the chassis upgrades that were mentioned earlier? Turns out, the Active Sport model benefits from special suspension tuning. The springs are different from the standard model, along with new dampers. Toyota even went to the trouble of recalibrating the power steering for enhanced feedback.
By the way, the Active Sport is also available as a sedan. For those wondering, it gets the same upgrades as the wagon, the special suspension tuning included.
There are no upgrades to the engine. In Japan, it uses a 1.8-liter hybrid that makes 138hp and 207 Nm of torque. Manuals aren’t offered in Japan (save for the GR Corolla), so the long choice is a continuously variable transmission.
