Following a successful roll-out around South East Asia, Taiwan, and even the United States, the Corolla Cross has now made its way over Toyota’s home country in Japan, although this time with a significantly redesigned front end.
The trapezoidal grille on the global Corolla Cross is moved downwards to now serve as the lower intakes, while a hexagonal protruding trim piece with a letterbox-style slit replaces the regular grille area.
Halogen projector headlamps Bi-LED projector headlamps
A “C” emblem (representing Corolla) sits in the middle of the trim piece, as opposed to the regular elliptical Toyota logo. Flanking the new “grille” are the headlights, which also gets a significant redesign to their light signature, particularly on the range-topping models with Bi-LED projection.
Check out the Malaysian-spec Toyota Corolla Cross in more detail here!
The rest of the exterior remains pretty much faithful to the global model, except for the slightly-reworked tail lights, plus a new rear bumper featuring a slim satin-aluminium strip.
It’s a similar story on the interior, where it’s also largely identical to the global model. The Japanese Toyota Corolla Cross however does get a few additional goodies over our Malaysian-spec model, including a seven-inch digital display in the instrument cluster, and an electronic parking brake (as opposed to the ancient foot-operated one on ours).
Just like most international markets, the Toyota Corolla Cross in Japan is also offered in two powertrain configurations – a regular petrol ICE model and a Hybrid variant – both with 1.8-litre naturally-aspirated engines.
The 1.8 2ZR-FA engine in the petrol variants makes 140 hp and 170 Nm of torque, with power sent to the front wheels via a CVT gearbox, while the Hybrid variants pair an Atkinson-cycle engine with an electric motor for a combined output of 122 hp.
Toyota Taiwan has just unveiled a GR Sport edition of the Toyota Corolla Cross! Check it out here.
The Hybrid variants are also available with the E-Four all-wheel drive system, which adds another motor to the rear axle. Unique to the AWD variants is also the double-wishbone rear suspension; all other models get a torsion beam suspension at the rear of the TNGA-C platform, just like our Malaysian-spec model.
Toyota Safety Sense 2.0 is also available as standard across all Corolla Cross variants in Japan, which includes autonomous emergency braking with pedestrian and bicycle detection, adaptive cruise control, lane centring assist, automatic high-beam, and blind-spot monitoring.
Pricing wise, the Toyota Corolla Cross starts at JPY1,999,000 (approx RM79k) for the base petrol G “X” variant, and tops out at JPY3,199,000 (approx. RM121k) for the Hybrid Z E-Four variant.
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