Yesterday, I finally dropped my car off at the body shop to have the storm damage fixed. As part of the deal, my insurance company is covering a rental car while the professionals replace parts and match paint and all that stuff they’re good at on my 2016 Scion iM.

I left the shop yesterday with this:

A 2016 Toyota Corolla LE. As you might be aware, my Scion and this Corolla are essentially siblings. They’re derived from the same platform, share the same engine (though the Scion’s tuned to make a few more horses), and seem to share, based on my short experience thus far, a lot of the same parts bins for interior hardware and sheet metal. Mine’s got a hatch and a body kit, this one’s got plastic hubcaps and a trunk; otherwise, the family resemblance is uncanny.

That said, they feel like entirely different animals.

Part of that might be the fact that the Corolla has a less advanced suspension out back,is running a CVT rather than a six-speed manual, and has smaller, narrower wheels and tires rolling it along. It’s a little bumpy and sluggish, has less responsive steering, and is largely numb. My Scion, at least, has sporting aspirations; the Corolla is a cheap reliable appliance for people who don’t like driving very much.

But I kind of knew that already, though I’d never had the opportunity to do such a hands-on comparison before . What’s surprising me most is the fit and finish. The interior of the Corolla, again, clearly shares a bunch of components (dash top, door cards, pillar shrouds, buttons and stuff), though even for the mid-trim level Corolla (which actually has a sticker price a bit higher than my Scion), it feels kind of cheap. Surfaces that in my car are soft-touch or leather(like) wrapped in my car are plain, hard rubber and plastic (most notably the steering wheel). The seats are barely bolstered and uncomfortable (also weirdly gray while the carpet and much of the dash is black); the instrument cluster has a cheap LCD screen rather than the color, multifunction display mine’s got, and The sound system, while running the same software, runs on a smaller unit with a lower-res screen and with much lower sound fidelity. Stuff is “mostly” in the same place, though often just off enough to throw me off when I try to turn on the headlights or change the volume.

It’s my car, just slightly shittier, which is weird, since we’re talking about a car that’s nearly identical, but with an MSRP that’s $1100 bucks higher. It feels….cheap.

I don’t know, that might just be the ubiquitous rental car smell – you know, the scent of conflict between deodorizing spray and “I wasn’t smoking in here, honest!”?

Whatever it is, I just want my car back.