Comparison Tests
From the June 2014 Issue of Car and Driver
As We Emerge from a Winter that saw record-low temperatures lead to the rebranding of cold fronts as “polar vortices,” those of us in northern latitudes get to suffer through the inevitable sequel to the season’s historic snowfall: historic flooding. Our thigh-deep drifts and two-story plowed hills will melt into the ground like four months of rain that arrives in mere weeks or even days. Spring is a wet time up here.
There’s a simultaneous flood going on in a corner of the automotive world. The small-sedan segment has lately let loose a deluge of new and updated models. Our current favorite is the Mazda 3, which made its debut in 2013 and immediately redefined li’l-sedan (and -hatch) excellence. It ended the Ford Focus’s two-and-a-half-year reign over the class [“Frenemies,” December 2013] before clinching a spot on our 2014 10Best list the following month. In order to keep the Mazda’s price in the low-$20,000 range for this comparo, we opted for an i Touring model, which meant we rolled on 16-inch wheels—a significant distinction.
Also new is the Kia Forte. The brand’s styling overhaul has resulted in some handsome sedans, but until now the Forte wasn’t one of them. For 2014, it’s a low, lean thing with an aggressive shape on which the company’s so-called tiger-nose grille doesn’t seem so out of place. Given Kia’s value position, we could upgrade to the top-of-the-line EX model, with its 173-hp 2.0-liter, and the Forte would still be the cheapest in the test. So, of course, we did.
For years now, it seems as if Kia has been trying to build less-expensive Toyotas, but when the 2014 Corolla appeared, it looked an awful lot like the work of Kia styling chief Peter Schreyer. Like the Forte, the Corolla wears stubby four-door-coupe styling, with the same upswept beltline and truncated trunk. From a practical standpoint, the Toyota is significantly longer than its predecessor—it has the largest rear seat in this test—but packs a lowest-in-test 132 horsepower from its 1.8-liter four. An optional Eco tune adds eight horsepower but pairs it with lazier CVT programming.
Volkswagen’s Jetta looks the same now as it did when it finished last in our previous roundup of this class [“Startup Sedans,” May 2011], but beneath the car’s frozen crust of an exterior lie two very promising shoots: a new engine and a revised rear suspension. The former is a turbocharged 1.8-liter four with 170 horsepower; the latter a multilink independent setup instead of last year’s beam axle.
Honda’s Civic was new for 2012, but then took a mulligan when critics—including the people who put together the magazine you’re holding now—voiced their disappointment. Honda replaced the front and rear sheetmetal, redid the interior, and stiffened up the suspension, so we figured it had earned another go.
To escape recurrent vortices, we had to head south—way south, all the way to Knoxville, Tennessee. Since we were in the neighborhood, we hit the Tail of the Dragon, a legendary stretch of Appalachian byway boasting 318 turns over 11 miles. Overkill? Absolutely. But the Dragon proved as good a place as any to see if, here in a class of commuters where driving satisfaction often doesn’t make it onto the list of standard features, any car would warm our frostbitten hearts.
