New Corolla Estate opinions / alternatives?

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Casual window shopping for a new family car, not finding much that appeals. Requirements are:

Hybrid or Petrol
Decent sized boot (550L+)
5 door
Isofix
0-62mph <10s
Parking sensors
Not massively long (<4.7m)
Nice interior
Smooth and quiet ride
<£40k
Android Auto
Reliable (maybe more to go wrong in a hybrid?)
~9k miles per year, mostly mix of short motorway runs, town driving etc plus occasional longer trips and holidays etc. Potentially might go up as current numbers a bit subdued by pandemic.
Happy to wait

Toyota Corolla Touring Sports Icon Tech 2.0 seems to potentially fit the bill but don't know much about them.
Skoda Octavia Estate another option under consideration, but leaning towards the Toyota as the ideal of hybrid appeals for some of the short journeys it will be used for (plugin hybrid or full electric not really an option as garage/parking space isn't directly attached to our house).

Has anyone driven the new Corolla Estate?

 

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Thanks. I'm not looking for a car that is 'sporty' or fun to drive, ride quality much more important. But it needs to be something with enough power to handle overtakes when loaded up, going up inclines etc. 10s to 62mph is just an arbitrary value that should hopefully ensure that.

I've spent the last couple of years driving an Auris hybrid.

Less to go wrong in a Toyota hybrid. No turbo, dual-mass flywheels, clutch, fancy DSG gearbox, starter motor or alternators in them. Gearbox is basically one speed planetary drive. Hybrid system does the rest, and it's essentially the same concept as used in nearly 20 years worth of Prius'. They'll do vast mileages reliably, as your local Uber drivers will likely attest.

Yeah, I figure Toyota have had as much experience as anyone with hybrids so it should be pretty refined by now.

plugin octavia (even leon/passat phev too) will still charge off of the petrol engine
and could use plugin away from home/holidays, free supermarket trip - so, more versatile, lower depreciation ?

Yeah I guess so, but it feels like a bit of a waste and it seems quite pricey. The Octavia PHEV costs about £5k more than the 1.5 TSI. Similar story with the Leon ST. Both of them cost more than the Corolla in the trim levels I'm looking at. Ability to plug in does appeal but not sure it's enough to warrant the expense, given we can't charge it at home I think it would take a long time to claw back the £5k in fuel savings.

stellaris peugot phev's, the pretty, new, 308sw seem relativelty untested yet.

This would be to replace a (petrol) 308SW, so whilst it ticks all the boxes I couldn't bring myself to spend that much money to have basically the same car again. Obviously nearly every car will be a downgrade in boot size, but kids are at an age now where we rarely need to take a pram anywhere so can probably just about get away with a Corolla estate.

I would really like to get the Corolla soon but with some uncertainty at work and the cost of used cars right now I just can't justify it

Yeah with the state of the used market I can understand that, I looked on AT last night and the cheapest in the country was like £21k for a 19 plate. You can get brand new for about £26k which I think is better value (as per OP I'm prepared to wait) - in a normal market you'd probably be able to get one for perhaps £16k I reckon.

 

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If I could fine one for that money know I would bite, haven't seen one for less than £25k on auto trader since August

This one is under £22k: https://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-details/202111199739240

As I wrote in another thread I see a slow deflation not a bubble bursting. The issue is there simply won't be that many 70-71 plates on the road to fill the used market because they never sold that many in the first place. So a 2 year old car will hold value for a long time as it can still undercut new but not be pushed down by 1 year old cars as not enough of those exist.

With the current market if we proceed with this it will definitely be brand new. 2L Icon Tech is £292.53 for 41 months with zero deposit then final payment just under £13k, so total price under £25k.

- Loads of boot space 598L approx

2L version has a marginally smaller boot, 581L or something.

Out of interest what do you guys see as the benefits of Excel trim, I couldn't see enough there for me to warrant spending another £3k above Icon Tech but maybe I'm missing something?

 

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As per OP this is just window shopping at present, no decisions have been made.

My wife is annoyed with it, it's failed on her twice during motion. The first time was cambelt failing and trashing the engine, second time was a sensor problem but she was stranded on her own for 6 hours waiting for the RAC. She's lost confidence in it, it's out of warranty now (except replaced parts). So the main reason is concerns about reliability whilst on the road, plus just itchy feet having owned it nearly 5 years wanting something with more power, tech and auto, and wanting to cash in on elevated used car values while we still can.
As I mentioned earlier, the need for a huge boot is diminishing slightly so downsizing that to Corolla in exchange for more legroom seems an ok proposition.

As for appreciation it depends on how you look at it - compared to a couple of months ago (ironically just before these problems started happening), valuation has dropped about 15%. At a guess it's probably worth about the same as it was 18 months ago.
It's not an automatic.

Given it's recently had a lot of replacement parts, it's arguably a bad time to sell it because it is probably in better mechanical condition than most equivalent cars of its age. On the flipside, if it's got a design flaw to begin with that's not much consolation and having no confidence in a car isn't a great place to be, rational or otherwise.

 

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Yes the website said 4 months+ lead time (wouldn't surprise me if it is longer), we are not in a rush to change vehicle so I'm fine with that. Would be happy with getting a 72 plate on 1st September. One of the reasons I'm starting the casual search now is due to the lead time as if we wait until we want/need a new car, it will be too late.

Also looked into the Suzuki Swace as an alternative which I'd never heard of, but it seems that only comes with the 1.8 not 2.0 so that's off the table.

 

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plot twist - missed these - don't tell your wife it has a shared 308 platfrom, but they look nice, decent zf gearbox, almost a calibra look,
may have a sweeter pricepoint than the asia-pacific alternatives

2022 Opel Astra Sports Tourer with two PHEV powertrains

Hybrid boot is under 550L so doesn't fit in my criteria. It's close, but you have to draw the line somewhere and our current car already has a boot 20% bigger than that.
Pricing wise the cheapest trim Astra Hybrid hatchback with an auto box starts at an eye-watering £32.9k already, so it's hard to see the Estate being competitive with the Corolla on price.

 

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With the current market if we proceed with this it will definitely be brand new. 2L Icon Tech is £292.53 for 41 months with zero deposit then final payment just under £13k, so total price under £25k.

Kinda wish I'd just ploughed ahead with this now, price has gone up over past 5 weeks and is now over £330/month i.e. over £26.5k in total. Thought it seemed a good deal at the time considering the market...

 

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They've hiked the price a lot since I made the thread, doing away with the Icon Tech trim which basically means you need the Design trim and just generally bumping the price anyway. So you need to spend £34k list (£29k after discounts) instead of <£25k after discount when I posted on 3rd Jan last year. It's been slowly creeping up, I have it setup on carwow and every few months it tells me the manufacturer configuration has changed and I need to refresh the spec.

Now to be fair they have beefed up the engines a bit, the 2.0L is now 196HP and the 1.8 which was previously useless (122hp) is now a more respectable 138hp. But I think they realised this car was previously underpriced compared to alternatives so have steadily increased the price pretty much every quarter or at least half year. They've been a bit sneaky with the trim changes, engine changes etc basically raising the price by 20% under the guise of some very modest improvements.

That said, despite the rising prices I still haven't found anything to usurp it from my window shopping list, right now the choice is basically between this and a Kodiaq (which I'm aware are different types of car, but both fit my criteria pretty much). The situation is basically now pay £29k for a car I could have got a year ago for £25k except for a slightly better engine map. And yet I still can't find a car I want more for under £30k new, it was a 'bargain' at <£25k.

edit: So I guess my original request from over a year ago for alternatives still stands, as I'm still looking for one