Extended Test Drive, 2015 Toyota Corolla

I'll start this one very simply: this Corolla did not make me hate life like the 2013 I had as a rental and reviewed previously.
Was it as fun as the one I drove from age 16 to 19? No, I do not like this as much as I liked that 1995, but this one was much better than the 2013.

Starting with handling. I like to do a steering rack test. Basically I test the steering by starting from a stop and doing a left or right turn to see how many turns of the steering wheel are required, and another test at low speed, not from a stop.

From a dead stop I had to turn the steering wheel  about 270 degrees. While moving at low speeds, 5-20 MPH, it took about 180 degrees. (About 90 degrees more for both than my BRZ requires.)

This car had the best headlights I have had on a rental in my recollection. LED low beams as standard across the model range are great for night time visibility. This is opposed to halogen or halogen projectors so often found in budget conscious rentals.

Otherwise on on and off ramps there was a very small pull to understeer but for the most part you could maintain speed through an on, off, or interchange ramp. Little bit of brake or throttle kept everything in check. It seemed rather neutral. Granted steering feel was not this car's forte.

I took a speed bump at ~15-20 MPH that had a suggested speed of 15 MPH. The experience was a crashing thunk and the suspension was not comfortable in that regard.
That being true on the speed bump the car was otherwise neither too soft nor too hard in its ride. You felt the road some, more through your butt than the steering wheel, but not too much. There did not seem to be any undue undulation. Granted there was body roll, but that is rather expected in this class of car.

The 150 MPH max on this speedometer can be classified as "optimistic". Where speed limits permitting, the car gets rather floaty at around 90 MPH. This is likely because the car lacks much in the way in downforce and begins to lift.
The 6400 RPM redline is real though, more on that below.

My one big complaint about this car is the steering wheel. Those grips at 10 and 2 are hard plastic and are supremely uncomfortable. If the steering wheel had a softer feel there it would have been fine.
The controls were relatively easy and intuitive to use. The only one I had a little trouble with is resetting the trip mileage is a press and hold of the "DISP" button on the steering wheel.

The seats were not comfortable enough that I would want to own one. But I did not find any aspect particularly uncomfortable. Mainly they were just too wide for me.
We never packed five into this car but it sat four adults without issue.

The transmission has three forward drive modes: D, S, and B.
In D, under light throttle input, upshifts are at 1500-2000 RPMs. D under heavy throttle is at 5500-6000 RPMs. Cruising RPMs were typically around 1500-2000 RPMs. When in D an "ECO" light will light up in green when you are being light and judicious with the throttle.
In S, under light throttle input, upshifts are at 2500-2800 RPMs. S under heavy throttle is at 6200-6300 RPMs, which is right up by that redline. Cruising RPMs were typically around 2300-2500 RPMs. The "ECO" light will not turn on when in S.
B is apparently a downhill engine braking selection. Being in FL there were not exactly a lot of downhills. But it did provide for additional engine braking than normal D or S deceleration. Generally it holds low gears. On accelerating in B this means a steady climb in RPM with no indication of upshift, I assume in gear. Following the LE on the boot lid this had a CVT with intelligent shift mode, CVTi-S.

Boot space was good, we fit four people's luggage in there on the trip back to the airport.
Braking was fine, nothing to write home about but nothing to complain about either. In some ways remarkable in how unremarkable it was. The rear bakes are drums.

The engine is a 1.8 L unit. It is equipped with Toyota's VVT-i variable valve technology. 16 valve dual overhead cam effort rated for 132 HP and 128 lb-ft of torque. This was enough power for the car to get out of its own way and relatively quickly get to a point where you had to watch your speed. This car weighs 2822 and 2866 lbs.
I imagine the improvements in this car over the one I drove previously and felt was abysmal have to be primarily in the suspension, or something. The previous generation supposedly weighed in at 2860 lbs. and had the same power and torque figures, though it is unclear at what RPMs.

Our fuel tanks were as follows:
Tank 1: 8.099 gallons, trip A 278.0 miles, trip B 278.0 miles. 33.33 MPG.
Tank 2: 5.155 gallons, trip A 183.6 miles, trip B 461.0 miles. 35.62 MPG.
Total economy over our rental period (which included all the shift testing and higher revs than might ordinarily be seen) was  34.78 MPG.
The base model is estimated at 28 MPG city and 37 MPG highway. While most of our driving was on the highways there were not insignificant portions of it spent in some of south Florida's lovely traffic jams. So I'll say fuel economy was acceptable.
According to Fuelly self-reporting 2015 Corolla owners are averaging 31.9 MPG.

Random shot of gauge cluster when returning the rental.

Concluding thoughts...
This generation (E170) felt a lot better to drive than the previous generation (E140). My favorite Corolla to date is still the 1995 (E100) I had in high school, though to be fair, I may be remembering it fondly due to the rosy fog of memory.
Being a rental I did not get to try the manual transmission.
That said, I found this more alive and engaging to drive than the 2015 Kia Optima and 2015 Hyundai Sonata I have rented recently. It was not as fun or pleasurable as the Hyndai i20 I had in Israel, though a lot of that might be down to the manual transmission.
Ultimately the answer is Mazda3 (unless you need AWD, and then it is Subaru Impreza). But that answer assumes the question is: "What entry level car should I buy?"
Really, at the end of this all, this is the first rental I've had in a while that was not trying to kill my inner car enthusiast. And for that I can say, you can get this now, and someday you might actually get a fun car.