First look: Toyota's new baby

TOYOTA took the covers off a concept car pointing to its tenth-generation Corolla at the Paris motor show last week.

Dubbed the Auris, which is the name the next Corolla hatchback will be called in Europe, the car serves as a massive hint as to what Toyota wants the European edition of its next-generation Corolla to achieve in the fiercely contested Continental small-car segment.

The production version – which is certain to retain the Corolla name for Australia and most other markets around the world – is due in Australia by the middle of next year following a debut at the Geneva motor show next march.

Pronounced "our-ris", the Auris is name is a play on the Latin word for gold. It was designed at Toyota’s ED2 design centre in Toulouse in Southern France, where the Yaris light car was designed. While both cars share similar styles in the front end, silhouette and tail treatment, the Auris adopts a somewhat cleaner European visage and displays a less brash approach to the detailing.

Germanic and even Honda Europe influences surface in the interior, which are dominated by a high-set centre console and gear-shifter, and a very VW-like central information screen.

On the subject of inspiration, the Auris is the car that Toyota allegedly has come up with after going back to the drawing board following the future shock design of the already-massively successful European Honda Civic, although the result is meeker than some pundits had hoped for.

However, by all accounts, the Auris’ two-box shape is much bolder than the closely related four-door sedan and wagon editions the company will build in Asia and the US. The Japanese unveiling of the production version of these is expected to occur next month.

As usual, Australia will receive the hatchback and sedan at the very least. While our production source will be Japan, the European market will receive the Auris from two sources – Turkey for the five-door hatchback and the UK for the sportier (and still-secret) three-door edition.

Toyota will not disclose information other than length (4226mm), width (1762mm) and height (1530mm) for the new hatchback, however speculation is rife that the Auris’ four-cylinder engines and running gear are derived from the Corolla Verso II, a five- and seven-seat MPV which is also built at the Turkish plant.

Released during 2004, Corolla Verso II offers two VVT-i variable-valve four-cylinder petrol engines, in 81kW/150Nm 1.6 and 95kW/170Nm 1.8-litre formats, as well as two 2.2-litre D-4D direct-injection common rail turbo-diesel units (100kW/310Nm and high-tune 130kW/400Nm).

Toyota Australia has already indicated that the new Corolla will introduce a new range of 1.8-litre petrol four-cylinder engines that will easily eclipse today’s 93kW/161Nm outputs.

Despite the hoopla Toyota is raising about its European aspirations, the company is among the last of the Asian manufacturers to embrace such a wholesale European design flavour for the world’s best-selling vehicle segment – the small car.

Honda and Nissan have been at it for years, while even Kia and Hyundai are where Toyota is at with their respective Cee’d and new Elantra hatchbacks.

The first Corolla, the KE10, was introduced to Australia in 1966.