Thursday, February 18, 2010
This week I took a little business trip to Baltimore. At the Hertz counter I was handed the keys to a new Corolla. I figured if I got pulled over I could claim sudden unintended acceleration. Bonus!
I don’t care much for the styling. Somehow they found a way to make it look just plain, kinda slab-sided, and somehow rinky-dink. So anyway, I’m obviously going to be stylin’ around town.
I open the door, go to climb in and bash my leg on the end of the dash assembly protruding into the door space, something I then proceeded to do over and over again through three days. Obviously a behavioral and/or coordination problem on my part.
I pulled out of the rental car place onto the main drag and up onto 195. The immediate driving impressions were:
- The car was nice and quiet at highway speed, and
- There was no, and I mean absolutely no, on-center feel.
Hit a truck rut, shoot to the left. Too much road crown, swoop to the right. No road feel whatsoever. How can I possibly simultaneously cruise, talk on the cell, and tune the radio in this thing if I always need a hand on the wheel? But seriously, this thing was stupid numb and required constant attention.
Then I hear on the radio on the way back to the airport yesterday afternoon that Toyota is considering recalling Corollas for some kind of power steering problem. Go figure.
I don’t care much for the styling. Somehow they found a way to make it look just plain, kinda slab-sided, and somehow rinky-dink. So anyway, I’m obviously going to be stylin’ around town.
I open the door, go to climb in and bash my leg on the end of the dash assembly protruding into the door space, something I then proceeded to do over and over again through three days. Obviously a behavioral and/or coordination problem on my part.
I pulled out of the rental car place onto the main drag and up onto 195. The immediate driving impressions were:
- The car was nice and quiet at highway speed, and
- There was no, and I mean absolutely no, on-center feel.
Hit a truck rut, shoot to the left. Too much road crown, swoop to the right. No road feel whatsoever. How can I possibly simultaneously cruise, talk on the cell, and tune the radio in this thing if I always need a hand on the wheel? But seriously, this thing was stupid numb and required constant attention.
Then I hear on the radio on the way back to the airport yesterday afternoon that Toyota is considering recalling Corollas for some kind of power steering problem. Go figure.
