Humble Instructor - My Driving Lesson in the Toyota Corolla LE

(Welcome to the third article in my series, The Hot Seat, where I drive incredible, cool cars from my point of view! Today, however, I’m diverting from this by speaking about the 2007 Toyota Corolla LE, which wasn’t crazily powerful or maniacally, meticulously engineered, but was especially with helping me to learn the art of driving through its slower nature. I hope you like the article, and if you have any questions, comment below!)

(Preliminary note: the Corolla posted above is similar to the one that the driving school used, but it’s not the exact one that was used. I apologize for not finding the one they use.)

My mom and I sat in the Q7, waiting and waiting for the car to pick me up. Two minutes passed by seven o’clock, and, anxious, she began to drive into the front of the building, where she was hoping that the driving school’s car was. A silver Corolla LE, one adorned in lettering and sponsors for the school, pulled into the front parking lot, taking a left. Mom followed it, continuing with a right as we passed the building again, going back into the rearward parking lot where we originally stayed. Upon reaching it, the student driver drove into a parking space, stopped, and got out, proud of practicing his techniques.

Curiosity flowed through my head as I approached the car, with the main thought being how I would adapt from driving my dad’s cars. Would I press the accelerator too lightly? In an attempt to muster more power, would I press it too hard? I was a beginner again, a mouse being taken out of his hole and has to find another place to scurry, going into the Toyota to seek respite from the decreasing temperatures and increasing wind.

Opening the sizable door, I sat, not fell, onto the plush seats, and I checked my surroundings from the rearward half of the car. The interior was clad in gray plastic, used wherever possible, with the exceptions being the wood trim that was laid onto parts of the door and the center console, along with the outskirts of the bulbous shifter, which was an automatic, and its associated letters, colored in either white, orange, or green. Several dials were pressed into the front console, and there was a digital clock that glowed green as dusk settled. The layout appeared relatively spartan, and the gauges brightened as the lights behind them activated.

The first hour in the car was spent observing the two other drivers in the car. The first one, who pulled over to pick me up, continued within the parking lot and practiced her left and right turns, along with learning how to parallel park and perform a three-point turn. There was also driving in reverse, which took some time, but was accomplished within five minutes. Another left, another right, and the instructor told him to leave the parking lot and enter the main road. During the on-road component, I, feeling slightly shy, looked out the window, taking in the world as the earth continued its rotation, forming a cunning illusion of a golden ball continuing on its course to the west. The sky became orange, pink, and purple as the sun peaked above the trees one last time, looking lonesomely at us four in the car, turned back, and went west.

Continuing on the route chosen by the instructor, the road led to the first driver’s house, where he exited with his permit. The second driver, one almost my age, got into the seat in front of me, taking control and performing a three-point turn, doing so at the man’s request in order to begin his lesson. We would retrace the previous route, but instead of continuing straight to reach a bridge, we took a right turn, where we entered the second town’s center. The sky’s colorful parade ceased, giving way to dark blue and, eventually, black. A few three-point turns later, the driver asked for him to parallel park beside a restaurant, which was done with finesse. From here, the driver brought us through several meandering corners, parked up a hill, and returned to the original parking spot. Being his third lesson, he performed well.

I counted my third Prius of that day while the car returned to the parking lot, which was almost entirely barren save for an SUV and the Corolla. After he exited, proud of everything except a slightly twitchy turn at the fourth to last turn before the parking lot.

It was my turn, and I was scared of my first impression. In all, there was 128 horsepower being produced by the 1.8 liter inline-four that rested in the front, powering the wheels just beyond my accelerator and brake pedal, which had a second pedal that was connected to the passenger side in the case that the instructor needed to activate my brakes. If I drove too slow, I would be told to speed up; if I used the the aging but peppy engine’s throttle, it would jolt forward, especially when the car itself weighed approximately 2,600 pounds.

I dropped into the cloth seat, checking everything like I would with my own car. Shifting in neutral, emergency brake completely up, steering wheel centered and straight, indicator stalk undisturbed, my instructor spoke to me about looking about and making sure the car was in working order. The fuel needle was edging closely towards empty, and there was a check engine light, and, upon asking about both of those things, I was told that he would solve those issues after my practice. Preparing to drive, I shifted into drive, pushed the button on the emergency brake, lifting it up and gently bringing it down, turned to the left to prepare for a left turn, activated the requisite turn signal, looked into the mirror, and, just before I made that first mechanical impression, checked the blind spot over my left shoulder.

Getting used to the vehicle, I was told to take a lap around the building. The car responded well, even with over 130 thousand miles being clocked on it since 2007, with the four cylinders not being teachers of power, but of control. Upon taking off, I pressed the pedal and accidentally allowed my nerves to get the better of me. The car hopped eagerly ahead to the first turn, a right one, for which I braked a bit quickly. My driving instructor told me to stop for one second and take a deep breath; he understood my anxiety, telling me to make my actions more natural, to slow down with my reactions and allow the car to flow.

To this, I told him about my “training” in Forza Motorsport, and to this, he responded, “Motorsport is like water, but regular driving is like honey.” To have the benefits of lightning-fast reaction times, rapid turning, and the will to push the envelope of performance further to seal the gap between an opponent was quenching and quick, but to be able to relax this, to slow down the motions and make them more flowing, was a greater benefit when there was normal driving, with it also being relaxing and sweet.

Upon his utterance of that last word, we both laughed, and I relaxed as I turned, bringing one hand over the other, as the road test mandated, to tighten the turn, bringing the wheel one full rotation around. Upon reaching this straight, I continued onward with my shyness slowly fading as I continued, but at the speed limit. To make it less taxing on the car, I used one pedal at a time, making sure that the front wheels didn’t have too many tasks to complete. Another right, another right, and another straight, and the car almost felt like it was at Daytona, but it wasn’t. There was no snarling V8 underneath here, but just half of that, tuned for economy and longevity.

My turning became relaxed as we returned to where we were, and after practicing stopping on a curb, I was told to enter the main road. Since we were in a thickly-settled district and in an area where my Cross Country team and many other people run, I maintained a reasonable thirty miles per hour, attempting to relax as some slow, rolling turns with less twitchy turning and more confident, relaxed rotations of the wheel. Through here, I looked about, with the car cruising by trees, a field, and several houses, eventually reaching a set of lights. The brakes here were quite responsive, seeing that one doesn’t need large brakes to stop a small, light car like this, and the car never ceased to amaze me with its relaxed, yet responsive, turning.

He then told me to take a detour into a small neighborhood, where I was told to parallel park. I checked as my elbow became perpendicular to the car’s rear tire (the one that was to my right), and from there, I turned my head to the right as much as possible. Noticing this as a flaw to my driving, he asked me to place my hand on the back of his seat, allowing me to have structural rigidity as I rose, being able to use my central vision, not my peripheral vision, to see where I was going. Staring at a brake light that was in the center of the rear window, I used one of its edges to determine when I was coming too close to the curb, adjusting my wheel, which I held in the “twelve o’clock” position with my left hand, as a means of learning to drive backwards and parallel park. After this, and turning the car so it was facing the other’s direction, I put it into park and pulled the emergency brake up, holding the button.

This was the remarkable part about a car like this; even after so many miles, it was proven to keep going, to continue humbly from point A to point B without causing anybody to take out their phones or wake up from sleep. It was a car that instructed not on the quantity of power, but of the smooth curve it and torque can share. It was slow, but it was efficient, being able to continue farther than Dad’s ZO6 could potentially do even with its cylinder deactivation. Being lighter, with such gains in fuel economy and range, it would willingly turn into a corner, especially when my hands played leapfrog in a sharp turn, to portray Colin Chapman’s philosophy, which was expressed to an extent in this car.

A three-point turn was coming up, and, being on a narrow road, one part of me feared that the car wouldn’t be able to turn. By the first turn, however, it became apparent that the car wasn’t large enough to be stuck as a roadblock in the middle of a dark street. The second turn allowed it to be perpendicular to the road, but the third would allow it to putter back in an inverse of the original route.

Approaching a grocery store, the instructor wanted me to continue past, reaching a red light, where he told me about taking a right on red. I did as instructed, slowly, gently rotating the wheel as I approached the soft, infinite apex. Continuing along in the simply effective sedan, we would go through another series of meanders, and after this, I gradually rested my foot on the brake pedal at a stop sign, wishing not to produce too much friction.

Another mile, and we were approaching the parking lot where it started, and while the darkness covered much of the road ahead, the steadfast glow of the headlights brightened the yellow line, the asphalt, and a little bit yonder. Turning left into the secondary entrance, the soft, yellow glow was replaced by the modern, white illumination being produced by poles that blended in with the night, making it appear as if there were inch-tall aliens hovering in cube-like saucers. An ambling through the next small right, followed by an immediate twist to the left, and we were on the same road where we first saw the diligent municipal servant guiding people into driving with the right methods.

The next slow right, being followed by another sharp ninety-degree left, was taken without a twitch or a crazed attempt in slowing down, and with the next right and a short straight, we were back in the parking lot. As the Q7 pulled in, the instructor asked that I practice reverse driving again, and after this, he told me to turn out, continuing until I found a parking space where I could park the car. From here, I looked through the controls again, pressing the automatic’s button until it clicked into park and bringing the emergency brake up with a resolute pull while holding the button.

Before exiting the LE, I looked at the fuel needle; it sat at the bottom, pointing to the “E” while the engine light continued to glow yellow.