The Toyota GR Corolla Morizo Edition and the Honda Civic Type-R are two of the very best hot hatches ever built. On paper, they’re incredibly similar, and somewhat unsurprisingly that holds true when you put them on a track together. Here’s how the two hot hatch kings fare in a three-part U-drag race.
As a refresher, a U-drag race is exactly what it sounds like. The cars start from a static position, race a full quarter of a mile, and then have to turn around and race back to the start line. It tests acceleration, braking, and cornering grip in one nice tight package and in this case, it’s testing the best of the family.
The GR Corolla Morizo Edition is as quick as the Corolla gets. It comes with a 300-hp (223 kW) three-cylinder engine, a six-speed manual transmission, and an AWD system that can continuously send up to 70 percent of the power to the rear wheels. The Honda Civic Type-R is also at the top of the Civic food chain and makes 315 hp (234 kW) from its turbocharged four-cylinder engine. Just like the Toyota, it uses a six-speed manual transmission but it sends power to the front wheels only.
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As one might expect, the GR Corolla gets off to a great start in race one but the additional power of the Civic actually reels it in before the end of the quarter mile. The Honda takes that lead and never lets up, managing to best the Corolla in the corner and then use its power to reach the start/finish line about a car length ahead.
In race two we see more of the same. The Toyota leverages that AWD system to launch faster but the Honda simply overpowers it in a straight line. Over the quarter-mile drag race, the two cars finish just 0.1 seconds different from one another, 14.3 seconds vs. 14.4 seconds.
In the cornering contest, the Type-R takes the win again with a maximum g-force of 1.28 compared to the GR Corolla with 1.22 G. Over the whole course the Civic managed to put a half of a second gap on the Toyota, finishing in 38.5 seconds compared to the Toyota’s time of 39 seconds flat.
As a die-hard believer that AWD is always more fun to drive (given other things being equal), I’ll simply add this: had these cars been on a lower-traction surface, I think the results would’ve been dramatically different. Regardless, we all win since pricing on both the Type-R and the GR Corolla seems to be cooling off a bit and both are fun and practical.