2019 Toyota Corolla vs 2019 Nissan Sentra--Comparison

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The Corolla is the number two bestselling compact car, and the Nissan Sentra isn’t far behind at number three. The Civic outsells them both, so you may be wondering why it hasn’t been included in this comparison. Unfortunately, the 2019 Civic was not available for me to film yet, and as it becomes available I will release a new comparison featuring the three. For now, though, we’ll stick to the Sentra and Corolla. Naturally, consumers want to know which is the best car, so today I will be comparing them using multiple points of evaluation. I assess each category on a scale from one to ten to come to as objective a conclusion as possible. 

Let’s begin with our first area of evaluation, which is value. The features that are available on both vehicles here include push-button start, some form of smart key, a SiriusXM subscription, Bluetooth, and a seven-inch screen in the dash housing the infotainment system. Other features they have in common are 60/40 split folding rear seats, a leather wrapped steering wheel, heated front seats, and a power moonroof. Now let’s look at the differences between each car. The 2019 Toyota Corolla XLE begins life at $22,135. It has automatic climate control, but it doesn’t have dual zone capability. However, it does have an eight-way power adjustable front driver seat and even allows the passenger four ways of power adjustment. The Toyota comes with six speakers, and its wheels are 16 inches instead of 17. However, it does boast LED headlights and daytime running lights, which aided the vehicle in the safety segment that we will get to shortly. Speaking of safety, the Toyota does come with a lot of active features such as dynamic radar cruise control, lane departure alert with steering assist, and a pre-collision system with pedestrian detection. Let’s move on to the Nissan Sentra SR Turbo. The Nissan has some more premium features for its $22,570 price, such as LED headlights, dual zone climate control, and Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. Fog-lights, 17-inch wheels, heated side mirrors, and 6 speakers are also present; however, it is also lacking some key features, such as any form of power adjustable seats, and active safety features. All it has in this segment is automatic emergency braking, lacking any form of lane recognition assistance or dynamic cruise control. 

Safety is very important for these small cars in a sea of large SUVs, so we’ll move on to that next. Of course, we have already discussed the active safety features, which were included in the value segment, so let’s instead look at the passive safety features and the IIHS ratings. The outstanding performance here lies with the Toyota, which received the Top Safety Pick award, and got a rating of ‘Good’ in every area the IIHS tests, except headlights, where it got acceptable. The Nissan wasn’t that far off of the Toyota, to be honest. The biggest thing stopping it from scoring as well as the Toyota were the headlights. The Sentra SR Turbo scored poor in this segment, which prevents it from the lauded award. The Nissan’s LED’s must not have been enough to earn it an ‘Acceptable’ rating. 

Something that buyers of these compact cars care about even more than safety is fuel economy. The Toyota gets 28 miles per gallon in the city and 36 on the highway, and the Nissan trails with 27 in the city and 33 on the highway. 

Something that buyers may care less about is the powertrain of each car and the corresponding performance, but that is a necessary point of evaluation for every car on the market. The Toyota sticks to natural aspiration with its 1.8 liter inline four cylinder, but only manages 132 horsepower and 128-pound feet. The Toyota has a Continuously Variable Transmission, or CVT in the interest of fuel economy. The Nissan is turbocharged, making 188 horsepower and 177-pound feet from its inline 1.8-liter four cylinder, which is attached to the industry standard CVT. Historically, however, turbocharged engines come with more variation in EPA ratings than naturally aspirated ones, but for the sake of the comparison the only numbers we have to rely on are EPA numbers. 

Let’s look at how each vehicle’s powertrain performs in a test from a dead standstill to 60 miles per hour. The Corolla is the slowest of the two, which is no surprise given its power deficit. It takes a sluggish 9.2 seconds to get to 60 miles per hour, compared to a quick 7.0 seconds for the Sentra SR Turbo. 

2019 Toyota Corolla

Styling is a controversial topic because it is purely subjective, so your tastes may differ from mine. This generation Corolla’s look was a much more disputed look than the previous generation, and I don’t think the 2017 facelift helped much. Personally, I didn’t mind the 2014-2016 Corolla’s styling, but it started looking weird in 2017. The Sentra hasn’t changed much, and it looks rather plain, but at least it isn’t ugly. Moving on to the interiors of each car, my tastes change a little. The Corolla has a better interior than the Sentra. Styling in general in this segment is sort of insignificant because they are both very close, especially interior wise so there isn’t a whole lot to say. 

Finally, let’s look at our last evaluation area, which is reliability. The 2019 Corolla is rated Much Better than Average by Consumer Reports, where the Nissan is rated Worse than Average. Nissan vehicles seem to struggle more in reliability than the other Japanese makes, like Honda, Toyota, Subaru and Mazda. Even some GM vehicles have been edging them out. The weight of this category is significant, so Nissan could really use to look at the quality of their product. 

Here are the final scores for the Nissan and Toyota on a scale from one to ten in each category I evaluated. As you can see, the Corolla pulls ahead in value and safety, but demolishes the Nissan in reliability, because they are the best of the best and worst of the worst in this category. The only category that the Nissan won was for powertrain, and even then, some people don’t like its CVT. I tied them for styling because I considered it a wash, essentially. Thanks for reading! See the infographic below to see how I ranked each car. This year, the Corolla won, although both are due for a re-fresh soon.